Ed Sadlowski (1938–2018)
"The workers and the boss have nothing in common. It is a class question."
A campaign poster from Ed Sadlowski’s (left) famous electoral bid for the Steelworkers presidency, along with Jim Balanoff (right), candidate for director of District 31.745 Teamsters United for Change / Facebook
The labor movement, the Left, and the city of Chicago lost an icon Sunday with the passing of legendary steelworker Ed Sadlowski at the age of seventy-nine.
“When you think of Chicago and labor, you think of someone like Eddie,” Studs Terkel once remarked.
Sadlowski was best known for his insurgent run for the presidency of the United Steelworkers (USW) in 1977, when he was thirty-eight-years old. Though largely forgotten today, Sadlowski’s “Steelworkers Fight Back” campaign captivated the nation, with Terkel saying it was more important than that year’s presidential election between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
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