The labor movement lost a gifted and spirited leader when Edward M. Smith died on January 3, 2024. Here's a biography documenting his own labor story.
At each day’s end, Ed Smith asks himself “Who have I helped today?” He learned the habit from his father, Connell Smith, Sr. who served as the business manager of Laborers’ Local 773 in Cairo, Illinois, for over thirty years. For Ed, who followed his father’s path into the labor world, that nightly ritual is an opportunity to remember that his job, and the labor movement more broadly, is about helping people.
Looking at the scope of Ed’s long career, one could say he has helped an awful lot of people. Ed joined Laborers’ International Union of North America as a laborer at the age of thirteen and was elected LIUNA Local 773’s business manager by the age twenty-one. Later, he was elected LIUNA Vice-President and Midwest Regional Manager, and served as Assistant to the General President. Today, Ed is Chairman and CEO of Ullico Inc., the nation’s only labor-owned financial services company.
Decades of work in the field haven’t dampened his spirit. He has a contagious optimism and is always on the lookout for new opportunities to protect and grow the labor movement. “That fire burns in me every day, much as it always has,” he recently said. “There’s so much to do. It’s a calling for me, not a job, because I know when the labor movement succeeds, America succeeds.”
Labor Roots
Ed’s father, Connell Smith, laid the track for his son’s labor career early in his life through his tireless dedication to the union. Ed remembers the long days when his father drove the entire county looking for job opportunities for unemployed laborers. It was hard work, but it made a difference in people’s lives. That fact left an impression on Ed as a young boy.
He yearned to be part of the union, but to afford the initiation fee he had to get a job at a local laundromat and save his money. To this day, Ed remembers the exact price he paid to get his union card in 1968 as a thirteen-year-old: there was a $100 initiation fee, $7 in dues, and a 50-cent building fee. It was a steep price for that time, but Ed is quick to point out that it was worth every penny.
Even as a thirteen-year-old, he was no idle bystander. When the recording secretary of Local 773 was unable to attend a union hall meeting, Connell enlisted his son to take the minutes in their absence. Ed remembers the day well, recalling how he tried to keep up while writing longhand in a notebook. He still has that notebook after all these years.
By the next summer, Ed had grown to 5’11’’ and weighed 160 pounds. His father felt the fourteen-year-old’s prolific energy would get him into trouble if he had too much idle time, so he opted to keep him busy. Pretending to be eighteen, Ed was put to work with the Laborers all summer—building a bridge and working along I-57. He continued to work with the Laborers each summer throughout his high-school years— working on a dredge boat, paving asphalt, and doing whatever else the laborers were dispatched to do. Ed learned at an early age that it paid to be in a union—he was accumulating valuable skills and earning more money than his high school teachers.
At age 16, Ed’s father sent him down to a levee project along the Mississippi River to put up his first picket line. The young man proved to be a natural—enlisting members of the Operating Engineers and Teamsters to the cause. Before long, the project was hiring more union Laborers.
Ed also helped organize the Pulaski County Highway Department in 1975. Notably, the county refused to recognize the fledgling bargaining unit and terminated all union employees. After a 54-day strike, the county gave in and started recognizing Local 773 as the collective bargaining agent for the highway department. Following this success, the local union then organized the Alexander County Highway Department—this time with immediate recognition and no strike.
With years of labor experience under his belt, Ed also began to build his labor studies education as well. His mother, Mary, initiated this process—urging her son to apply to the National Labor College (NLC) after reading about the opportunity. Ed went on to be the first LIUNA member in the country to graduate from the NLC.
Soon after, LIUNA sent him to participate in the Harvard Trade Union program. Ed was one of twenty-three students in the semester-long program—half from the U.S. and the rest from all around the world. Participants attended class with Harvard MBA students and debated case studies in labor history. It was a world away from working highway construction, but Ed took the opportunity seriously — studying for hours so he could hold his own against those he deemed “the future captains of industry.”
This education helped him develop a more comprehensive understanding of the labor world and its relationship to business. That knowledge, paired with his practical construction background, allowed him to develop and execute ambitious ideas throughout his career—often in the face of stiff resistance.
A Storied Career
As Ed was working on his education, his father suffered a heart attack. It was a difficult time, but it prompted the young Smith to step up and take a leadership role in the union. Not long after, he was elected 773’s business manager in 1976 at the age of twenty-one.
When Ed took over as business manager, he made a point to advance LIUNA’s political interests in southern Illinois. He later approached the late Wilbur Freitag, then LIUNA Springfield Regional Manager, and volunteered as a statehouse lobbyist. The Illinois AFL-CIO already had a lobbying effort, but Ed was adamant that LIUNA needed its own statehouse voice.
That presence in Springfield allowed Ed to develop an understanding of the legislative process while also building relationships that would profoundly shape his career. “I became close friends with Rich Walsh (Illinois AFL-CIO lobbyist) and Margaret Blackshere (Illinois Federation of Teachers lobbyist),” Ed said. Both Walsh, and later Blackshere, went on to lead the Illinois AFL-CIO. Impressed by his vision for the union, the LIUNA Region Office named Ed as LIUNA International Representative in 1981.
He took the position just as the Reagan administration, and the Republican Party more broadly, began a strategic campaign to weaken labor unions throughout the country. “Reagan fired all the striking air traffic controllers in 1981. That decision sent a clear message to every business in the country that you could get rid of unions,” Smith recalled. From there, the Republican Party set out to outlaw project labor agreements and pass so-called right-to-work legislation in every state. “We knew we needed a plan and that we’d have to fight like hell moving forward.”
Ed focused his efforts on protecting labor rights in Illinois. Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, the paramount issue was establishing collective bargaining rights for public employees. Between 1982 and 1983, the legislature passed separate laws giving educators, state and local workers, firefighters, and police the right to organize. LIUNA, alongside AFSCME and the Service Employees International (SEIU), wasted no time organizing. Local 773 led organizing drives with forty different worker groups, ranging from police, health care and highway workers. This work paid off, as thirty-nine of these organizing drives proved successful, expanding Local 773’s membership from 300 to 4,000 members.
Following this success, he won the election for Southern Illinois Laborers’ District Council Business Manager in 1985. Nine years later, following the passing of Jim Norwood, he took on the role of Midwest Region LIUNA Manager and later earned a seat on the LIUNA Executive Board.
His experience with public employee organizing had convinced him that political outreach and power was important. Now in charge of a larger region, Ed doubled down on his efforts to expand LIUNA’s political voice. His first move in the new role was to hire Jack Reid as the union’s Springfield lobbyist.
The Midwest Region enhanced their political war chest, and very importantly encouraged local unionists to run for precinct-committee positions and Democratic County Chairs. “When workers wanted a union, we wanted people in power that would protect their political rights,” he said. LIUNA members like Peoria’s Billy Halsted, McLean County’s John Penn, and Woodford County’s late Dave McBride were soon leading their respective local political organizations. “Politically, we had at one time probably 18 or 20 county chairs that were Laborers. We made an effort to set up our political action,” he recounted. “If you wanted to get elected, you had to come through the Laborers. Politicians knew all those county chairmen were with us.” Ed later served as the Illinois representative to the Democratic National Committee.
Former 17th District Democratic Congresswoman and a current Ullico board member Cheri Bustos said that “Ed Smith is one-of-a-kind… A mentor to so many – in politics, in organized labor and throughout Illinois. Kind. Hard working. Smart. Strategic. And passionate to his core about working men and women. He’s the same guy whether it’s with those in the highest echelon of national politics or with men and women on the worksite. Those of us who are lucky enough to know him are better because of Ed Smith.”
LIUNA also greatly expanded its activities across the United States, creating the Tri-Funds, which developed a series of training, marketing, and health and safety programs meant to give the union a competitive edge in winning work. Ed pushed the Midwest Region to innovate as well, developing regional Tri-Funds programs for contractor cooperation and worker protection.
Ed was also committed to protecting construction workers’ rights, helping to forge the National Association for Fair Contracting (NAFC). Fair contracting works to ensure proper wages, benefits and safety conditions are maintained on all construction jobs, so employers cannot gain contracts at their workers’ expense. Prior to the NAFC, some unions and regions began developing programs to monitor contractors and make sure they were following through on their obligations to their workers. Ed reached out to these fair contracting groups across the country and brought them all together for a meeting in St. Louis. “It was like a family reunion,” he recalled. “They all knew each other.” The event inspired the establishment of the NAFC, with the Midwest Region LIUNA acting as the association’s original sponsor.
“Those were heady times. We were organizing, we were setting up NAFC, and we were doing the Regional Tri-Funds. Those were all new back then. It was such an exciting time. We were on the go and on the move,” Ed remembered with fondness.
Critically, those efforts were making a difference—LIUNA was gaining political and job-site power. Thanks to Margaret Blackshere, Ed was appointed to the Illinois State Board of Investments and became its Chairman. While serving on the board, he worked to leverage the financial power organized labor held through its pension and health and welfare funds. He recognized that this money was not reaching its full potential if it was being invested in non-union firms like Walmart. Ed began to think in more ambitious terms, wanting to invest this money in ways that could create union jobs. Obviously, the first necessity was protecting the members’ pension dollars, but he knew there were safe ways to invest that could also include union construction mandates and neutrality on worker organizing at the same time. That strategic mission would become central to the next chapter in his career.
A New Chapter
In 2008, Ullico experienced the same financial difficulties much of America was facing during the Great Recession. Then LIUNA President, now Emeritus, Terence (Terry) O’Sullivan was asked to stabilize the company. Knowing the work Ed had done in pension investment, Terry turned to Illinois for assistance. Ed resigned as Midwest Region LIUNA Manager and became Ullico’s President in 2008, just as our nation descended into recession.
With the same fortitude and spirit that he used in his organizing efforts, Ed moved Ullico into an expansion phase. Facing stiff resistance, Ed led the charge to develop an ambitious new infrastructure fund that would focus on offering strong returns for investors while also creating union jobs. Early on, Ed gave a speech to the building trades unions about his vision to rebuild America’s infrastructure in the hopes of raising money for the fund. It was a heavy lift, after all, it was just a vision at that time. People had to trust that Ullico could make good on the fund’s projections.
After years of hard work, fundraising, and sound investing, that vision is very much a reality—the Ullico Infrastructure Fund (UIF) now has over $5 billion in assets under management. “The UIF helped us turn this company around,” he said. “We started that fund with two employees in the middle of the recession. Now, the UIF is a key player in the largest public-private partnership in the world—the JFK New Terminal One project in New York City, which is estimated to create six thousand union jobs.”
Ed also put his imprint on the insurance side of Ullico’s business by emphasizing union liability insurance. “When a company thinks they can bankrupt a union, we pay the legal bills and help them keep the lights on.” For Ed, these decisions are all part of Ullico’s mission to protect and grow the labor movement. “Ullico is the most profitable it has ever been, but we are doing it the right way and looking out for working people.”
“Who have I helped today?”
For over 70 years, the Smith family has held leadership positions within LIUNA Local 773. First with Connell Smith as Business Manager, then to Ed as Business Manager and President, and now on to Ed’s son, Matt, who is President of the Local and Assistant Regional Manager for LIUNA. The common thread through this consistent leadership is an understanding that unions are meant to help people—help them get good jobs, good pay, a voice on the job, and benefits to support a family. It's fitting that the phrase “Who have I helped today?” is now on a plaque honoring Connell Smith outside of the Local 773 office in Marion, Illinois.
Illinois AFL-CIO President Tim Drea said, “From his humble beginnings in Cairo, Illinois, Ed Smith is a true trade unionist. Ed has always been guided by one principle during his career; ensuring a union card means, middle-class wages, affordable health care and an adequate retirement plan. He has never been shy in advocating that principle with employers, local politicians, Governors, members of Congress and United States Presidents. In Illinois, our movement owes a great deal of gratitude to Ed Smith.”
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said that “Ed Smith embodies the values, determination and spirit of the labor movement to his core. His career is a testament to the power of unions. From his time as a member of LIUNA Local 773 to his role as president of Ullico, his mission has always been to put working people front and center. He is a true partner in advocating for union members at every level, from the worksite to organizing drives to supporting good union jobs through labor’s pension fund investments.”
From where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers meet deep in southern Illinois, Ed Smith has left his mark on union labor throughout Illinois and nationally. “They’ve written the labor movement’s obituary so many times and they keep getting it wrong,” Ed said. “We keep figuring out a way to grow. We’re having real success now.” Thinking back over his incredible career, first in Illinois and now still going strong in Washington D.C., Ed is quick to say, “I’ve been the luckiest guy in the world to be part of this incredible labor movement in the best country in the world. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”