Ruth Milkman collection on Ruth Young

Ruth Young (1916-1986), the nation's highest-ranking female labor union offical in the 1940s, was born Ruth Youkelson in Chicago, the daughter of Jewish immmigrants from the Ukraine. After graduating from high school. Young worked in a number of factories and almost immediately became a union activist. She became active in the Communist-led Trade Union Unity League, and then in the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE-CIO). By 1938, she was on the UE's full-time staff, a staunch advocate of organizing women and bringing them into union activity. In 1940, she became the Membership and Education Director of the UE District 4 which covered New York City and Northern New Jersey, and later became its Executive Secretary. She organized a large UE women's conference in 1941, and wrote a weekly column in the UE News, called "Work and Play". After the United States entered World War II, Young became a members of the UE's highest executive body, the International Executive Board. Throughout much of the 1940s, Young was a member of the Communist Party, like many UE leaders. But she left both the party and UE in 1950, and married Leo Jandreau, a leader of UE Local 301 which represented workers at General Electric in Schenectady, New York. Young remained active in local community activities in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1967 she launched a "second career" as a college administrator. In te 1980s she gave public lectures on women's work and women's labor history.