Public Lives: A Voice for Labor, Deftly Applied By ROBIN FINN, The New York Times
Mr. Hughes grew up in a thoroughly unionized Irish-Italian clan. One grandfather was a boilermaker, the other a carpenter. His father worked for the Department of Sanitation, his mother was a keypunch operator and his uncles were pipe fitters and carpenters.
He chose electronics because, of all the building trades, it struck him as one with 'more thinking and less lifting.'
'In my neighborhood,' he said, 'being in a union was considered a major economic move. Getting into the electricians' union was like being accepted at an Ivy League college.'