THE ALASKA STORY
Aug. 27, 2026 – Alaska’s largest labor organization is changing hands. After five years as president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, Joelle Hall is stepping aside.
Delegates at the federation’s biannual convention in Anchorage elected Heidi Drygas, the state’s former labor commissioner and recent head of the Alaska State Employees Association, to succeed her. Bronson Frye of the building trades was chosen as secretary. The Alaska AFL-CIO is the umbrella for more than 50 unions and roughly 50,000 members—grocery clerks, construction workers, state employees, and federal workers among them. It does more than bargain. It endorses candidates, spends on independent campaigns, and runs phone and door operations that can move close races. That political machinery now sits with Drygas.
Hall built her career inside that machine. She arrived at the federation in 2006 after running Democratic campaigns and serving as Alaska Democratic Party director.
She later became political director, then operations chief, before succeeding Vince Beltrami in 2021, the first woman to hold the presidency since the state federation was chartered in 1943.
An UFCW Local 1496 member, and University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate, she lives in Peters Creek. Under her watch the federation pushed paid sick leave and kept a pragmatic line: back the candidate whose record helps workers, party label secondary.
Drygas offered a public tribute. She said the labor movement is stronger than it has been in years and credited Hall with holding the affiliates together. Then she sketched her own theory of the job: elect people, not parties.
“We’re kind of agnostic about what party you come from,” she said. “We want to know your policy positions.”
In fact, however, the AFL-CIO never endorses Republicans unless they are completely contrary to their own party, such as Sen. Cathy Giessel.
Drygas, 48, grew up in Fairbanks and graduated magna cum laude in history from UAF, earned a law degree at Willamette, and came home.
After a short stint in private practice she spent nearly a decade as general counsel to the Alaska District Council of Laborers. Independent Gov. Bill Walker appointed her labor commissioner in 2014. She held the post until 2018, then ran her own consulting shop.
In 2022 she was Walker’s running mate on an “ndependent” ticket that lost.
In 2023 she took over ASEA/AFSCME Local 52, the union for about 8,000 state workers.
She lives in Juneau with her husband and daughter and has spent years arguing for a restored defined-benefit pension, market-rate pay for state workers, and better recruitment.
She has described herself as a former Democrat who ran without a party in 2022. Her campaign that year supported abortion rights, LGBTQ nondiscrimination legislation, Medicaid expansion, and university funding.
