Longtime Louisiana labor leader Bussie dead at 92

Vic Bussie, whose name is synonymous with the labor movement in Louisiana, is dead at age 92. He died early Sunday, three days after an operation for stomach cancer, says his wife, Frances “Fran” Bussie. A railroad worker’s son who grew up in north Louisiana, Bussie—his given name was Victor—began his career as a firefighter. He was head of the state AFL-CIO for 41 years, until his retirement in 1997. Throughout his tenure at the helm of Louisiana’s organized labor movement, he was praised for his dedication. Even business leaders called him a man of integrity and a master politician and strategist. “I never heard him raise his voice. Never heard him say a cuss word. But when he spoke, everybody listened,” says AFL-CIO state President Louis Reine. “He was very admired and respected by people he represented and by people who were on the other side of the issues from him,” says Dan Juneau, president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the state’s largest business lobby. President John Kennedy asked him to help get the Medicare bill out of a committee chaired by Sen. Russell Long, Fran Bussie says, noting that her husband and Long had known each other since childhood. Bussie served on dozens of boards and commissions, including the LSU Board of Supervisors and the Louisiana Commission on Governmental Ethics. He was on the Baton Rouge-area police and firefighters civil service board at the time of his death, Fran Bussie says.