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Family Legacy Led Ken Moffett to Distinguished Career in Labor
Growing up in Pennsylvania's coal mining country, Ken Moffett remembers his father - a labor organizer - taking him to union meetings with lots of smoking and hollering and conversation he couldn't understand.
Within a few years, Moffett was standing with his father outside plant gates handing out pamphlets to unorganized workers. Unionism "was ingrained in me," he said.
Indeed. Moffett went on to a career in labor that led him to head the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, serve as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, referee feuds between National Football League players and their agents, negotiate contracts for ABC and NBC, advance labor relations and workers' rights in Africa and, ultimately, to head CWA's human resources office.
That job sprung from the position he took in 1985 as assistant to the president of NABET, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians. NABET merged with CWA in 1994 and, in 2000, CWA President Morton Bahr asked Moffett to take over for the union's retiring human resources director.
Now Moffett is retiring, and he said his last three years with CWA "have been the most pleasurable of my career."
"I think CWA is the best union in the country, and I've been involved with a lot of them," Moffett said. "CWA is so diverse and has such a strong mission, a combination of organizing and outreach to locals and to members, and political work. And the sector concept - NABET, the printers, the Guild, IUE - gives smaller unions an opportunity to come under the umbrella of a strong national union, while doing their own work within their particular industry."
Moffett's family history of unionism goes back four generations. His grandfather started the first mine workers' local in Williamstown, Penn., and his great-great-grandfather was a Molly Maguire, an underground group of Irish coal miners who struck back against strike-breaking coal mine owners in the 1870s. Moffett's father went on to become president of the 250,000-member District 50, a breakaway group of mine worker locals, and oversaw its merger with the Steelworkers in 1972.
After a stint in the Navy during the Korean War and
graduating from the University of Maryland, Moffett went to work as an organizer in District 50, then moved to the federal mediation service. He handled major disputes at newspapers, networks, in professional sports and in industry nationwide and held virtually every position in the agency. Ultimately, he served as director under President Jimmy Carter and during the first year of the Reagan administration.
"We're all going to miss Ken tremendously," Bahr said. "His dedication, intelligence, good nature and his incredible breadth of experience have been a great asset not only to us at CWA but to the labor community as a whole."
Within a few years, Moffett was standing with his father outside plant gates handing out pamphlets to unorganized workers. Unionism "was ingrained in me," he said.
Indeed. Moffett went on to a career in labor that led him to head the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, serve as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, referee feuds between National Football League players and their agents, negotiate contracts for ABC and NBC, advance labor relations and workers' rights in Africa and, ultimately, to head CWA's human resources office.
That job sprung from the position he took in 1985 as assistant to the president of NABET, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians. NABET merged with CWA in 1994 and, in 2000, CWA President Morton Bahr asked Moffett to take over for the union's retiring human resources director.
Now Moffett is retiring, and he said his last three years with CWA "have been the most pleasurable of my career."
"I think CWA is the best union in the country, and I've been involved with a lot of them," Moffett said. "CWA is so diverse and has such a strong mission, a combination of organizing and outreach to locals and to members, and political work. And the sector concept - NABET, the printers, the Guild, IUE - gives smaller unions an opportunity to come under the umbrella of a strong national union, while doing their own work within their particular industry."
Moffett's family history of unionism goes back four generations. His grandfather started the first mine workers' local in Williamstown, Penn., and his great-great-grandfather was a Molly Maguire, an underground group of Irish coal miners who struck back against strike-breaking coal mine owners in the 1870s. Moffett's father went on to become president of the 250,000-member District 50, a breakaway group of mine worker locals, and oversaw its merger with the Steelworkers in 1972.
After a stint in the Navy during the Korean War and
graduating from the University of Maryland, Moffett went to work as an organizer in District 50, then moved to the federal mediation service. He handled major disputes at newspapers, networks, in professional sports and in industry nationwide and held virtually every position in the agency. Ultimately, he served as director under President Jimmy Carter and during the first year of the Reagan administration.
"We're all going to miss Ken tremendously," Bahr said. "His dedication, intelligence, good nature and his incredible breadth of experience have been a great asset not only to us at CWA but to the labor community as a whole."