Al Viani joined Local 371 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) on his first day of work at the New York City Department of Social Services in 1961. He became president of Local 371 in 1964, a position that he held during the Welfare Department's strike of January 1965. With other members of the Local's Executive Board, along with the leaders of the Social Service Employees Union (SSEU), Viani spent 12 days in jail for defying the Condon-Wadlin law by refusing to order the membership back to work. In 1968 he left the local to become the assistant director of the Research and Negotiations section of District Council 37 (DC 37), where he later became the director in 1973. In 1986 he left DC 37 to become the Deputy Director of the Office of Collective Bargaining (OCB), an agency that was established as a direct result of the 1965 strike. Although Viani retired in 1993, he participated in the effort to end the New York City transit strike of 2005 and in 2015, he was appointed as a neutral member to the New York City Board of Collective Bargaining.