[3] The head projectionist, who was an officer in the film operators' union, reportedly gave Carey the theory and practice of the labor movement.

[citation needed] Carey's first job was as an electrical worker in the radio laboratory of the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company (later the Philco Corporation).

[4] Carey and six other workers at the Philco plant started the "Phil-Rod Fishing Club," primarily to organize a union.

Under the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933, the radio factory set up a "Company Congress" to meet NRA collective bargaining requirements.

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.

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.