Union career

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Carey's first job was as an electrical worker in the radio laboratory of the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company (later the Philco Corporation). He began in 1929, while taking evening courses in electrical engineering at Drexel Institute.^[4]

Carey and six other workers at the Philco plant started the "Phil-Rod Fishing Club", primarily to organize a union. Discontinuing his studies at Drexel Institute, from 1931 to 1932 Carey attended the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, where he took evening courses in industrial management, business forecasting, and finance. Under the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933, the radio factory set up a "Company Congress" to meet NRA collective bargaining requirements.

October 1933 Carey was sent as a delegate from his local to the convention of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Two months later, representatives of a dozen AFL and independent unions in the radio and electrical industries met in New York, established the Radio and Allied Trades National Labor Council, and elected Carey (then 22 years old) its first president.

Carey became President of the United Electrical Workers (UE) in 1936 during its formation. Under Carey's leadership the UE formed an affiliation with the new Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). In 1941, he broke with the UE due to Communist control.^[5]

From 1938 to 1955, Carey served as secretary-treasurer of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

In 1948, Max Lowenthal, a Truman insider, recorded in his 1948 diary that Carey was CIO president Philip Murray's main conduit. He recorded a conversation in his diary thus:

M(ax): You know that although Jim Carey sees you, Phil Murry has been saying for three years that he has no real access to the White House.
D(avid): You should see how much Jim Carey has been in my hair these past few weeks!^[6]

In 1950, Carey helped found and became first president of UE rival International Union of Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers, also known as the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE), which the CIO helped found and where he served until 1965. Today, the IUE is part of the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

In 1955, when the CIO rejoined the AFL to form the AFL-CIO, Carey became vice-president of AFL–CIO.

Government service

In 1946, U.S. President Harry S. Truman appointed Carey to the President's Committee on Civil Rights.

From 1965 to 1972, Carey served as labor representative to the United Nations Association, where he helped influence the CIO's pulling out from the WFTU and forming of an alternative International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) organization, dedicated to promoting free trade and democratic unionism worldwide.