Eugene Cotton, a labor lawyer whose negotiating savvy helped improve the wages and conditions of tens of thousands of meatpacking workers, died Nov. 11 at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.þþHis son Richard confirmed the death. When Mr. Cotton became general counsel for the United Packinghouse Workers of America in 1948, most meatpacking workers had low wages, no health insurance and no pensions, and worked six days a week. During his 20 years as general counsel, he bargained with giant companies like Swift and Armour and negotiated some of the first pension and medical benefits in the industry as well as hefty raises, paid holidays and vacations of up to six weeks a year.þþHe won several significant legal victories in an era when labor unions were at their height. During a strike at Wilson & Company in 1960, management hired thousands of replacement workers, and when the walkout ended, management refused to rehire the 3,000 strikers. After Mr. Cotton made a passionate five-hour argument before an arbitration panel, it ordered Wilson to take back almost all the strikers.þþIn 1981, Mr. Cotton was a lead lawyer in a case in which the National Labor Relations Board ruled that a unionized company that decides to relocate jobs to another plant had, in many cases, a legal duty to bargain over the decision. The labor board ruled that an Iowa meatpacking company had violated federal law by refusing to bargain with the union over its decision to move a hog-kill operation from Dubuque, Iowa, to Rochelle, Ill.þþIn his more than four decades as a labor lawyer, Mr. Cotton visited scores of stockyards and slaughterhouses throughout the Midwest.þþ“I remember his description of seeing workers on the killing floor,” his son said. “It was pretty rough. He said there were still things right out of ‘The Jungle’ by Upton Sinclair. But the union and negotiations helped bring about a pretty dramatic upgrading of working conditions.”þþEugene Cotton was born on May 20, 1914, in the Bronx, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who had fled czarist oppression. He graduated from James Monroe High School at 15 and from City College at 19. In 1936, he graduated from Columbia University Law School, where he served on the law review. þþAfter a year at a law firm, he went to work for the New York State Labor Relations Board for four years. In 1940, he married Sylvia Glickstein, who died last year. A onetime social worker, she founded Illinois Action for Children. þþIn 1941, he moved to Washington as special counsel for the Federal Communications Commission to lead hearings on its policies on newspaper ownership of radio stations. þþThe Navy drafted him in 1943, and he was headed to the Pacific theater when World War II ended. He then took a dual appointment as assistant general counsel for the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the United Steelworkers of America. In 1948, he moved to Chicago to become the top lawyer for the packinghouse workers. þþ“This was a New Deal period, and I was essentially interested in defending working people,” he told Chicago Lawyer magazine in 1995.þþIn 1951, while serving as general counsel for the packinghouse workers, he founded a law firm, Cotton, Watt, Jones & King, where he worked until it dissolved 44 years later. It specialized in representing meatpacking, aviation and printing workers.þþWhen the packinghouse union merged into the Amalgamated Meat Cutters in 1968, he became general counsel to its packinghouse department. þþFrom 1966 to 1968, he served as president of the Chicago City Club.þþBesides his son Richard, of Manhattan, Mr. Cotton is survived by another son, Stephen, of Andover, Mass., and two grandchildren.þ
Source: NY Times
