Pohlmeyer To Be Next Texas AFL-CIO Communications Director; Sills to Retire After 31 Years in Job
Dec. 3, 2024
News Release
Contacts: Rick Levy, Leonard Aguilar, or Ed Sills: (512) 477-6195
Sills cell: (512) 695-1148
Pohlmeyer To Be Next Texas AFL-CIO Communications Director; Sills to Retire After 31 Years in Job
AUSTIN — Today, the Texas AFL-CIO announced the hiring of Tara Pohlmeyer as the next Communications Director of the Texas AFL-CIO, succeeding Ed Sills, who is retiring after 31 years in the job.
Sills’s last day in the office will be Friday, Dec. 20. Pohlmeyer, currently the Communications Director for U.S. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Austin), will begin work on Jan. 7.
“The path toward a better Texas — a Texas that works for working people — runs through the Texas labor movement,” Pohlmeyer said. “The Texas AFL-CIO is uniquely positioned to fight right-wing extremism and build the pro-worker economy that families desperately need. I’m looking forward to building on Ed Sills’s legacy and doing my part to grow the labor movement.”
“I’ve had the great fortune to get to tell the Texas stories of the greatest movement on the face of the Earth for more than three decades,” Sills said. “I’m forever grateful to generations of amazing union officers and staff and to the working men and women of the Texas AFL-CIO who stand strongly — and all too often against the current — for dignity on the job. It’s a delight to hand off this position of trust to Tara Pohlmeyer, who has the proven talent and desire to build a better Texas for working people. For my part, I am leaving a job, but will never leave the union movement. Solidarity Forever!”
“It’s times like this that you really need an Ed Sills who would know how to put this moment into words,” Texas AFL-CIO President Rick Levy said. “The Texas labor movement owes Ed such a deep debt of gratitude for giving voice to the hopes, struggles, and aspirations of hundreds of thousands of Texas workers during his time here. He has written the first draft of the history of the Texas Labor Movement over the last couple decades, and his words and legacy will continue to guide us. He has done it all with grace and integrity while being one of the kindest and most genuine people on the planet. Viewed against the background of his long service to the movement, we don’t feel the need to dwell on that one typo we found in his work back in, I believe, 2007. We certainly wish him well in his most well-deserved next chapter.”
Levy added, “At the same time, the show must and will go on. We are beyond excited to have Tara join our team and bring her unique skills directly into the service of the labor movement. Tara understands what it means to tell the story of the challenges and triumphs of working people in Texas — she has been doing just that with labor champion, Congressman Greg Casar. We can’t think of a better person to pick up Ed Sills’s baton and take off running with it”.
Pohlmeyer will return to Austin, TX after serving as the DC-based Communications Director for U.S. Rep. Greg Casar. She joined the Casar team in Austin in 2020, and has led Casar’s communications through thirst strikes, winter storms, and election cycles. She’s a graduate of Texas State University and grew up in the Rio Grande Valley.
Sills, 68, started working at the Texas AFL-CIO in 1994, following a 12-year career as a police and federal courts reporter, then Austin Bureau Chief, for the now-defunct San Antonio Light. In addition to regular comms duties, he inaugurated and maintained a daily email report along with special weekly reports during legislative and election seasons, researched and advocated on bills during legislative sessions, coordinated the Texas AFL-CIO Scholarship program, served on the board of the Texas Climate Jobs Project, and maintained hundreds of correspondences with union members across the state.
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The Texas AFL-CIO is the state labor federation consisting of 240,000 affiliated union members who advocate for working people in Texas.
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