Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a longtime labor and international activist and the former President and chief executive officer of TransAfrica Forum, a national non-profit organization organizing, educating and advocating for policies in favor of the peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. Fletcher is also a founder of the Black Radical Congress and is a Senior Scholar for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC.
Fletcher was formerly the Vice President for International Trade Union Development Programs for the George Meany Center of the AFL-CIO. At the Meany Center, he worked with foreign labor centers, aiding them in matters of education and organizational change, as well as working to construct stronger ties between respective educational institutions.
Additionally, Fletcher worked domestically to develop union movement capacity in its relation to organizational change/development. This latter work included supervising and coordinating Meany Center efforts to provide direct technical assistance to labor organizations as well as providing education and training to practitioners seeking to develop expertise in union transformation efforts.
Prior the George Meany Center, Fletcher served as Education Director and later Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO. Fletcher's union staff experience also included the Service Employees International Union(SEIU), where his last position was Assistant to the President for the East and South. He served as the Organizational Secretary/ Administrative Director for the National Postal Mail Handlers Union. Prior to the Mail Handler's Union, Fletcher was an organizer for District 65-United Auto Workers in Boston, Massachusetts.
Fletcher got his start in the labor movement as a rank and file member of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America. Combining labor and community work, he was also involved in ongoing efforts to desegregate the Boston building trades.
Fletcher is a graduate of Harvard University and has authored numerous articles published in a variety of newspapers and magazines. He is the co-author of the pictorial booklet The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941. He is also co-author (with Fernando Gapasin)of the forthcoming book on the crisis of organized labor, Solidarity Divided, to be published by the University of California Press in late spring 2008.