Falkowski, Edward J.

Labor activist in a variety of jobs including mineworker, newspaperman, and college instructor.

From the description of Edward J. Falkowski papers, 1916-1939. (Wayne State University, Archives of Labor & Urban). WorldCat record id: 32320862

Edward J. Falkowski (1901-1984) was a journalist, trade unionist, and radical who was politically close to the communist movement in the 1920s-1940s. He was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania in 1901. As a teenager, Falkowski began working in the coal mines, and he became active in the United Mine Workers (UMW). In 1926, Falkowski began attending Brookwood Labor College in Katonah, New York on a UMW scholarship. During this time, Falkowski's articles and poetry first appeared in Labor Age and New Masses . (Falkowski used two pseudonyms in his published writings: "Edward Fulsky" in the 1920s and "Polonicus" in the 1970s.)

In 1928, Falkowski traveled to Germany as a work exchange student. Encouraged by friends and attracted politically to the Russian Revolution, he decided to visit and write about the Soviet Union, arriving in May 1930. He remained in the Soviet Union for seven years, during which time he worked as a journalist for the Moscow News (an English-language paper), married, and began raising a family. In 1937, he left the Soviet Union and returned to the United States, where he settled in Toledo, Ohio. He taught for a time at Commonwealth College in Mena, Arkansas, then was drafted into the army. After his service, he remarried and continued his writing activities.

In the mid 1940s, at the urging of labor organizer Leo Krzycki, Falkowski helped organize and worked for the communist-associated American Slav Congress, an umbrella organization of Slavic Americans. He later directed a Polish press agency.

As a factory worker in the plastics department at Eagle Electric Manufacturing Company in the 1950s, Falkowski served as shop steward to the United Automobile, Aircraft and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), Local 365 in Queens, New York. He moved into a management position at Eagle Electric in 1959.

In the 1960s, Falkowski was active in New York City housing issues, worked as a field interviewer for the National Opinion Research Center, and contributed articles to the Christian Herald, Good Business, Supervision, Modern Management, Christian Science Sentinal, New Republic, and New Freeman .

Falkowski died in New York City in 1984.

From the guide to the Edward J. Falkowski Papers, Bulk, 1930-1970, 1910-1983, (Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive)