Church had responded with an off-color joke when pressed by the women for the addition to the contract for affirmative action and improved sickness and accident coverage.

[7][8] While President of the UMWA, Trumka led a successful nine-month strike against the Pittston Coal Company in 1989, which became a symbol of resistance against employer cutbacks and retrenchment for the entire labor movement.

[9] A major issue in the dispute was Pittston's refusal to pay into the industry-wide health and retirement fund created in 1950.

"[14] Besides his domestic labor activities, Trumka established an office that raised U.S. mineworker solidarity with the miners in South Africa while they were fighting apartheid.

[17] As secretary-treasurer of the AFL–CIO, Trumka focused on creating investment programs for the pension and benefit funds of the labor movement, capital market strategies,[18] and demanding corporate accountability to America's communities.

He co-chaired the China Currency Coalition, an alliance of industry, agriculture, services, and worker organizations whose stated mission is to support U.S.

[20] Martin Davis, a Carey campaign consultant who owned The November Group (a direct-marketing company), allegedly contacted Trumka in the summer of 1996 and concocted a scheme whereby the Teamsters would donate $150,000 to the AFL–CIO for spurious get-out-the-vote efforts and the AFL–CIO would pay the same amount to Citizen Action (a liberal grassroots lobbying and organizing group).

[20] Citizen Action would then pay $100,000 to The November Group, which would use the cash to finance Carey's direct marketing effort.

[28] Trumka invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during the government's grand jury investigation and a congressional panel, and was never charged with any crimes.

[29][30][31] Although the AFL–CIO had a policy (enacted in the wake of several Teamsters' scandals in the late 1950s) appearing to require anyone who asserted their Fifth Amendment rights to be removed from office, AFL–CIO President John Sweeney wrote in a letter sent to AFL–CIO member unions in November 1997 that the AFL–CIO policy regarding assertion of Fifth Amendment rights had "never been applied by the federation".

[32] The letter went on to say that "The policy calls for removal only when the union determines that the Fifth Amendment is being invoked to conceal discovery of corruption.

[5] Trumka's video was called "surely the first YouTube moment in the history" of the labor movement by ProPublica journalist Alec MacGillis.

[38] In March 2013, Trumka confirmed that organized labor would make an effort to work more closely with groups trying to aid immigrant workers, as the national debate on minimum wage and fair employment in the restaurant industry heated up.

They had one son,[43] Richard Trumka Jr., whom President Joe Biden appointed in 2021 to be a commissioner of the Consumer Products Safety Commission.