Katherine Pollak Ellickson
| Katherine Pollak Ellickson | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Katherine H. Pollak 1 September 1905 Yonkers, New York |
| Died | 28 December 1996 (aged 91) La Jolla, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | A.B., Economics |
| Alma mater | Vassar College |
| Occupation | labor economist |
| Spouse(s) | John Chester Ellickson |
| Children | Margaret, Robert |
Katherine Pollak Ellickson (1905-1996) was an American labor economist. For much of her career, she worked for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). During the Kennedy administration, she was executive director of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women and helped create the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Katherine Pollak was born on September 1, 1905, in Yonkers, New York, and grew up in Manhattan in the midst of the Ethical Culture movement. Her father, Francis D. Pollak, was a lawyer; her mother, Inez Cohen, was an activist involved in labor, feminist, and consumer issues. She attended the Ethical Culture School, a private preparatory school in New York City, and studied economics at Vassar, where she earned an A.B. degree in 1926. She pursued graduate studies at Columbia University.
Ellickson started her career in the workers' education movement, teaching and writing for Brookwood Labor College (1929-1932), the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry (1927-1949), and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) Southern teachers' training school in 1934. She also did field work in the textile mills of the South and the coal mining camps of West Virginia.
In the late 1930s she worked for the fledgling Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as assistant to director John Brophy at the national office, doing organizational work, research, and speechwriting. She also worked as an associate economist for the National Labor Relations Board. She became the CIO's Associate Director of Research in 1942, serving as liaison to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and representing the CIO on government advisory committees. After the merger with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1955, she became assistant director of the AFL-CIO's Social Security Department. Later she recalled that the AFL-CIO was much less welcoming to women than the CIO had been.
...
Wikipedia