Susan L. Phillips

Susan L. Phillips was elected as the fourth National President of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) on August 28, 2004. She succeeds Gloria Johnson, who served as CLUW president since 1993 and was the group's treasurer since CLUW's founding in 1974. Previous presidents include Joyce Miller (Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, now part of UNITE HERE), who served from 1979 to 1993, and Olga Madar (UAW), who was president from 1974 to 1979. Phillips has been a member of CLUW's National Officers Council since 1998, and has been a CLUW member and activist since 1980.

Phillips is director of the Working Women’s Department of the 1.4 million-member United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW). She was elected as a UFCW International Vice President in 1998 and reelected in July 2003. Her responsibilities include coordinating programs for and mobilizing UFCW women and retirees, with major emphasis on organizing and political action.

Prior to her current position, Phillips was director of the UFCW’s Publications Office, serving as managing editor of UFCW Action, the union's bimonthly membership magazine, and UFCW Leadership Update, the union's monthly leadership newsletter. She also wrote and coordinated the production of a variety of political materials for local unions to use in member education and outreach efforts as well as special reports, newsletters, brochures, local union graphics packets, and educational materials on effective communications techniques.

Before coming to the UFCW in 1984, Phillips worked as a Legislative Representative for the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Department, Public Information Director for the National Consumers League, and Legislative Writer for the U.S. House of Representatives's Democratic Study Group.

From 1991 to 1998, Phillips served as the elected Secretary-Treasurer of the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA), which provides training, graphics, and other support services for labor communicators who work for AFL-CIO affiliated unions. She co-authored a chapter in The New Labor Press, "Women and the Labor Press: Emerging from the Shadows," published in 1992 by Cornell University Press, and was a contributor to "The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History," published by Houghton Mifflin Co. in 1998.

Phillips currently represents the UFCW on the boards of the National Committee on Pay Equity and the Alliance for Retired Americans. She also is Treasurer of the Elderly Housing Development and Operations Corporation, a labor-supported organization that builds and maintains housing for low-income seniors.

She represents the UFCW as a member of the Union Network International (UNI) World Women's Committee and the UNI-Americas Women's Committee, representing women from unions in the retail, communications, graphical, and media sectors throughout North and South America and the Caribbean. She has spoken about the U.S. labor movement and CLUW and has participated in communications and other training programs in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Paraguay, and Brazil as well as Canada and Mexico. In addition, she has visited with dozens of union activists from around the world who visit the U.S. as part of various labor delegations over the past dozen years.

Phillips also serves as the AFL-CIO's representative for the ICFTU-Interamerican Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT)'s Women's Committee (COMUT), an international organization that represents women workers associated with 24 labor union federations in North and South America.

Phillips earned a B.A. in history from Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, in 1976, and an M.A. in American Civilization from Brown University, Providence, R.I. in 1978. She lives in Takoma Park, Maryland.