USW Local Union Leader Presented the 2014 W.C. Young Award

By Berry Craig, AFT Local 1360

“Today is not about me,” insisted veteran union leader Jeff Wiggins after he was presented the 2014 W.C. Young Award. “It’s about doing the right thing for working people.”

Wiggins is the 21st recipient of the annual award, the highest honor the Paducah-based Western Kentucky AFL-CIO Area Council bestows.

Young was a national labor and civil rights leader from Paducah.

“This is about you; all of you are my brothers and sisters,” said Wiggins, 53, of Reidland. He is president of the council, president of United Steelworkers Local 9447 in Calvert City and a member of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO Executive Board.

Added Wiggins: “It’s about all of us working together to do the right thing for working people, about making sure people having a decent wage, about people being able to retire with dignity, and it’s about our kids growing up and having decent paying jobs so they can raise families.”

Members of his family, local politicians and union officials recently gathered for the annual award dinner at the USW Local 550 hall in Paducah. Many of the well-wishers and speakers were Steelworkers, active and retired.

State AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Larry Jaggers, a member of Steelworkers Local 780, read a letter to Wiggins from Bill Londrigan, state AFL-CIO president. “The principles of justice and equality extolled by brother W.C. Young during his lifetime are reflected in your unswerving support for worker rights, civil rights and human rights and this award is a fitting tribute to your lifetime as a dedicated trade unionist,” said the missive sent on behalf of the executive board.

Brandon Duncan, president of USW Local 727, lauded Wiggins. So did Donna Steele, Local 550 president, and Jim Key, vice president. Adding his congratulations was Kip Phillips, who retired as USW International vice president at large and assistant to USW International President Leo Gerard. Ron Spann, a USW District 8 staff representative when he retired, lauded Wiggins, too.

Union-endorsed state Rep. Gerald Watkins, D-Paducah, a former city commissioner, was master of ceremonies for the program. Retired Paducah City Commissioner Robert Coleman, Young's cousin, also praised Wiggins. Coleman was the first African American president of the National Association of Letter Carriers union local in Paducah.

Others who took turns at the microphone to commend Wiggins included a quartet of labor-backed Democratic candidates -- Jeff Parker, who is running for the state senate; Julie Griggs, who wants to be McCracken County clerk; county commissioner Ronnie Freeman, and Property Valuation Administrator Nancy Bock.

The election is Nov. 4.

Wiggins, who was a council trustee and COPE director before becoming president, has worked in many political campaigns. He is part of the state AFL-CIO’s Labor 2014 effort to elect pro-union candidates, including Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is challenging Sen. Mitch McConnell.

“We are under attack by those who want Kentucky to be a right to work state,” Wiggins said. “Right to work means the right to work for less money. It means a workplace that is less safe. More people get killed on the job in right to work states.

“I want keep right to work out because I’ve got two sons who are working and a daughter soon to be in the working field. I want to protect them.”

Wiggins said Kentucky labor’s two priorities are to elect Grimes and to maintain a Democratic, anti-right to work majority in the state house of representatives.

“Mitch McConnell is the pied piper of politics,” Wiggins said. “He is always blowing his little flute and leading the middle class over to the Ohio River and drowning us.”

Wiggins urged the crowd to go out from the hall, which is near the river, and “fight hard and elect candidates who are labor friendly. Let’s knock on doors and make phone calls and work hard for our labor-endorsed candidates. We are only 12 percent of the population in Kentucky, but we are 40 percent of the vote.”

In 1994, Young was the first recipient of the award named for him. Wiggins’ parents, Martha and the late George Wiggins, accepted the award jointly in 1998.

A plaque and photo of Jeff Wiggins will go up on a wall at the council hall wall along with similar photo-plaques of the other honorees, including Phillips and Spann.

“Sometimes when I am working alone at the hall and feeling discouraged and want to quit and hang up my hat, I look at the faces of those people on the wall – my heroes -- and say to myself, ‘Dammit, they didn’t give up, and you’re not going to give up either.”

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