Bal Harbour, Fla.
Vice President Douglas H. Dority has devoted 40 years of service to the United Food and Commercial Workers, starting out as a union organizer at the grocery store where he worked in Lynchburg, Virginia. His strong belief in a strong, unified labor movement drove his efforts to build his union and organize the unorganized.
Elected international president of UFCW in 1994, he guided the growth of the UFCW in administering mergers with several unions and overseeing successful organizing drives that enhanced the ability of the union to protect the job security, wages, health care benefits and pension coverage of UFCW members. His energetic, insistent and focused effort to organize workers at Wal-Mart has been joined by the entire labor movement in order to protect the livelihoods and living standards of working families all over this country.
He was elected an AFL-CIO Vice President in February 1994 and contributed to the Executive Council as chair of the committee on organizing, as a member of the special committee on political funding and the committees on Article XX and XXI review, political education, public affairs, finance and union sportsmen. He also has served on the boards of the George Meany Center for Labor Studies and Union Privilege.
On behalf of the men and women of the unions of the AFL-CIO, the Executive Council expresses its gratitude and appreciation to Douglas H. Dority for his service and devotion to the members of his union and to the labor movement.