Jack Conway; Labor Leader, Social Activist

Jack T. Conway, labor leader, political and social activist who helped launch housing, Head Start and Job Corps programs while in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, has died. He was 80.

Conway, who worked extensively for campaign finance reform and minority rights in California, died of respiratory failure Jan. 6 at his home in Sarasota, Fla.

Paul Schrade, a former United Auto Workers executive in the Western United States who worked with Conway in presidential campaigns for John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, said in Los Angeles that Conway became an early champion of migrant farm workers leader Cesar Chavez. In addition to helping Chavez improve workers’ conditions and organize the United Farm Workers, Schrade said, Conway interested Robert Kennedy in aiding Chavez.

Conway also gave professional and personal support to Ted Watkins and his Watts Labor Community Action Committee after the 1965 riots. Again, Conway enlisted Robert Kennedy to work with Watkins and his group.

As the first president of Common Cause, Conway campaigned strenuously for passage of California’s Proposition 9 campaign finance reform law, as well as for campaign finance reform throughout the country.

Conway was deputy administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Administration in the Kennedy administration and deputy director of the Office of Economic Opportunity in the Johnson administration.

Under President Kennedy, he helped draft the Omnibus Housing Act of 1961, which established the Department of Housing and Urban Development. For President Lyndon B. Johnson, he helped arrange financing for the Head Start preschool program for underprivileged children and the Job Corps program to train the unemployed.

Conway also headed Johnson’s Community Action Program, which distributed grants to about 250 communities in the War on Poverty.

Born in Detroit, Conway was educated at the University of Chicago and became involved with the UAW while working for a Buick aircraft engine plant near the campus.

From 1946 to 1961, Conway was a UAW representative, becoming administrative assistant to union president Walter Reuther.

Conway later worked as executive director of the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO and, in the mid-1970s, of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

He ended his active career as senior vice president of United Way of America, based in suburban Washington.

Conway is survived by his wife, LuVerne; three children, Thomas, Jan and Cynthia; five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.