Héctor Figueroa (April 3, 1962 – July 11, 2019) was an international labor movement leader. He was president of the Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union.

Early life and education

Figueroa was born on April 3, 1962, to Luis and Castita, both educators, in Ponce, Puerto Rico. He attended the University of Puerto Rico for some time until student protests about tuition increases upset the campus. Then, he moved to

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, with his aunt in 1982. He received his bachelor's degree in economics from New York University. He then studied economics at the

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in Manhattan, New York.

Union activism

Figueroa started his labor movement activism in the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, now Workers United, in New York. He then moved to the service workers union in Washington until he moved back Puerto Rico to organize workers. Figueroa moved back to New York and served as the secretary-treasurer for the Local 32BJ Service Employees International Union in 2000. He was elected to serve as the Local's president in 2012. Local 32BJ SEIU represents between 160,000-170,000 building cleaners,

security guard A security guard (also known as a security inspector, security officer, or protective agent) is a person employed by a government or private party to protect the employing party's assets (property, people, equipment, money, etc.) from a variety ...

s, doormen, and airport employees. Under his leadership, the local added around 50,000 members and expanded its political impact. He supported the Fight for $15 campaign, which seeks to increase the wages of fast food workers, from when it was still only in New York. He told the ''New York Times'' that the fast food industry "as a whole is not meeting the needs of its workers by fundamentally basing their model on the poverty of working people." Due to protests and Figueroa's private meetings with elected officials and their appointees, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey increased the

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to $19 of about 40,000 employees at the three main airports in New York City. Figueroa supported Amazon's motion to build a second corporate headquarter in Queens, saying that he wanted to get the company on "

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" to start organizing Amazon laborers from there. He stated:

If there is any place where it would be possible to leverage the labor movement’s existing power to crack open the door to collective bargaining for Amazon workers, it is here.

Personal life

He was married to Maria Ríos. The couple had a son, Eric, before divorcing. He then married Deidre McFadyen and had a daughter, Elena. He was known by friends to be great at drawing

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Death

He died of a heart attack in his home at Jackson Heights, Queens, New York.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Figueroa, Héctor 1962 births 2019 deaths 20th-century Puerto Rican people People from Jackson Heights, Queens People from Ponce, Puerto Rico