Leib (Leo) Perlis

His obit from the New York Times:

LEO PERLIS, UNION ADVISER, DIES; LONG AN OFFICIAL AT A.F.L.-C.I.O.

By JOAN COOK (NYT) 488 words

Published: April 1, 1986

Leo Perlis, for 25 years director of community services for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., died of a stroke Sunday at the Miami Heart Institute in Miami Beach. He was 74 years old and lived in Bay Harbor Islands, Fla.

From 1945 to 1955, Mr. Perlis was director of community services for the Congress of Industrial Organizations. When it merged with the American Federation of Labor, he remained as director until 1980, when he retired, becoming a consultant. He moved to Florida two years later.

In retirement, Mr. Perlis continued to speak out for workers, as well as to the leadership of the labor movement. In 1984, in an Op-Ed page article in The New York Times, he said that endorsement of Presidential candidates in advance of primary elections would not bring the new era labor sought. It will begin, he wrote, only when labor realizes that demonstrations and pre-primary endorsements are poor substitutes for organizing the unorganized, educating the organized, developing a participatory rather than an adversary approach to business, and greater involvement in community affairs. He Worked in Silk Mills

Mr. Perlis was born in Russia and came to the United States in 1923, at the age of 11. He graduated from East Side High School in Paterson, N.J., and began his career as a newspaper editor on The Call in Paterson. He became a worker in the silk mills of Paterson and a member of the silk workers' union, a predecessor of the Textile Workers. In 1936, he became active in Labor's Nonpartisan League, a union political action group headed by John L. Lewis.

In 1940, when Lewis endorsed the Republican candidate for President, Wendell L. Willkie, Mr. Perlis resigned from the league, working for the re-election of Roosevelt.

In his post with the merged labor movement, Mr. Perlis in 1972 became coordinator of a price watch group that checked on and reported retail price increases that might violate the Nixon wage-price freeze.

Mr. Perlis's position took him into various national projects; he was a member of the labor advisory committee for the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1965 and secretary to the National Citizens Committee for Public Schools. He was also a member of the sheltered workshop committee of the Department of Labor and of the President's Citizens Advisory Commission on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime.

In 1947 and 1948 he was a consultant to Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund, and a vice president of the United States Committee for Unicef. He was a founder of CARE, a private relief organization begun after World War II, and its secretary from 1946 to 1954.

Mr. Perlis was a trustee of Nassau Community College.

He is survived by his wife, the former Betty Gantz; two sons, Michael, of San Francisco, and Howard William, of Birmingham, Ala.; a sister, Nettie Halpern of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; a brother, Louis, of Paterson, and four grandchildren.