Pat Eiding, top labor leader in Philadelphia for two decades, retires at 82

When Pat Eiding took over the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO, the largest labor organization in the city, his first job was to pick up the pieces.

It was 2002 and union membership nationally was still falling. The organization, conceived as the central hub for the labor movement, was struggling financially. Its membership numbers were lackluster.

Eiding, at the time the top official of the insulators union, had to borrow money to keep the lights on. And he made it a goal to get every local in the city to become a dues-paying member.

Seven uncontested elections later, Eiding, 82, is retiring.

Colleagues described him as a consensus builder, with the temperament and the respect to mediate conflict between unions, and a leader who built the reputation of the AFL-CIO within the nonprofit and business community by joining numerous boards.

Before Eiding’s leadership, the AFL-CIO was plagued by political infighting and unions were more isolated and not as willing to work together, said Cathy Scott, former president of AFSCME DC47.

“He was able to convince people that, ‘You may think that it’s just your issue, but generally, issues are broader issues,’” she said.

While he didn’t reach his goal to get 100% union membership at the AFL-CIO (the Fraternal Order of Police, for example, has resisted joining), Eiding presided over a period of growth that’s brought the AFL-CIO to more than 100 unions, including nearly all the building trades. (When Eiding began, he said about one-third were members.) His former union, the insulators, is part of the building trades.

Former staffers describe him as a compassionate boss who gave staffers leadership opportunities and didn’t shy away from doing menial tasks, such as stuffing envelopes or packing toys for donation.

“I joke with him and call him my dad because that’s how he treats his folks,” said Nicole Fuller, a former AFL-CIO staffer and now the executive director of worker-safety organization PhilaPOSH.

Eiding will be replaced by his longtime aide, Danny Bauder, who ran uncontested during the fall. Bauder, 40, worked in labor communications at the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776 and at a public-relations firm between his time at the AFL-CIO.

Past AFL-CIO leaders have themselves run unions, but Eiding said that experience isn’t necessary to do the job well.

“Listen,” he said, “there may be some value to being fresh.”

Eiding, who lives in Langhorne with his wife, grew up in Kensington. His father worked at a union textile mill, while his mother, whom he calls “one of my heroes,” raised five children and took on side gigs, doing tasks for others such as ironing.

He spent two years in the Army, including a year in South Korea, studied plumbing by night at Dobbins when he returned to Philadelphia, and got into the insulators’ union, joining his older brother and cousins, when he was 23.

It was his brother who told him, “If you wanna know what’s going on here, you go to union meetings.” Eiding followed the advice, and in 1976, after several years on the union executive board, ran against the 12-year incumbent business manager and won.

Eiding’s AFL-CIO has embraced the growing subset of labor organizing outside of unions and supported such policy efforts as the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights and Fair Workweek. And Eiding encouraged diverse gender and racial representation on the AFL-CIO’s executive committee, Scott said, noting that the committee is no longer almost entirely white men, as it was when Eiding began.

» READ MORE: The building trades first organized in Philadelphia. Black people never got a fair shot at their jobs.

But he — and the organizations he leads — have also been criticized for protecting the status quo, in part by the younger generation of labor activists. The Philadelphia Building & Construction Trades Council, where he has long served as secretary-treasurer, has remained majority white in a city that has nearly equal numbers of Black and white residents. And the AFL-CIO’s executive committee voted to endorse Jewell Williams for sheriff in 2019, after at least three employees made multiple allegations of sexual harassment.

And when John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty, former leader of the Building Trades Council, and Councilmember Bobby Henon were found guilty of federal bribery last year, Eiding was among their most vocal defenders, saying “the only reason they were found guilty [is] because we had a bunch of people from outside the city that were impressed with cursing on the phone.”

The conviction, which Dougherty and Henon have appealed, has “made us more careful and more angry,” Eiding said, speaking about labor unions in Philadelphia.

Eiding is leaving during a time of record high public approval for unions, numerous high-profile organizing drives and strikes, and a president who is sympathetic to labor — despite the percentage of Americans belonging to a union remaining at a historic low.

“Labor right now has one of the best opportunities they’ve had in the U.S.,” Eiding said. For instance, the cultural workers at the Philadelphia Museum Art voted to unionize with DC47 in 2020 and went on strike this year, which Eiding brought up several times as an example of the energy around worker organizing.

He plans to finish out terms on several boards and commissions — he’s a trustee at Temple, for one — and perhaps some politicking.

Asked who he supports for mayor, he smiled and said, “Nobody.”

He knows the labor movement will be divided. He’s waiting for some type of consensus.

“You know,” he said, “once it’s established who labor supports, if I can be of any help, I’ll be there.”