"We have a tremendous responsibility to future generations to leave an accurate record
of our history, one which lays bare not only the facts, but the process of change."
"Listen to the extremists - changes come from them."
"The world has more poor people today than ever before.
We have an accelerating gap between the rich and the poor.
Widespread violence is tearing families and communities apart
nearly everywhere. And the planet's ecosystems are deteriorating at
an alarming rate".
Esther Peterson, a long-time labor educator, union organizer and labor lobbyist, became one of the leading figures in American public life in the 20th century. Serving as a popular and highly visible government official during the Kennedy, Johnson and Carter administrations, Peterson was an eloquent and effective advocate for the rights of workers, women and consumers.
The daughter of Danish immigrants, Esther Eggertsen grew up in a Mormon family in conservative Provo, Utah, where her father was the local school superintendent. She received a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University in 1927 before moving to New York City and earning a master's degree from Columbia University Teachers' College in 1930.
While at Columbia, she met her husband, Oliver Peterson, a young working-class socialist and Farm-Labor Party supporter from North Dakota, who introduced her to labor leaders such as Sidney Hillman of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (ACWA) and David Dubinsky of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
Inspired by the new labor movement emerging in the 1930s, Peterson turned to teaching "working girls" through the industrial department of the YWCA and to volunteer work as a labor organizer for the garment and textile unions. From 1932 to 1939, she also spent many summers teaching at the Hudson Shore Labor School and as the physical education and drama coach at the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers—"the best education on workers' issues that I could have experienced," she later recalled.
After a year as a paid organizer for the American Federation of Teachers, Peterson joined the staff of ACWA in 1939. She worked first in the education department with J.B.S. Hardman and spent time as a labor organizer in Utah. Then, during World War II, Peterson co-directed ACWA's Committee on War Activities with Bessie Hillman, one of the leaders of the 1914 Chicago garment strike and a co-founder of ACWA. Peterson and Hillman worked together organizing new shops for ACWA and integrating ACWA locals in the South.
In 1945, Peterson became ACWA's first legislative representative in Washington, D.C. Her integrity and candor earned her the respect of even her staunchest political foes. As an ACWA lobbyist, Peterson worked hard for full employment, equal pay for equal work, improved social insurance programs, raising the minimum wage and extending the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act to workers outside of manufacturing.
In 1948, Peterson took a leave from ACWA to travel with her husband to Sweden and Belgium, where he was a foreign service officer. While abroad, Peterson was active in the women's committees of the Swedish Confederation of Trade Unions and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions while also raising the couple's four children. In 1958, Peterson returned to paid employment when her husband became ill—an illness brought on in part, Peterson believed, by the stresses he suffered as a result of House Un-American Activities Committee accusations during the height of McCarthyism.
Peterson joined the legislative staff of the Industrial Union Department in 1958 as the AFL-CIO's first woman lobbyist. She quickly established herself as a highly effective and respected lobbyist, developing close ties to Sen. John F. Kennedy and others that would serve her well in the future. Peterson also allied herself with a national network of women labor leaders, many of whom were active in promoting equal pay and job opportunity for women. Peterson joined the National Committee on Equal Pay, for example, a group led by labor women and men from the IUE, UAW and other unions whose objective was to end wage discrimination against women.
In 1960, Peterson formed the 300-member Committee of Labor Women for Kennedy and Johnson, a group that campaigned energetically for the Democratic Party presidential candidates. Kennedy appointed Peterson director of the Women's Bureau, a position from which she rightly believed she could have an impact on the lives of wage-earning women, in 1961 and later named her assistant secretary for labor standards. Working with her old friend Arthur Goldberg, secretary of labor and former CIO general counsel, Peterson gained Kennedy's approval for the establishment of the first Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. The commission's 1963 report sparked a national debate over the proper role of women and helped spur the rise of a new women's movement. Peterson was also a driving force behind passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, a legislative goal long sought by labor women reformers.
In 1964, Peterson turned her attention to consumer rights, serving as President Lyndon Johnson's special assistant on consumer affairs (1964–1967) and as vice president for consumer affairs at Giant Food Inc. (1970–1977). In 1977, President Jimmy Carter convinced Peterson to return to public office and head his consumer affairs department, a post she held until 1981. Her consumer advocacy resulted in new federal laws requiring the labeling of foods with their nutritional value, the pricing of food products per unit and the use of open dating—labeling with a date by which perishable products such as milk must be sold. In 1981, Peterson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian award. President Bill Clinton named Peterson to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations in 1993. She died at her Washington, D.C., home in 1997 at the age of 91.
Source: AFL-CIO America's Union Movement
Source:Medal Of Freedom
Link: The Consumer's Union
Contributed by: Demelza Co~Galaxy Star - Causes
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