George Barasch (December 10, 1910 – August 11, 2013) was a US 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 Senator William Proxmire, Martin Luther King Jr., U.S.
Supreme Court Justice William O.
Douglas, President Gerald Ford, Vice President Walter F.
Mondale, labor columnist Victor Riesel, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Harrison E.
Salisbury, and economist Leo Cherne.Barasch remained Chairman of the Allied Educational Foundation for 49 years until his death, at 102.