2001 Union Hall of Honor
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Marvin Gittler
A Chicago attorney whose labor union practice began in 1967.
A youth from the garment district of New York City, who graduated from the University of Chicago in 1963, Marvin Gittler began his practice of law at the National Labor Relations Board. He left the board to join an important firm with a broad labor clientele, ranging from the Building Trades to the Teamsters and Meatcutters.
Irving Friedman
Long the legal counsel for both the Farm Equipment Workers and the United Auto Workers in the Illinois region.
Graduating from New York University Law School, this son of Polish immigrants became a staff attorney for the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago. In 1952, he was the Government's lead attorney in a famous case involving the UAW and the Koehler Company. In partnership with Harold Katz, Friedman was connected closely with the UAW and the Farm Equipment Workers. In more recent years, he has been Counsel to Chicago's Longshoremen and the Illinois Education Association.
Eugene Cotton
General Counsel to the United Packinghouse Workers of America
Cotton's legal career reaches back to the precedent-creating era of the New Deal with its passage of a wide range of reform legislation, including the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, then hailed as "labor's magna carta". With his legal degree from Columbia University in 1936, Cotton moved swiftly through a variety of new government agencies, before becoming Assistant General Counsel of the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). He moved from Washington to Chicago in 1948 to become General Counsel of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA). There he was plunged into a two-month long national strike. At the UPWA, he helped the union to create a system of nationwide agreements which brought about new wage and benefit provisions. Among his other clients were unions in the printing and aviation industries.