George Barasch

George Barasch (December 10, 1910 – August 11, 2013) was an American trade union labor leader who led both the Allied Trades Council and Teamsters Local 815 (New York City), representing a combined total of 11,000 members.

He was the first labor leader to create a union anti-crime department, and he was instrumental in eliminating racketeering and organized crime from much of local union life in New Jersey and New York City in the early 1950s. His disputes with the United States government in the mid-1960s over control of union benefit funds ultimately led to proposed legislation that prompted and evolved into the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

In 1964, after spending over two decades fighting for the rights of workers to organize and thrive, Barasch created the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) as an independent organization that would continue to advance the education and rights of working Americans outside the labor arena. The semi-annual AEF conferences served as a forum for high-ranking political figures, academics, legal scholars, and civil rights activists including United States Senator William Proxmire, Martin Luther King Jr., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States William O. Douglas, U.S. President Gerald Ford, U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale, labor columnist Victor Riesel, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Harrison Salisbury, and economist Leo Cherne.

Barasch remained Chairman of the Allied Educational Foundation for 49 years until his death, at 102.

Barasch was born in 1910 in Russia. He immigrated with his family to the US as a young boy and obtained his first job at 14 with Ye Colonial Sweet Shop (Brooklyn) in 1925. In 1928, while employed as a clerk at Davis drug store (Brooklyn), he enrolled at St. John's University. In 1931, Barasch worked as a clerk at B. & W. Pharmacy and soon after became an apprentice at Walgreens drug store. He graduated from St. John's University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Science in 1934, and enrolled in St. John's University School of Law in September 1935.

During his employment with Walgreens "putting in unbearable long hours, sometimes as much as 15 hours a day," Barasch conceived of the idea of forming a labor union.

By 1937, he had left law school, resigned from Walgreens, and secured a charter from the Retail Clerks International Protective Association to devote his efforts to the Drug Store Employee's Union of Greater New York by organizing drug store employees.

Beginning with his first union in 1937, Local 1185 of the Retail Clerks International Association, Barasch began organizing smaller union groups, including Local 105 of the International Leather Goods Workers Union, Local 22806 (Powder Puff & Cosmetics Workers Union), Local 20646 (Cosmetics, Soap & Perfumery Workers Union), Local 20734 (Vinegar & Mustard Workers Union), and Local 18943 (Hardware & Grocery Workers Union). In 1942, he created and served as managing editor of the Unity News, an official labor newspaper publication of the Manufacturers, Wholesale, and Retail Unions to inform and connect union workers during and after World War II. The newspaper received a citation award from the United States Treasury Department from Henry Morgenthau Jr. on May 27, 1943, for "distinguished services rendered in behalf of the War Savings Program." On January 1, 1947, Barasch created the Allied Trades Council to incorporate the unions he had organized in the past decade, and soon after, he sought and was granted affiliation with the International Leather Goods, Plastic & Novelty Workers Union, which allowed Allied Trades Council to be designated as an AFL (American Federation of Labor) organization. The AFL designation was maintained until the two groups parted ways in 1965. Under his leadership, the union expanded to the distributing and manufacturing, leather, drug and novelty fields which included over 10,000 members by 1948. Barasch was later issued a charter for a second union in 1952 (Local 815 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters) to aid in his expansion efforts in New York when he began having jurisdictional disputes with Teamsters locals. By 1965, Allied Trades Council represented 88 businesses, including pharmacies, restaurants, and candy stores and Local 815 grew to represent 165 pharmacies, perfumeries, bakeries, and other businesses.