Arlene Baker

Arlene Holt Baker
Arlene Holt Baker after speaking at the AFL-CIO Quadrennial Convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 16, 2009. (Photo: Bill Burke/Page One)
Born	1951 Fort Worth, Texas
Nationality	American
Occupation	Union organizer, Labor activist
Known for	Executive Vice President, AFL-CIO

Arlene Holt Baker (born 1951) is an African American trade union activist and labor leader. A staff assistant with the AFL-CIO since 1995, she was appointed Executive Vice-President of the labor federation by the AFL-CIO Executive Council in 2007 and won re-election in 2009. She became the first African American in the federation's history to serve as an officer.

Holt Baker was born in 1951 in Fort Worth, Texas. Her father, W.S. Leslie, was a laborer and her mother, Louise Leslie, was a domestic worker. She was one of seven children.

Holt Baker became an organizer with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in the late 1980s. She began organizing public sector employees for the state of California, and eventually was hired as an international union staff representative. She rose to become an "area director" in California, overseeing AFSCME's collective bargaining efforts for public employee locals and leading the union's political operations for statewide and federal races.

In 1995, John Sweeney was elected president of the AFL-CIO, unseating incumbent Thomas R. Donahue. Sweeney's running mate, Linda Chavez-Thompson, was elected the labor federation's Executive Vice-President. Chavez-Thompson, a local AFSCME leader from Texas, hired Holt Baker as her executive assistant.

Holt Baker was given a number of assignments in addition to her duties as an executive assistant to Chavez-Thompson. In 1998, she led the AFL-CIO's successful effort to defeat California Proposition 226, which would have denied dues check-off to public employees belonging to unions and required all union members in the state to annually give their assent before any portion of their dues could be used for political purposes.