Rutgers Labor Center To Celebrate Life And Legacy Of Tony Mazzocchi
In the 1960s and 70s, conservative leaders of the AFL-CIO and many national unions viewed militant activists in the civil rights, anti-war, environmental, and women’s movements with alarm. When student radicals started migrating from campus and community organizing to unionized workplaces, labor officials did not welcome them.
But a World War II veteran from Brooklyn named Tony Mazzocchi did. Mazzocchi had risen through the ranks of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers (OCAW), a CIO union which had a strong tradition of rank-and-file activism and internal democracy.