Chicago, IL
Our friend and brother Vice President Wayne E. Glenn, retired president of the United Paperworkers International Union, has resigned from this Executive Council after a lifetime of faithful and committed service to his union, the AFL-CIO and the best interests of working men and women and their families.
A native of Oklahoma, he first became a union member after going to work at the International Paper Plant in Camden, Arkansas, in 1946, and he soon became an officer of Local 355 of the International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers. By 1957, he had become a national representative of his union, and in 1965, he was elected as a national vice president. During the 1960s, Wayne Glenn was an outstanding leader in the movement to organize pulp and paper mills in the South.
He was elected as national president of the UPIU in 1978, and as a vice president of the AFL-CIO in 1979.
Throughout his career in the labor movement, Glenn has been an advocate of strong, active central labor councils and state federations, having served as an officer of the Camden, Arkansas, Central Trades and Labor Assembly and later as secretary-treasurer and president of the Arkansas AFL-CIO. Among his distinguished contributions to the work of the AFL-CIO, he has chaired the federation's State and Local Central Bodies committee which works to encourage every union to affiliate with the central bodies and state federations to strengthen the labor movement at the local and state level and assure working families an effective and vigorous voice in the localities and states where they live.
Wayne Glenn has provided the AFL-CIO Executive Council and many of its key policy committees with the benefit of his good judgment and his comprehensive experience as a trade unionist leader and activist.
On behalf of the men and women of the unions of the AFL-CIO, the Executive Council expresses its warmest gratitude and sincerest thanks to Wayne E. Glenn for his principled and tireless dedication to the American labor movement and to the best interests of working families everywhere.
This expression of appreciation will be placed in the permanent records of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.