Welsh, Edward K., 1902-1979.

Edward K. Welsh was a union organizer. A native of New York City, he worked in his youth at various unskilled and semi-skilled jobs. In 1930 he began working as a volunteer organizer for the ILGWU New York Dressmaker's local. During the 1940s Welsh worked as an organizer for the CIO under Allan Haywood. In 1950 he went to Panama on behalf of the CIO, and in 1961 he went to Africa where he organized agricultural, building and construction, textile and hotel workers. He retired in 1967.

Edward K. Welsh (1902-1979) was born in New York City in 1902. As a teenager, he worked at the old Metropolitan Opera House, opening carriage doors for opera-goers. He also worked as a laborer, ditch digger, elevator operator, store clerk, shipping clerk, and longshoreman.

Welsh's career in the labor movement began in 1930, when he worked as a volunteer organizer for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), Local 22 (dressmakers). Soon he became involved in radical politics, traveling with Communist Party notable Jay Lovestone and others to the Soviet Union. During that visit, Stalin hoped to secure Welsh as one of communism's supporters among African Americans in the United States. However, Welsh's close-up exposure to Soviet society caused him to alter his political allegiance. Nevertheless, his concern for workers' rights led him to continue to carry out his activism in the labor movement through writing, speaking and teaching.

During the 1940s, Welsh was appointed to the staff of Allan Haywood, vice president and director of organization of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), where he organized workers in the steel, auto, and textile industries in the South and in Ohio.

In 1950, Welsh was sent to the Panama Canal Zone by CIO president Philip Murray to organize workers there. With Welsh's help, 5,500 workers were enrolled in Local 900 of the Government and Civic Employees Organizing Committee within a year. In 1953, Welsh returned to New York City, where he organized office workers. He later moved to Detroit, where he conducted worker education and political action programs.

The CIO merged with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1955. In 1961, AFL-CIO president George Meany assigned Welsh to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). Welsh's job was to assist trade union movements in Africa, specifically in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Kenya, and Uganda. During this period, the AFL-CIO sought out African union leaders to further the United States' political and economic interests in Africa. Sanctioned by the Department of State and the CIA, African labor leaders were given secret undercover support.

Welsh spent three and a half years in Africa organizing agricultural, textile, hotel, and building and construction workers. He returned to the United States in 1964 to work with taxicab drivers and hospital workers in New York City before retiring three years later. Welsh died in February 1979 at the age of 77.