Center for Families

Noel Beasley is an executive vice president of UNITE HERE and the manager of UNITE HERE’s Chicago and Midwest Regional Joint Board, which represents more than 40,000 members in nine mid-American states.

Beasley began his union work as a member of the Textile Workers Union of America’s Local 1818 in Lafayette, Indiana, in 1974. He served as a shop steward and chairman of the local’s bargaining committee. By 1977, Beasley had joined the union’s staff as a representative of the Indiana-Kentucky Joint Board. In 1983, he became manager of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union’s (ACTWU) Chicago Joint Board and, in 1986, was elected an international vice president and manager of the Midwest Regional Joint Board.

In 1995, ACTWU merged with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE). In 2004, UNITE and the Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) merged to create UNITE HERE. Beasley became a UNITE HERE executive vice president in 2007.

Beasley also is a director of the Amalgamated Bank and chairman of its trust committee. He is a trustee of a number of the union’s pension and health insurance funds and is a director of the Amalgamated Life Insurance Company.

For more than 20 years, Beasley has been the executive vice president of the Eugene V. Debs Foundation of Terre Haute, Indiana, which maintains the Debs’ home as a museum of labor movement memorabilia.

Beasley travels extensively on behalf of workers’ rights and has assisted in organizing projects throughout Central America and the Caribbean. He serves as a director of the U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Pepperdine College in 1966, Beasley earned a master’s degree from Purdue University in 1968. He lives in Oak Park, Illinois, with his wife, Laurie, an art dealer specializing in Afro-Caribbean culture.