Esther E. Peterson,91, a pioneering advocate of worker and consumer rights in three presidential administrations, died yesterday at her Washington home.
She was a pioneer in pressing the food and grocery industries to include unit pricing, more complete lists of ingredients and freshness dating, a son, Iver Peterson, said. A native of Provo, Utah, she was an official of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and the AFL-CIO before being named director of the Women's Bureau and assistant secretary for labor standards at the Labor Department by President Kennedy in 1961.
As the consumer movement grew in America under the influence of Ralph Nader and other activists, President Lyndon B. Johnson named her the first White House consumer adviser in 1964, a post she held through 1967.