Our Life & Times

A JOURNAL OF 1199SEIU December 2009

orma Amsterdam Gloria Arana Eddie Ayash Mattie Best Ezra Birnbau John Black Thelma Bowles Arnetta Campbell Maria Castaneda Linda an Carrie Davis Ossie Davis Ruby Dee Marshall Dubin Gloria Duso A ack Moe Foner Aida Garcia Marshall Garcia Elliott Godoff Frank Go Wilhelmina Goss George Gresham Leaza Halloway Annie Henry Gerr Hudson Joe James Hilda Joquin Carol Joyner Phil Kamenkowitz Eddi Kay Deborah King Steve Kramer Ramon Malave Ruth Massey Bernie Minter Theodore Mitchell Mary Moultrie Henry Nicholas Mike O’Brie esse Olson Julio Pagan John Perkins Norman Rayford Robin Ringwoo Dennis Rivera William Taylor Doris Turner Celia Wcislo Leon Davis orma Amsterdam Gloria Arana Eddie Ayash Mattie Best Ezra Birnbau John Black Thelma Bowles Arnetta Campbell Maria Castaneda Linda an Carrie Davis Ossie Davis Ruby Dee Marshall Dubin Gloria Duso A ack Moe Foner Aida Garcia Marshall Garcia Elliott Godoff Frank Go Wilhelmina Goss George Gresham Leaza Halloway Annie Henry Gerr Hudson Joe James Hilda Joquin Carol Joyner Phil Kamenkowitz Eddi Kay Deborah King Steve Kramer Ramon Malave Ruth Massey Bernie Minter Theodore Mitchell Mary Moultrie Henry Nicholas Mike O’Brie esse Olson Julio Pagan John Perkins Norman Rayford Robin Ringwoo Dennis Rivera William Taylor Doris Turner Celia Wcislo Leon Davis orma Amsterdam Gloria Arana Eddie Ayash Mattie Best Ezra Birnbau John Black Thelma Bowles Arnetta Campbell Maria Castaneda Linda an Carrie Davis Ossie Davis Ruby Dee Marshall Dubin Gloria Duso A ack Moe Foner Aida Garcia Marshall Garcia Elliott Godoff Frank Go Wilhelmina Goss George Gresham Leaza Halloway Annie Henry Gerr Hudson Joe James Hilda Joquin Carol Joyner Phil Kamenkowitz Eddi Kay Deborah King Steve Kramer Ramon Malave Ruth Massey Bernie Minter Theodore Mitchell Mary Moultrie Henry Nicholas Mike O’Brie esse Olson Julio Pagan John Perkins Norman Rayford Robin Ringwoo Dennis Rivera William Taylor Doris Turner Celia Wcislo Leon Davis orma Amsterdam Gloria Arana Eddie Ayash Mattie Best Ezra Birnbau John Black Thelma Bowles Arnetta Campbell MariaAnnouncement Castaneda Linda of Union Election an Carrie Davis Ossie Davis Ruby Dee Marshall Dubin Gloria Duso A See Insert ack Moe Foner Aida Garcia Marshall Garcia Elliott Godoff Frank Go Wilhelmina Goss George Gresham Leaza Halloway Annie Henry Gerr Hudson Joe James Hilda Joquin Carol Joyner Phil Kamenkowitz Eddi

50 WHO CARRIED

THE 1199 TORCH Profiles of our pioneers

EDITORIAL

Contents 3 4 5 15

Leon Davis, the father of 1199, leading a picket line during a 1941 strike against the Whalen Drug Stores Corporation.

WE STAND ON THEIR SHOULDERS Saluting a half-century of pioneers.

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN In the spirit of our pioneers.

50 WHO CARRIED THE 1199 TORCH Profiles of our pioneers.

AROUND OUR UNION

OUR PIONEERS 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

Norma Amsterdam Gloria Arana Eddie Ayash Mattie Best Ezra Birnbaum John Black Thelma Bowles Arnetta Campbell Maria Castaneda Linda Chan Carrie Davis Ossie Davis Ruby Dee Marshall Dubin Gloria Duso Ann Flack Moe Foner Aida Garcia Marshall Garcia Elliott Godoff Frank Goes Wilhelmina Goss George Gresham Leaza Halloway Annie Henry

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

Gerry Hudson Joe James Hilda Joquin Carole Joyner Phil Kamenkowitz Eddie Kay Deborah King Steve Kramer Ramon Malave Ruth Massey Bernie Minter Theodore Mitchell Mary Moultrie Henry Nicholas Mike O’Brien Jesse Olson Julio Pagan John Perkins Norman Rayford Robin Ringwood Dennis Rivera William Taylor Doris Turner Celia Wcislo Leon Davis

Our Life And Times, December 2009, Vol 27, No 5 Published by 1199SEIU, United Healthcare Workers East 310 West 43rd St. New York, NY 10036 Telephone (212) 582-1890 www.1199seiu.org

E DITOR : J.J. Johnson STAFF WRITE R : Patricia Kenney PHOTOG RAPH E R :

Jim Tynan PHOTOG RAPHY ASS ISTANT :

Belinda Gallegos ART DI RECTION & DES IG N :

PRES I DE NT :

Maiarelli Studio

George Gresham S EC RETARY TREASURE R :

Maria Castaneda EXEC UTIVE VIC E PRES I DE NTS :

Norma Amsterdam Yvonne Armstrong Angela Doyle Mike Fadel Aida Garcia George Kennedy Steve Kramer Patrick Lindsay Joyce Neil John Reid Bruce Richard Mike Rifkin Neva Shillingford Milly Silva Estela Vazquez

Our Life And Times is published 6 times a year by 1199SEIU, 310 West 43rd St., New York, NY 10036.

Subscriptions $15 per year.

Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and additional mailing offices.

ISSN 1080-3089.

USPS 000-392.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Our Life And Times, 310 West 43rd St., New York, NY 10036.

We Stand on Their Shoulders Thousands of homecare workers demanded a living wage at June 2004 march and rally in New York City

For the past year, this journal has chronicled the path that our Union has traveled over the past half-century. It is a path that has transformed a 5,000-member Union into the world’s largest local, with 350,000 members in four states and the District of Columbia The march was begun by a small pharmacy union that defied the most powerful interests in New York City. These pioneers 1199ers took on what most called an impossible task – the organizing of New York City’s poor, exploited voluntary hospital workers.

Unity was the essential ingredient in1199’s recipe for success. But that unity could not have been forged and sustained without sharp vision and individual acts of courage and sacrifice.

This issue celebrates 50 of those leaders whose courage, commitment and leadership have been central to our accomplishments. Many of the 50 are obvious choices – names that have become legend within our Union and the broader labor movement. For example, Leon Davis, the father of our Union, has long secured an honored place in U.S. labor history.

Others are less well known. Many never joined the Union staff. Instead they built the Union at their institutions and in some instances won unprecedented gains.

Some were with us for only a short time. Norman Rayford was killed by a security guard at age 34 while organizing Philadelphia hospital workers.

Of course, because the list is limited, many deserving 1199ers have been excluded. To acknowledge those leaders, the 1199SEIU website will establish a section dedicated to the 50 pioneers profiled in this magazine together with other past Union activists who periodically will be added to the section.

Our website also will inaugurate early next year a Member of the Month section to honor outstanding current members. Please log onto www.1199SEIU.org for details.

Our 1199SEIU new members’ brochure is entitled “Proud of Our Union.” We are especially proud of the 50 pioneers profiled in the pages of this magazine.

3

December • Our Life And Times

We salute a half-century of pioneers.

The 1199SEIU audited financial statement for the year ending Dec. 31, 2008 will be included in the next issue of Our Life And Times

THE PRESIDENT’S COLUMN George Gresham

In the Spirit of Our Pioneers As you know, this month we celebrate our 50th Anniversary as a healthcare union, marking five decades since a group of heroic Montefiore Hospital workers, and a visionary 1199 leadership, won our first hospital contract and began our transition from a small drugstore Union to becoming the largest local union in the world.

This issue of Our Life And Times profiles 50 pioneers who built our Union. But the fact is that we continue to build it every day.

Last month, 5,000 New York 1199SEIU members woke in the middle of the night in their homes along the Canadian border and the far reaches of Long Island and points in between to make the long bus trip to Albany. We came to tell the Governor and Legislature that “enough is enough” and that we would accept no further healthcare budget cuts that would harm patient care, our institutions and our families.

New York political leaders have to respect the power of our members. Only a week before the Albany demonstration, 1199SEIU political volunteers got out the vote throughout New York and Massachusetts to secure election victories for: • Worker-friendly Public Advocate, Comptroller, and City Council candidates in New York City, • The first female mayor of Syracuse, • A new Democratic Congressman in an Upstate N.Y. district that had been Republican since the U.S. Civil War, and • City Council members in Springfield and Boston (including a former SEIU political director in Boston) as well as the reelection of our ally, Boston’s Mayor Thomas Menino.

And couple of weeks before that busloads of 1199ers from Baltimore to Boston to Buffalo came to Jersey City, N. J., to show their solidarity with our sisters and brothers fighting for a fair contract with the greedy Omni nursing-home chain.

So it goes for our Union and our members. Campaigns may come to a close, but the struggle for a better life for our families and our patients is never ending.

This past spring and summer, we re-opened our contract with the League of Voluntary Hospitals (and with the Greater New York Nursing Home Association) in order to secure our world-class healthcare and pension benefits for the future, against a backdrop to the worst economic crisis in 80 years.

Our collective bargaining agreement with the League (and those contracts modeled on it) covers nearly 150,000 of our members and sets the standards that we strive to achieve for every 1199SEIU member. By re-opening the contract two years before it was due to expire, we were taking a big chance because every item is up for bargaining, not just those that our members hope to gain. But we felt we had no choice given the (then) crisis in our Pension Fund as a result of the global financial freefall.

Usually our contract talks with the League go on for a week.

This time around, they lasted two full months. But we were confident. In addition to having a respectful relationship with our League employers—and the respect goes both ways—we have a special not-very-secret weapon.

The members of 1199SEIU have a long tradition of struggle. We know that nothing is given to us, that we have fought for all that we have gained, and that we deserve what we have won. We also know we are never going back. Our members won the new contract, of course, with their health and pension benefits secure up to 2015.

Like virtually every 1199SEIU contract, the talks at the bargaining table only ratified what our members mobilize and fight for in our institutions. In 2009, the sisters and brothers fought a fight worthy of the pioneers that built our union.

On behalf of our entire 1199SEIU Executive Council, we want to wish every member a peaceful, safe holiday season and a Happy New Year. Rest up and enjoy the season with your loved ones. The struggle continues anew on Jan. 2.

Letters BLESSED WITH BENEFITS saw the last issue of Our Life And Times and reading about our history made me want to write. The best thing I ever did was to join 1199 in the mid-1960’s. I retired in 1995 and without 1199 I don’t know how I would manage.

When I started working at Abbey Beauty Supply in Brooklyn I didn’t know anything about the business or the Union. I was a housewife and mother. The store’s owner, Moe Benjamin, told me I should join the Union. It was $25 or $35 to join then, and Mr. Benjamin paid half my initiation fee. I worked there for seven years, until the store was sold. Mr. Benjamin died soon after that. It broke my heart. He was such an example of the right way to treat workers.

I was out of work for six months when the Union helped me get a job at another Brooklyn drug store – Silver Rod Pharmacy, now a Walgreen’s. I worked there for 23 years. I was a proud 1199 member there too and they didn’t always like it. But I knew how important the Union was. When I started there my kids were 10 and 15 years old. It was such tremendous comfort to know I had those benefits. Our prescriptions were 50 cents.

I’m 80 now and recently had cataract surgery. I still bless the Union for my pension, my prescriptions and my healthcare coverage.

I

ELAINE GELOBTER Retiree, Brooklyn, N.Y.

A NOTE OF THANKS m one of the Beth Israel surgical techs who were featured in “The Work We Do” in the last issue of Our Life And Times. Seeing ourselves in the magazine was really a boost to our morale. Many of us – myself included – didn’t know the history of our Union until reading that issue of the magazine.

It was really helpful to know where we came from and to see the struggles of others who came before us. I think a lot of us have a better appreciation for what we have today through seeing what the

I’

people before us went through to win our benefits and wages. It’s also a great teaching tool for newer members.

As for us surgical techs at the Phillips Ambulatory Care Center, it was great to see our work in the magazine. We work in a satellite of Beth Israel’s main hospital. Sometimes it may seem like no one knows we’re here working so hard.

That story re-energized us and definitely made us feel appreciated and recognized.

I also wanted to take a moment to praise The Monitor, the Union’s publication for professional and technical workers. That newsletter also helps us feel more connected and valued. Thanks again. I hope you continue to do more stories about our Union’s history. It’s clear that we have a lot to be proud of.

50

DARRELL SADLER Beth Israel Medical Center, New York City

LEARNING ABOUT SAFETY just completed a series of Health and Safety classes offered by the Union. It was the first time these classes had been offered in five years. I hope they keep offering them because I know for myself now just how important they are.

We learned so much about various chemicals as well as policies and procedures, how to avoid falls, and other ways to protect each other and ourselves at work.

The class was informative for our safety at home also. I used a lot of the information when I looked at the chemicals in many of the products I use every day. I had no idea how toxic some things are or how many carcinogens they contain.

The classes really made me think twice. It’s amazing how with a little knowledge you can change how you see things and how you use them.

These classes are really important for healthcare workers. When we come to work every day we need to know we’re safe. It’s not just for us, but also for our coworkers and for our patients. It’s vital that we have the ability to protect the people around us. These classes are good for our institutions and for us.

I

COREY BELL Beth Israel Medical Center, New York City

Profiles of our pioneers For the past half-century, the organization that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called his favorite union has been one of the nation’s primary engines for progressive change. 1199SEIU has vastly improved conditions and compensation for its members while helping to transform conditions for millions of Americans. What follows are profiles of 50 of our pioneers without whom those victories would not have been possible. To write the profiles, the staff of Our Life And Times relied on interviews, back issues of 1199News, “Not For Bread Alone,” the memoirs of the late Moe Foner written with retired 1199 News editor Dan North, and “Upheaval in the Quiet Zone,” a history of 1199SEIU by Leon Fink and Brian Greenberg.

THIS TRAINING This training’s necessary though we started late.

Our opening exercise? Superbly great!

Delegates need constant refreshing, For the education process is ongoing.

Our mission, objectives and principles are the guiding light, Leading us delegates to do what’s right.

The battle is FIERCE and things seem WORSE This training is ammunition To the delegate force.

ROSALENE PHILOGENE NYU Langone Medical Center, New York City

December • Our Life And Times

WHO CARRIED THE 1199 TORCH

4

5

December • Our Life And Times

OUR PIONEERS

OUR PIONEERS

1. Norma Amsterdam They Tried To Shut Us Down Exec. VP Norma Amsterdam has been head of the Union’s RN Division since 1992.

“I tell nurses that they are the center of the healthcare team and so they really need to value who they are,” says Amsterdam. She has been a nurse and trade unionist for some 40 years.

Amsterdam directs a division that services some 15,000 registered nurses and is dedicated to protecting the nursing profession and its standards.

“When I was in high school in Guyana

2. Gloria Arana Floor Lady of the Mount Sinai Laundry Gloria Arana landed a job in 1942 pressing curtains at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital. Her pay was $60 a month.

A single mother of three daughters, Arana, a native of San Juan, Puerto Rico, had previously worked in a battery plant and a candy factory.

“I had never seen a strike in my life” she later told an 1199 News reporter. Nor did she know much about unions. But when the historic 1959 strike for union

recognition began, it was Arana who helped lead the walkout.

In “Upheaval in the Quiet Zone,” a history of 1199, Arana described a number of “good bosses” she worked under at Mount Sinai. But she also recounted that she once was out sick for two months but got paid for just ten days. She also was out for weeks after falling in the snow outside the hospital. “I didn’t get a penny while I was out,” she said.

Her leadership skills and the respect she inspired were reflected in the words of a European immigrant who lived in the

3. Eddie Ayash Union Bean-Counter

Dues during the 1930s depression were 25 cents a month for employed members and 10 cents a month for the unemployed.

Staffers until well into the 1960s remembered Ayash rationing the use of items as small as paperclips. But they understood that Ayash’s bean-counting came from a commitment that every penny of Union resources be used to organize workers and fight bosses.

Ayash did more than keep the books.

In 1959, at the start of the 46-day strike that established 1199 as New York’s hospital union, Ayash and Davis went into

“Take care of the dimes and the dollars will take care of themselves.”

That could have been Edward Ayash’s motto. Ayash, who joined Leon Davis and a small group of pharmacists in forming 1199 in 1932, was the Union’s first treasurer. He remained in charge of 1199 finances for almost four decades, helping to create an early tradition of thrifty austerity.

The young 1199 was not a rich Union.

4. Mattie Best Rochester’s Mother of the Union When Larry Fox, a young 1199 organizer, began talking union to Strong Memorial Hospital workers in the early 1970’s, workers advised him that if he wanted to do any organizing there, he needed to see Mattie Best.

Under Best’s leadership, Fox and other 1199ers brought Strong Memorial and the University of Rochester Hospital into the 1199 family. Best worked as a laboratory assistant at Strong from 1967 to 1997.

my sister was in school to become nurse.

The unions were very active and they went on strike. She went on strike too even though she wasn't supposed to. She was a real activist,” says Amsterdam. “After the strike was over they tried to penalize the students but the other unions wouldn't let them. I saw that so I became a nurse too.”

Amsterdam came to New York City in the late 1960’s and got a job at St. Mary’s Hospital in Queens, N.Y. “We couldn't speak our minds,” she says. “They tried to shut us down. We’d have to work eight days to get one day off.

We couldn't talk about our patient loads.”

“She was always the person we went to,” says 1199SEIU VP Bruce Popper, who was a University of Rochester student organizer during the union campaign.

Popper says of Best, “She was our oracle.”

When Best relocated to Kennesaw, Georgia, in 2008, Fox was unable to attend her send-off celebration, but he wrote: “It has been 35 years since we met, and in 35 years I have yet to meet a leader of working people who is your equal. The history of healthcare workers in Rochester has recorded that when the most powerful people in the town tried to kill that

movement; tried to buy its leaders off, you stood strong and said ‘not here, not now, not this time,’ and the Union was born.”

Best says that after she retired, she would often stand outside Strong, look at the workers and say to herself, “This is something that I helped build.”

“I grew stronger as the campaign went on,” she says. “We won because we came together and stuck together.”

5. Ezra Birnbaum Healthcare Professionals Are Workers

immersed himself in struggles for social and political justice. Campaigns included housing, jobs and welfare rights.

In 1971 he returned to the place of his birth, Brooklyn’s Maimonides Hospital, where he supervised workers at local outreach clinics. “At that time, supervisors were in the Union, so I was able to do Union work,” he says.

He lost his Maimonides position during the city’s fiscal crisis in 1975. And in 1977 he landed a position at St. Luke’s in Manhattan, where he retired as a senior social worker in 1999.

Few 1199ers have done as much to advance the status of professional and technical workers as retiree Ezra Birnbaum.

Birnbaum was an active trade unionist long before he became a social worker. He worked as a unionized machinist for nine years before returning to school in 1958.

He earned a social worker’s degree in 1960, and while raising four children with his wife, Carol Birnbaum – a Roosevelt Hospital occupational therapist – he

“And it’s not like I didn't know different because in Guyana we had strong unions and could speak our minds,” she adds.

In 1978 Amsterdam led the effort to bring St. Mary’s nurses into the 1199 bargaining unit that represented service and maintenance workers at the hospital.

“It was so empowering,” she says. “I became part of the negotiating committee and a delegate. My goal was to enhance my education by getting my BA and my Masters. They tried to recruit me for management but there was no way I was going to let them computerize my brain.”

6. John Black A Portrait In Courage

Mount Sinai dormitory but whose ailing feet prevented her from picketing during the 1959 strike. Refusing to leave her room, she said, “Gloria told me I don’t work. I do the strike here.”

Arana retired in 1978 and died in 2003. Said the late 1199 organizer Marshall Dubin, “Anyone with half a brain would know that to run the (Mount Sinai) laundry meant dealing with Gloria Arana.

She was the floor lady of the laundry.”

7. Thelma Bowles It Was a Man’s World

One explanation for John Black’s picketline courage in the face of hostile police officers was simple: He’d seen a lot worse.

Black (1921-2006) was an 1199 leader in New York and Pennsylvania from 1961 to 1986. Born and raised in Germany to an American father and a German mother, he got involved in the anti-fascist underground as a nine-year-old courier and continued fighting the Nazis until he

Thelma Bowles was the first 1199 female organizer. She entered Montefiore’s practical nursing program in 1951 and later was in charge of a hospital floor on the night shift for five years. Bowles retired in 1977 and passed away in 1984.

Bowles attributed her openness to the Union message to her disgust at having to wear a special patch that distinguished practical nurses from the all-white RNs. Bowles was one of the few women

hiding to avoid subpoenas. And two years later, commenting on a successful boatride on which hospital and drugstore members danced and picnicked, Ayash reported: “Only two years before these hundreds of people, Negro, white and Puerto Rican, were strangers to each other.

They were disunited and never mingled together socially and now all these people were brought together in a spirit of friendship. This is 1199.”

Maria Castaneda, 1199SEIU’s Secretary Treasurer, credits her parents with instilling in her a sense of justice. Castaneda says she saw tremendous economic injustice in her native Philippines. “Multinationals were getting tax breaks from the government, while workers were fighting to be unionized and for better wages,” she says.

She was imprisoned in the Philippines at the age of 16, but continued to advocate for human rights. Castaneda came to the U.S. with her husband in 1984. After linking

December • Our Life And Times

6

rank-and-file leaders to emerge from the initial successful drive at Montefiore. “I didn’t know whether I could cope with it or not,” she said. But cope she did.

The historic 1959 strike stretched the resources of the Union to the limit. And out of necessity, 1199 was forced to rally the rest of the labor movement plus the civil rights and progressive community.

Bowles was a symbol of the two. Because she was one of few women leaders, she was sensitive to issues that sometimes eluded men.

With financial help from other unions,

1199 was able to provide strike benefits of $10 a week. The strike headquarters also functioned as an all-around community center. Bowles recalls ordering a high school graduation dress for the daughter of a proud but penniless striker.

8. Arnetta Campbell Her Union Is Her Home

Campbell told managers at the agency, “I don’t want to work anywhere without a union.” Campbell understood that some of the agency managers had been former homecare workers themselves and were not opposed to unionization.

But organization of other agencies was not nearly as easy. In addition to staff organizers, Union leaders had to depend on homecare members to speak to their co-workers. “Arnetta was always available for all our campaigns and that included speaking to other members or to politicians from City Hall to Albany,” says

Among the first campaigns of the Save Our Union leadership in 1986 was the organization of homecare members.

At the time, homecare workers had been ignored just as earlier hospital workers.

One of the leaders of the campaign to bring the plight of these workers to light was Arnetta Campbell, a home attendant at New York City’s Home Health Management.

Not long after she was hired,

9. Maria Castaneda A Lifetime of Struggle

During his tenure at St. Luke’s, Birnbaum was a staunch advocate of democratic unionism and advancing the professionalism of members through the help of the Union. “I’ve always believed in workers’ control,” he stresses. “Those who do the work should make the decisions.”

In retirement, Birnbaum has continued to advance the interests of professional and technical workers through organizing, work with the 1199SEIU Training and Employment Funds and with the 1199SEIU Professional and Technical Committee.

fled Germany for the U.S. in the late 1930’s.

After working as a union organizer in Buffalo, he joined the 1199 staff in 1962. In 1965 he was a leader in the bitter 55-day Lawrence Hospital strike in Bronxville, N.Y. During that strike he was severely beaten by the police, whose brutal conduct led to picket signs reading, “Bronxville, Mississippi.” The strike led to legislation granting collective bargaining rights to all New York State hospital workers.

In 1969, Black began organizing in Pennsylvania. His efforts led to the formation of 1199P, now a flourishing

10. Linda Chan Mobilizing Chinese Workers 1199SEIU’s Homecare Division represents a growing number of workers from mainland China and Taiwan. Over the years, these workers have become some of the most active and militant members of the Union.

Retiree Linda Chan is among those largely responsible for organizing and mobilizing 1199SEIU’s Chinese membership. Chan began her career as a home attendant with New York City’s Chinese

7

December • Our Life And Times

up with the Philippine Center For Immigrant Rights, Castaneda became an organizer in 1199’s RN Division. In the following years she was elected as a vice president and oversaw the Bronx’s Montefiore hospital network of 5,300 workers. She then served as an executive vice president of Health Systems 6, which includes New York City’s Continuum Network and Brooklyn’s Lutheran Medical Center and Maimonides Medical Center. She was a leader in developing labor-management programs that supported skills enhancement and job security for workers. She also helped develop childcare programs for members.

American Planning Council (CACP) in 1986.

Chan immediately became a delegate.

“I always liked helping people and I know a lot of Chinese dialects,” says Taiwan native Chan. “I helped people when they had to go to the housing department or to the doctor or with classes for the Union.”

In 2002 Chan became a CNA through an 1199SEIU training program and took a job at Lutheran Hospital in Brooklyn. She retired in 2007, but she’s continued her activism with 1199SEIU’s Chinese membership. On Friday nights she teaches traditional Chinese dancing and tai chi as

statewide SEIU district. Black was 1199P’s first president, a post he held until his retirement in 1986.

In retirement, Black conducted a regular show in State College, Pa. for WPSU, the radio station of Pennsylvania State University. Called “A View from the Left”, the show championed such causes as freedom for imprisoned black journalist Mumia Abu Jamal.

1199SEIU VP Rona Shapiro. “And all this she did with a sense of humor and love.”

One year after retiring, Campbell continues to help train and mobilize members. “The Union has been a second home and a school for me,” she says. “I often drop into the office just to see how I can help out.”

Castaneda was elected to her position as 1199SEIU secretary treasurer in April 2007. Along with Pres. George Gresham she oversees an annual budget of more that $135 million. She is the nation’s highestranking Asian-American union official.

Gresham expresses tremendous admiration for Castaneda’s determination and toughness.

“As a woman and a Filipina I know I have to make an extra effort to be recognized and gain respect,” said Castaneda.

well as basic English classes for members.

“We encourage them. We talk to them about our things like Political Action Fund.

I tell our Chinese members that one voice is not enough,” she says. “I tell them the same things I told myself - that at first you may be shy, but you can go and talk to your organizer.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” says 1199SEIU Homecare Division organizer David Ho. “That’s what I think about when I think about Linda. She’s always going to find ways to help people and get things done.”

OUR PIONEERS

11. Carrie Davis A Foe of Injustice “I don’t consider myself a pioneer,” says Carrie Davis, who began work in the nutrition department of Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1970, one year after the hospital was organized.

Leaders of the Md.-D.C. Division of 1199SEIU disagree with Davis. They say that she has been a bulwark for the last 39 years. And Davis did not begin her activism in 1970. “I marched in the demonstrations for the right to vote and

OUR PIONEERS

recall holding my grandmother’s hand while she exercised our hard-fought right in the voting booth.”

Davis says she left Eutaw, Alabama, for greater opportunities up north. “When I started at Hopkins, I was permitted to observe contract negotiations,” she says.

“I learned a lot from them.”

Over the years, Davis has spent a number of early Decembers on picket lines when contract negotiations have failed.

When she wasn’t picketing, she was preparing or serving food to fellow strikers.

As of this writing, she was in the

12. & 13. Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee 1199’s First Couple

14. Marshall Dubin 1199’s Poet Laureate Marshall Dubin, who died on January 30, 2004, served 1199 as an organizer, officer, education director and unofficial poet laureate. He was a hospital bacteriologist until he joined 1199’s hospital organizing effort in 1958. He won a reputation as a tireless picketline leader and joined 1199’s staff as an organizer. He retired in 1982 after serving as Brooklyn area director, education director and a staffer in what was called District 1199E in Baltimore.

Even before the 1959 hospital organizing campaign, the names Ossie and Ruby had become synonymous with 1199. The couple often said they considered themselves members of the Union.

Virtually all of the Union’s cultural events included Davis, Dee or both. Ossie and Ruby – both multi-talented actors, writers, producers, directors and political activists – personified 1199’s focus on roses as well as bread. Together with Dr.

Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King, Dee and Davis helped to cement 1199’s relationship with the cause of civil rights.

They also helped to attract other progressive artists into the 1199 family. In March 1959, the Union marked its annual Black History Month celebration with a play written by Davis entitled “The Montefiore Story.” It starred Ruby Dee and Ricardo Montalban, who many remember as the star of TV’s “Fantasy Island.”

“It was at Local 1199 under the tutelage of Moe Foner that we finally found the focus and began to fulfill in the deepest,

Even in retirement Dubin remained active and devoted to the Union. He served as the Retired Members Division representative to the 1199SEIU Executive Council and editor of the Retired Members Division Bulletin.

Lourdes Rodriguez-Dox, director of the 1199SEIU Retired Members Division, recalled when she and Dubin were arrested at a protest in New York City 1995.

“He was my mentor. He told me this is something we must do. This is a struggle.

You cannot do this by work alone. You must have action,” says Rodriguez-Dox. “To see

the pride in him at that moment, I understood him even more.”

Dubin was also 1199’s unofficial poet laureate. His work reflected the history of the Union and its members. His first book of poems, “Talking With My Feet,” was inspired by the 1959 strike that established 1199 as New York’s hospital Union. It included the poem “Boy No More”: I’ve been called a boy for thirty years; Chained to the broom and mop, my trade No wonder Mr. Charlie is dismayed To see a picket line led by a porter.

A cyclone has upset the social order!

15. Gloria Duso Plattsburgh’s Advocate For Change “Initially I wasn't a Union advocate,” says ambulatory surgery clerk Gloria Duso, a delegate a CVPH Medical Center in Plattsburgh, N.Y. “But as time went on and I worked with other people I saw that we really needed a union and I changed my mind.”

Duso has worked at CVPH for 38 years and was among those who voted for representation by SEIU Local 721 in the early 1970’s. Over the years Duso and many other CVPH workers became increasingly

16. Ann Flack Respect For Niagara Falls Nurses Ann Flack was a 16-year-old high school student when she started working part time in the dietary department at Niagara Falls Memorial Hospital. She made $1.05 an hour and worked six days a week. She went on to nursing school because there was financial assistance for nursing students.

Over the years, Flack has dedicated much of her career to building respect for the nursing profession.

“I started working as a nurse at Niagara

midst of negotiations, 39 years after her first. “We have won so much through our Union,” she says. “When I started here, we got just one weekend a month off. We’ve won more holidays, vacations and pensions.”

Though close to retirement, Davis is not ready to rest. “ I’ve been struggling since I was a child in Alabama,” she says.

“As long as there is injustice, I’ll be fighting.”

17. Moe Foner 1199’s Voice To The World

most personal way our commitment to the struggle, rendering our most conspicuous service to the cause,” wrote Davis.

Davis and Dee, through their participation in the 1965 organizing campaign and 55-day strike at Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, N.Y., were instrumental in winning legislation that granted collective bargaining rights to hospital workers throughout New York State. And Davis was there leading marches at Lawrence that won 1199SEIU unionization 37 years later. Davis passed away in 2002.

Dee continues as an active 1199er.

18. Aida Garcia Rising to Every Challenge

1199ers celebrate Moe Foner (1915-2002) for two monumental achievements: His pivotally effective public relations work during the 1959 strike and afterwards, and his creation of 1199’s Bread and Roses cultural project.

Foner joined the 1199 staff as cultural, educational and publications director in 1952, retired as executive secretary 30 years later, and continued to guide Bread and Roses for another two decades.

For the final two days of Marshall Garcia’s life, his family gathered around his bedside at Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. Periodically, they sang union songs like “Joe Hill.”

“To me, Marshall was Joe Hill,” said Garcia’s widow, Edith. “He was an organizer. He really, really believed workers should have better lives. He gave all of himself to what he believed in – the working class.”

A vote was held and CVPH workers overwhelmingly chose 1199 membership.

“It was an important victory. We had to show our strength,” says Duso. “This is not a union territory. We have some union mills and pipe fitters and stuff, but this is not a big union town. We had a lot to learn, but no matter what we did we had to show them that this was what we wanted.”

“It’s amazing to me –all the progress that we’ve made,” continues Duso. “The pay increases we’ve won and the benefits we have now. I mean who deserves healthcare benefits more than healthcare workers?”

in 1967. The nurses came into the Union in 1981. I wanted the Union. I come from a union family,” says Flack. “Maintenance was already in the Union and a lot of the nurses wanted what they had. We had quick returns, which meant we had to be back to work very quickly after working a long shift. We only had every third weekend off.

And there was favoritism. No jobs were ever posted. We didn't have very good pensions.”

Flack, a delegate, says Niagara Falls cares for some of the Erie County’s poorest and sickest residents.

“People stay at this hospital because they love it,” says Flack. “Nurses could go less than three miles down the road and make six or eight dollars more an hour.”

“Being here so long gives you a lot of past practice experience. You can help people through crises,” says Flack. “I want to be fair to the hospital and my patients but I also want to make sure that nurses are treated with respect.”

December • Our Life And Times

8

20. Elliott Godoff The Father of Hospital Unionism “One day in late 1957, a short, nearsighted pharmacist showed up in the 1199 hiring hall looking for a job in a drugstore,” writes the late Moe Foner in his memoir, “Not for Bread Alone.” The pharmacist was Elliott Godoff, who in 1958 joined the staff of 1199 after more than 20 years of attempts to organize hospital workers for other unions.

When Godoff joined 1199, a handful of workers he had organized at Maimonides –

Born in New York City of Cuban immigrant parents, former 1199 Exec. VP Garcia (1929-2006) joined the 1199 staff in the early 1970s after a decade as a rankand-file activist in other unions.

Before his retirement in 1992 he developed a reputation as an organizer so dedicated that his wife had to ban midnight calls and his secretary kept away visitors who wanted to borrow money. He did things his own way. At one point, he was fired over a policy disagreement. The workers he represented stormed into the next delegate assembly meeting and made

December • Our Life And Times

the incumbents in 1984. When SOU won the leadership in 1986, Garcia and Rona Shapiro were asked to take responsibility for the 15,000 home care members.

Once again Garcia had to prove herself.

“Rona and I knew nothing about home care,” she says. “The opposition had destroyed most of the records before they left and a lot of the members didn’t know or trust us.”

She also rose to that challenge. Today, Home Care Division is 75,000 strong and Exec. VP Garcia is going into her 24th year of leadership of the division.

such a powerful case that he was quickly reinstated.

In the troubled times of the early 1980s, Garcia became a mainstay of the ultimately victorious Save Our Union insurgent movement.

Garcia was active in such international causes as lifting the U.S. blockade of Cuba, ending the war in Vietnam, stopping South African apartheid and ousting Chile’s dictatorship.

the only unionized hospital in the city at the time – decided to join him.

Over the next 18 years, Godoff spearheaded the 1199 organizing drives both locally and nationally until his death in 1975. He devised the day-to-day organizing strategies that delivered victories from Connecticut to Washington State.

One organizing tactic developed by Godoff was the high noon demonstration in advance of a strike deadline. It was used to measure the readiness of the members and as a warning to the bosses.

His is the first name mentioned in the

dedication of Leon Fink and Brian Greenberg’s classic history of 1199, “Upheaval in the Quiet Zone.”

“He was a father figure,” says Eddie Kay, former 1199SEIU executive vicepresident and secretary treasurer. Though legally blind late in his career, Godoff shunned the refuge of his union office. “If a campaign was sputtering, Elliott would arrive on the scene and help calm you,” Kay says. “He would find a way to salvage a victory. He sincerely believed that with organization, workers could do whatever they chose to.”

21. Frank Goes Defending Hudson Valley Workers

workers, decided to make a stand for Vassar’s service and maintenance workers and organize with 1199 - which was unheard of in the Hudson Valley region.

“When you do something like that it’s scary because you’re afraid you might lose your job, but it never happened. I got thrown off the property a few times, but that’s it,” says Goes.

Goes felt it was his mission over the years to spread the strength of the Union throughout the mid-Hudson Valley and the Capital Region of New York State.

“At one time we were the farthest 1199

Carpenter Frank Goes went to work at Vassar Brothers Medical Center, which is located in New York State’s mid-Hudson Valley, in 1973. Only the hospital’s technical workers were unionized.

“At the time our wages were very low and there were very little benefits,” says Goes. “We felt that the service and maintenance workers should have the same thing as the technical workers.”

So Goes, along with a group of co-

9

included Gallery 1199, the only permanent art gallery in a union headquarters; “Take Care”, a musical revue seen by some 30,000 people; lunch-hour Theater in the Hospitals programs; Labor Day street fairs; “Women of Hope” posters; Unseen America, in which workers told their stories through photos; conferences and lectures on topics ranging from patient care to women in health care; and much more.

Foner’s life story is told in his memoir, “Not for Bread Alone” (Cornell University Press, 2002).

Roosevelt. “I had relatives working all over the hospital,” she says. When she asked if she could get a better paying job in Roosevelt, she was told that she would have to prove herself.

And she did, advancing to translator and then registrar. When 1199 began its campaign to organize Roosevelt, Garcia gladly signed the Union card. And she became a leader in the hospital when delegate Minerva Solla, now an 1199SEIU VP, recruited Garcia to become a delegate.

Garcia ran for office on the insurgent Save Our Union (SOU) slate that challenged

Growing up in the public housing projects of Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, Aida Garcia was often forced to prove herself. That did not stop when she began working at Roosevelt Hospital in 1964. “It was my second job out of high school,” she says.

“The only job they would give me then was in the dietary department.”

At the time, both of Garcia’s parents, who came to New York from Fajardo, Puerto Rico when Aida was seven, worked at

19. Marshall Garcia 1199’s Joe Hill

dissatisfied with Local 721.

So she, along with CVPH delegates Pat Sullivan and Ray Hawksby, began advocating for change. In early 2001 they began talking to 1199 about representing the workers at CVPH. “The people that were really active and working realized we couldn't show our power unless we got away from 721,” says Duso. “It was such a huge learning experience. We were able to work with the members and management. 1199 was so much more willing to sit down and talk with the members and management and negotiate good contracts.”

His unique ability to call the attention of New York and, later, national reporters to the plight of what came to be called “the forgotten workers” was a crucial ingredient in 1199’s initial hospital organizing.

Elements of his public relations success included a deep commitment to the cause he promoted, a sense of humor, a respect for facts, knowledge of the media sources he cultivated, and an untiring tenacity.

Foner founded Bread and Roses in 1978, and it quickly became widely known as the premier cultural program in American labor. Bread and Roses achievements

shop north of White Plains in Westchester County,” he says. “We were doing this when you didn’t hear a thing about 1199 up here.”

Throughout his career Goes continued to work on organizing drives and political campaigns. He was an active delegate in his shop until he retired in 2005.

“The thing I miss most about working is the Union part – defending people and arguing for people,” says Goes. “A lot of the old timers are gone, but there are young people who are motivated and who are stepping up and it’s good to see.”

OUR PIONEERS

OUR PIONEERS

22. Wilhelmina Goss Know Your Rights, Never Back Down Retiree Wilhelmina Goss started working as a nursing assistant at Boston’s Jewish Memorial Hospital – now called Radius Healthcare - in 1961 when she was just 18 years old. “I needed a job and the hospital was within walking distance from my house,” says Goss.

The hospital wasn't unionized. And though the workers enjoyed a good relationship with management, says Goss, in 1965 they decided they needed a

23. George Gresham Has Passed Every Test “No one is more qualified to lead this dynamic organization,” said former 1199SEIU Pres. Dennis Rivera when he passed the reins to George Gresham in June 2007.

The grandson of a sharecropper, Gresham recalls attending segregated Virginia schools during his early years.

His parents worked as domestics on Long Island before his father landed a job as a truck driver and his mother became a home attendant.

Gresham learned about unions from his father, who was an active Teamster.

That is why he took a housekeeping job at Manhattan’s Presbyterian Hospital in 1975. From there, he advanced to clerk and through the Union’s Training and Upgrading Fund graduated from college as an MRI technologist.

Gresham, who was one of 1199’s outstanding delegates, joined the staff as an organizer in1988 and in the next 19 years rose through the ranks to become a vice president, executive vice president, secretary treasurer and president.

Members and staff praise Gresham’s

24. Leaza Halloway Warrior For An Honest Union

Annie Henry, an instrument processor in Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital, has been at the hospital six months longer than has 1199SEIU. Even before the historic 1969 Charleston, South Carolina, strike had ended, 1199 joined hands with the civil rights movement in Baltimore to organize Hopkins, a symbol of Baltimore’s elite power structure and its neglect of the surrounding African American community.

“After about six months, I was ready to

quit,” says Henry. “The hospital was like a plantation. You couldn’t even talk to supervisors.”

Then the Union organizers came. A lot of workers were frightened, but Henry had had enough. “My mother was in the civil rights movement and my father worked at Bethlehem Steel,” Henry says. “I knew that civil rights and union rights were connected and by combining the two, we could all better ourselves.”

Henry remembers the rally on the eve of the Union election at which Coretta Scott King declared, “I’m a sister 1199er.”

26. Gerry Hudson Service to Others Runs Deep From 1989 to 2005, Gerry Hudson was at the center of every 1199SEIU major campaign and victory. As an executive vice president, Hudson directed 1199SEIU’s political action, education, cultural affairs and news departments. He was one of 1199SEIU’s chief strategists and spokespersons.

Hudson was a member of Local 144 of SEIU in the late 1970s when he worked at Hebrew Home for the Aged in Bronx, N.Y.

Joe James (1910-2001) was much more than a medical photographer and 1199 delegate for 25 years at Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.

He was a celebrated singer, actor, civil rights crusader, rank-and-file leader and teacher.

Many 1199ers who remember James’ deep baritone voice from countless delegate assembly meetings prior to his 1990 retirement will identify with these

28. Hilda Joquin Lightning Rod at Beth Israel Hilda Joquin, a native of Bermuda and single parent of three children, had been working in Beth Israel Hospital’s dietary department for eight years when she helped bring the hospital into 1199. But the outspoken activists is best remembered for leading one of the struggles that became a test case and that helped solidify the Union at Beth Israel.

The case also became a symbol of workers solidarity and support for the

Marshall Blake — both of whom eventually became 1199SEIU officers — and who were both fired by Butler when they confronted him about his abuses.

“Her work helped us win the formation of a new local - Local 200A,” says Presley. “And she also became the first black woman to serve as a vice president of our local.” Halloway passed away in 2008. “She was like a mother figure,” says Presley. “She inspired people and always took the side of the underdog.”

In less than a year, 1199E in Maryland represented nearly 6,000 workers in six Baltimore hospitals.

Since then, Henry has been fired more than once during contract and other Union campaigns. “I’ve always won my job back with the support of my Union and my family,” she says. “My husband, who’s also a union member, has been my support.”

In 1998 he coordinated the merger of Local 144 into 1199SEIU. He credits his late mother, Rebecca Orange, an 1199 activist who worked as a housekeeper at Beth Abraham NH in the Bronx, as the inspiration for his commitment to social and economic justice.

During his 1199SEIU tenure, Hudson oversaw the Union’s campaigns for Mayor David Dinkins.

Hudson left 1199SEIU in 2005 to become an executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union.

There he leads SEIU’s long-term care

27. Joe James “A Great Teacher”

because co-workers recognized her ability to be firm, honest and polite while never backing down.

“I’m a straight up person and I’ll tell you how things are right away,” she says.

She practiced that type of leadership in member organizing and political action work, as well as in representing members at her institution as a Union delegate for nearly 35 years. She retired last August.

“You can’t go in like you’re always ready for a fight,” she says. “But you have to know that you have the right to face people and to your point of view.”

easy but firm manner and his patient listening skills. He often says, “1199SEIU has no permanent friends. We have permanent interests.”

Gresham faced his greatest test defending those interests earlier this year when, during the worst economic crisis in the Union’s history, 1199SEIU reopened contract negotiations with the League of Voluntary Hospital and Homes of Greater New York. After marathon sessions, an agreement was achieved that covers 145,000 members and preserves members’ pension and benefits through April 2015.

Halloway was a gifted leader and community activist.

As a leader of Workers for an Honest Union and a reformer on the Executive Board of the former Local 200, Halloway led the movement to oust Walter J. Butler, the disgraced former president of Local 200, which once represented some 16,000 healthcare and human service workers in Upstate New York. (Local 200 members eventually became members of 1199SEIU.) Butler was convicted of racketeering and embezzlement. Halloway helped win back the jobs of George Kennedy and

Leaza Halloway’s family were sharecroppers in Syracuse, N.Y. “She was able to tell people how she came from nothing and that the Union was their chance to have a voice,” says Stanley Presley, an 1199SEIU organizer.

Halloway led key organizing drives in the Syracuse area including the one at Plaza Nursing Home, where she was an LPN, and at Loretto, one of Syracuse’s biggest institutions, in the mid-1980’s.

25. Annie Henry Union Power, Soul Power

union. “There were a lot of unfair terminations,” says Goss. “And sometimes if a supervisor didn't like you, you were terminated.”

Goss at that time knew nothing of trade unions but got involved in the organizing campaign anyway. “It was fun and educational,” says Goss of the organizing drive. “My husband supported me through the whole thing. And the truth is, anything you really want to do – you’ll find a way to do it.”

Shortly after that organizing drive, Goss was convinced to become a delegate

Phil Kamenkowitz lost his drugstore during the Depression of the 1930’s when he was a leader in the Republican Party.

Not long after that a leaflet led him to Local 1199, which he helped build into a small but effective union of drugstore workers.

While he was the drug union director for the Bronx and Northern Manhattan, Kamenkowitz was among the small group of staffers who led the hospital organizing

10

campaign. “Upheaval in the Quiet Zone” contains a number of accounts of Kamenkowitz’s bravado and sense of humor.

On one occasion, Kamenkowitz confronted a hospital director and police officer who charged two women strikers with disorderly conduct. Kamenkowitz grabbed the papers, tore them up and sent the women back to the picket line.

Another recounts his attempt to strengthen the resolve of two drugstore stewards who were leafleting hospitals during the early days of 1199’s first

hospital organizing drive.

Kamenkowitz said: “We were starting from scratch, no contacts, no nothing inside. We were huddling there. It was freezing, man, freezing. Then I see an old man walking down with a little bag toward the emergency room and I want to show my delegates what I can do. I run over to him, ‘I’m from 1199 here to organize you.’ He grabbed my hand, ‘Thank God the union’s here.’”

Kamenkowitz later served as an 1199 executive vice president and head of the Drug Division.

31. Eddie Kay Teaching Ownership

During the 1960’s he led a movement within the Union to oppose the Vietnam War. Kay joined the 1199 staff in 1967 as an organizer in the Hospital Division’s Queens-Long Island area. Within eight months he became the area’s acting director. In a short time, his efforts helped to double the number of 1199 nursing homes and he led the organizing of the Union’s first RNs at Eastern Long Island Hospital.

Kay led the campaign to organize Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in the early

Edward “Eddie” Kay championed militant rank-and-file unionism for 37 years as a delegate, organizer, exec VP and secretary treasurer of 1199SEIU. He retired from the Union staff in 1999.

Kay’s 1199 career began in 1962 when he began work as a clerk in his father’s Brooklyn drugstore. While still a delegate, he helped organize 1199’s first Rite Aid store and was a leader in winning a $2 an hour Drug Division minimum.

11

December • Our Life And Times

Rivera. Another speaker recalled James, with his characteristic beret and pipe, “cutting through the fluff with razor precision” to assert the rights of the underdog.

James performed professionally around the world for several decades as an actor and singer. During World War II as a shipyard welder he successfully fought his segregation into an all-black local. The landmark case, “James vs. Marinship”, has been credited with ending that discriminatory practice.

a supervisor who told her he would fire her if she wore her Union button on her hospital-issued uniform. Wrote Foner, “She stared him right in the eye, took the button off her lapel and pinned it in her hair.”

They were so giving. That group of women took over my life.”

It was the beginning of a relationship with 1199. Joyner came on staff in 1989 as an assistant director of the Training and Upgrading Fund. In 1991 she left that position to begin developing the 1199 Employer Child Care Fund.

“We began to work with 1199 members and dig into work and family issues with people who didn’t have the resources to pay for child care,” says Joyner. “We built about 400 Child Care Committees across the Union and

Carol Joyner was teaching adult education classes at New York City’s Consortium for Worker Education in 1988 when she was assigned to teach a basic skills course for a group of 1199 homecare workers.

“These were workers who were going to be decertified if they didn’t pass a test,” says Joyner. “They were older members who were in danger of losing their jobs.

I found them to be so warm and militant.

work. He was one of the architects of SEIU’s unprecedented effort to help elect Barack Obama to the presidency.

“When I wanted to develop a strategic plan in the Union, I always sought out Gerry.” says 1199SEIU Pres. George Gresham. “His ability to foresee, and understand what action might be needed in advance was key to our planning.

A real intellectual who stays grounded in his rank-and-file roots.”

December • Our Life And Times

Union leadership. Joquin was fired in May 1962 for collecting union dues while on the job. Members rallied around her and won her reinstatement.

She said at a delegates meeting at the time that her firing rather than intimidate the BI workers actually increased their militancy. Joquin told a stewards’ meeting, “United we stand; divided we fall, and we will back Mr. (Leon) Davis, who God chose to make sacrifices for us and to lead us.”

The late Moe Foner recalls that Joquin, who stood less than five feet tall, also became famous for defying and outwitting

29. Carol Joyner Focusing on Work and Family

30. Phil Kamenkowitz He Never Backed Down

words from former Pres. Dennis Rivera at James’ memorial service: “When Joe spoke I heard reason.

I heard common sense. I heard wisdom, integrity and principle. And I heard a deep commitment to constructive solutions that unified members in a common cause.”

Other speakers recalled James’ wideranging knowledge of the arts, economics, labor and civil rights struggles and other topics. They recalled the respect with which members new and old learned from James at formal and informal education sessions. “He was a great teacher,” said

developed our first learning center at the Future of America Learning Center. That was extremely exciting.”

Joyner resigned from her position as executive director of the CCF in 2006 to move with her husband SEIU Exec. VP Gerald Hudson and their two children to Washington, D.C. Today she works as a consultant on work and family issues and policy.

1970’s. He also led hundreds of contract negotiations. At the time of his retirement, Kay told 1199 News: “I guess my major contribution to the members of this Union is in motivating and teaching workers how to organize an already organized shop. In the long run victories are only victories when members have really fought for them and feel ownership.”

OUR PIONEERS

32. Deborah King Seeing Workers’ Whole Lives Deborah King, executive director of the 1199SEIU Training and Employment Funds, began her career at 1199 in 1970 as Leon Davis’ assistant for collective bargaining.

“When I came we were just starting to win some of our basic benefits. New Jersey and Connecticut were part of the Union then,” she says. “We were trying to win whatever we could get from the League and take that out into other areas.”

OUR PIONEERS

King left 1199 in 1973 and moved with her husband to Ireland. There they had two children. She returned to the U.S and to the labor movement in 1978, serving as a VP in 1199 New England in Connecticut.

“That’s when I got involved in some of the key issues I brought to [1199] – child care, pay equity, quality of work life, labor-management issues.” The Save Our Union slate of 1986 brought King back to 1199 and to her role as a lead contract negotiator.

“It was important to me that as a

33. Steve Kramer He Beat the Odds A history of 1199SEIU would not be complete without mention of the Union’s 1973 organizing victory at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, at the time the nation’s largest voluntary hospital and a seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dozens of dedicated workers risked their jobs to win union representation. The first activist fired for attempting to organize a union was Steve Kramer, a medical records messenger who today is an

34. Ramon Malave From Shining Shoes To Vice President Ramon Malave was one of 12 children born to a plantation foreman in Salinas, Puerto Rico. As a boy he worked in the fields and shined shoes. Joining the massive exodus to the mainland after World War II, Malave came to live with an uncle in New York and worked as a roofer until he got a job in 1948 in the storeroom at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan.

Working from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m., Malave found his bosses unresponsive when he

“A union is an instrument whereby the boss is compelled to stop doing what he wants to do and instead must do what the workers want him to do.”

That was a key part of the teachings of Bernie Minter (1919-1999), an 1199 rank-and-file leader for 25 years at Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.

Minter’s twin achievements were his leadership of Einstein’s strong, 1,500member 1199 chapter, and his role as a

1199SEIU executive vice president in the Queens-Long Island region.

Kramer was the primary force behind the formation of Brothers and Sisters United, Presby workers who initially came together to demand the rehiring of 33 fired dietary workers. That committee grew into a movement for union recognition throughout the 4,000-worker institution. The movement crossed job classifications, departments, race, gender and ethnicity.

Kramer worked closely with organizer Eddie Kay and rank-and-file leaders such as Sonia Ivany, now president of the New York

complained of low pay and nonexistent benefits. “There was no way you could get something out of management,” he recalled later. To make ends meet, many workers took things home – “eggs, butter, they didn’t have a choice.”

So Malave was ready when 1199 organizers arrived in 1959. He was an active participant in the 46-day strike that year that established the 1199 as New York’s hospital union. The strike at seven hospitals launched a massive organizing drive throughout the city.

“We kept talking union and we kept

building,” he recalled. “That’s the only way to convince them. A leaflet never convinced anybody. You have to talk to them.”

Malave went on to become an 1199 vice president and a Manhattan Hospital Division area director until he retired in 1987. Despite his belief in the primacy of the spoken word, he became an insistent voice reminding the 1199 Executive Council of the need to translate union written material into Spanish.

35. Ruth Massey Defender of 1199 Ideals

“I think that the initial bond between the social workers and the service workers was very important in our history,” Massey said during her retirement celebration at the hospital this past spring. “Divisive distinctions between professional and other workers were taken off the table from the beginning, and we always saw our common interests.”

When a vengeful supervisor arbitrarily transferred two-thirds of the social workers and created non-union social work positions, Massey helped lead a sixyear battle that returned members to their

For 37 years, social worker Ruth Massey was one of the Union stalwarts at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, one of the largest and most active chapters within 1199SEIU. As a member of Brothers and Sisters United, she was a key member of the workers who brought “Presby” workers into 1199. At the time, Columbia Presbyterian was New York City’s largest and wealthiest hospital.

36. Bernie Minter Defining A Union

woman and as a leader that our contracts helped us outside of work,” she says.

Over the years, King helped create many of the Union’s visionary programs, including the Training and Education Funds, its Citizenship and Home Mortgage Programs, and its Employer Child Care Fund. “I’ve been so fortunate to be part of 1199 which has enabled me to help make these positive changes happen,” she says.

teacher. He was a familiar figure at 1199 headquarters, lecturing young and old on trade union principles. After Minter retired in 1987, he and fellow Einstein delegate Joe James pioneered in starting and teaching the Union’s new members classes.

After participating as a soldier in the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1944, Minter became an officer of the United Furniture Workers. He was forced out in the early 1950s during the McCarthyite purge of leftwing trade unionists. In 1962, he went to work at Einstein as a bio-

City affiliate of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Jimmy Moorer, an African American transporter.

Kramer takes pride in the fact that Presbyterian was the training ground of so many 1199SEIU officers. For example, he led a campaign in 1978 to save the jobs of 69 members that management attempted to fire.

“Not only did we save the jobs,” he says. “We won the right to place 85 members, and we were able to give promotions to many of them.”

One of those Presby members whose job was saved is now 1199SEIU Pres.

George Gresham.

37. Theodore Mitchell 1199’s First Black Officer Theodore (Teddy) Mitchell, 1199’s first black officer, was one of a handful of organizers who began 1199’s hospital organizing efforts half a century ago.

Mitchell joined Elliott Godoff and Marshall Dubin in the campaign that led to the union’s first hospital election win, a 628-31 victory Dec. 30, 1958, at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx.

Mitchell was raised in North Carolina by his grandmother, a freed slave. After

38. Mary Moultrie Charleston Strike Leader

The life of Mount Sinai orderly Henry Nicolas was turned around by the 1959 strike. “I was very scared,” Nicholas recalls, “ but understanding that fear has helped me to organize workers.”

On the second day of the strike, Nicholas volunteered to become a strike captain. “Initially I was afraid to sign the union card,” he says. “But one day while I was picketing outside the hospital, I looked up and saw my boss on a balcony

original positions, won financial compensation and removed the supervisor.

Another battle, which lasted 10 years, forced management to close a non-union Burger King franchise within the hospital.

After the franchise closed, the workers were given Union jobs within Presby.

On Nov. 12, Massey was in Albany with Presby social worker delegates who she helped recruit, to protest proposed state budget cuts. “Social work ideals and 1199 ideals seemed to me to be a good match,” says Massey. “And 37 years later, I still think so.”

December • Our Life And Times

12

looking down on us. The fear left me.”

By the time 1199 began its organizing in the South a decade later, Nicholas, a Navy veteran born and raised in Mississippi, was Organizing Director Elliott Godoff’s chief lieutenant. He later rose to the position of director of organizing.

When Leon Davis retired in 1982, Nicholas was elected president of 1199’s national union.

Today he is president of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal

Employees (AFSCME).

“I still work as hard now as I did then,” Nicholas says, adding that he usually puts in a seven-day week and runs five miles every morning. He is one of the founders of Pennsylvania’s Kensington Welfare Rights Union and a driving force behind the AFSCME campaign to organize Charleston, South Carolina, sanitation workers.

40. Mike O’Brien Breaking Ground in Western Mass.

workers,” says O’Brien. “I didn’t like the way they were dealing with the dietary and housekeeping workers.”

“So I went to the second secret meeting for the organizing drive and I started talking to people because I wanted to see things change,” says O’Brien.

It was a bold move. The region of the state had at the time relatively low union density for healthcare workers and the hospital was one of the town’s major employers.

“We were successful,” says O’Brien of the organizing drive. “We were known as

In 1977 Mike O’Brien had returned from the service several years earlier and was working as a respiratory therapist on Long Island in New York. He and his wife decided to move their young family to Northwest Massachusetts to the small, picturesque town of North Adams. O’Brien took a job at North Adams Regional Hospital, one of the area’s local hospitals.

“I saw unfairness in some of what management was doing to different

41. Jesse Olson Organized 1199 Professionals Jesse Olson (1924-2009), who for 20 years led 1199’s drive to organize white collar employees, was a central figure in building 1199 as a hospital union.

Olson was best known as head of the Union’s Guild of Professional, Technical, Office and Clerical Employees. The Guild, begun in 1964, grew to 30,000 members under Olson’s leadership. In addition, Olson was a close advisor to Pres. Leon Davis in all important Union decisions.

13

December • Our Life And Times

Bowles were the drugstore members who volunteered for the Crack of Dawn Brigades that handed out organizing leaflets before reporting for their regular jobs.

Mitchell, an amiable man with a rolypoly build, consistently aroused crowds with his high-pitched voice and impassioned oratory. He died in 1989.

“I knew I had lost my job and I had to get my job back.”

The strike was a milestone for 1199, because it forever forged the link between workers rights and civil rights and opened the Union’s 15-year chapter as a national healthcare union.

“The strike lasted 110 days. We had daily picketing. There was the national guard,” says Moultrie. “Charleston looked like an armed camp.”

Workers didn’t win union recognition, but they did win increased wages and they got their jobs back. They also

In 1969 a group of 500 workers – mostly young, Black women – at the Medical College Hospital of the University of South Carolina and Charleston County Hospital, both in Charleston, S.C, went on strike to protest the firing of 12 of their co-workers.

Among the strike’s leaders was Charleston native Mary Moultrie, who was then a 24-year-old nursing assistant.

Moultrie had not yet been radicalized.

“I just knew it was survival,” she says.

39. Henry Nicholas From Fear to Fame

technician and quickly organized workers there into an independent union which affiliated with 1199 in 1967. Many Einstein members who learned about unions from Minter went on to become 1199 organizers and officers.

At the time of Minter’s death, thenPres. Dennis Rivera said, “He touched us all as an organizer, teacher and champion of progressive, principled trade unionism.”

coming to New York he joined 1199 in 1937 when he was a stockman at the Whelan Drug chain. He was soon elected shop steward for 15 stores, joined the staff in 1949 and soon afterward was elected a vice president.

After the Montefiore win and the 1959 New York City hospital strike, Mitchell worked closely with Godoff and a huge volunteer army of drug and hospital members to organize some 80 New York hospitals and nursing homes. Working with him, Godoff, Dubin, organizer Jesse Olson and former Montefiore LPN Thelma

Olson joined 1199 as a Manhattan pharmacist in 1948. He was a delegate when the Union began its city-wide hospital organizing drive in 1959. He took a pay cut that year from $175 a week as a pharmacist to $110 as a strike organizer at Beth Israel because, he said later, it was an opportunity to do “God’s work.”

After retiring as a New York 1199 executive vice president in 1984, Olson worked with Local 1199C in Philadelphia for five years and finished his union career as a prescription drug plan consultant for the 1199 Benefit Fund. His retirement from

changed Charleston, says Moultrie. “People began talking more,” she says. “Wanting to make changes, being more sympathetic.”

Mary Moultrie is still an activist in Charleston. She’s working on organizing the city’s environmental service workers.

“Working conditions have regressed so much for a lot of people,” says Moultrie.

“Especially for younger people. I have to wonder why. I tell them when we say unions we’re not just talking about strikes.

We’re talking about improving your life.”

very loud and very pushy.”

O’Brien is still a delegate and still leading workers who he encourages to be as “pushy” as the generations before them.

“It’s our job to motivate them,” he says. “This is where the rubber meets the road - when you can get the members to step up and do something for themselves.”

the Benefit Fund in 1998 rounded out a 50-year career with the Union.

“Jesse was one of the last major links to 1199’s earliest successes,” said Pres.

George Gresham at the time of Olson’s death at 84 last January. “He personified the dedication and commitment of the inspired generation of pioneers who built our Union.”

OUR PIONEERS

OUR PIONEERS

42. Julio Pagan A Union Was the Only Way “My boss, he treated me like an animal.”

That was the reason 20-year-old orderly Julio Pagan got involved when 1199 organizers showed up in 1959 at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.

“I knew the way to bring something you want, you have to fight for it,” Pagan continued. “If you don’t fight you get nothing. When I came to the meetings at Union headquarters . . . when I learned that other workers had unions, it just came

43. John Perkins Crack of Dawn Brigade Member “I was 16 or 17 years old when I started working in drugstores,” says 1199SEIU Retiree Division Pres. John Perkins.

“I was a clerk and a stock clerk and when we wanted to get the Union in we had to go one drugstore at a time until they caved in.”

Perkins worked at a number of pharmacies in Harlem, including Lax Drugs, Lenox Drugs and Goody Drugs as well as Soundview Drugs in the Bronx.

His father who was a member of the furriers’ union, as well as the laborers’ union, taught him his trade unionism.

Perkins was a member of the “Crack of Dawn Brigade.” These were 1199 pharmacists and drugstore clerks who helped organize workers in New York City’s voluntary hospitals by leafleting shops in the wee hours – 5:30 a.m. to catch workers for the start of their 6:00 a.m. shift.

“We told them that they had to have a union,” says Perkins. “Otherwise you have to settle for what they want to give you.”

44. Norman Rayford No Greater Sacrifice 1199C Organizer Norman Rayford was only 34 when he was shot and killed Aug. 28, 1972, by a security guard during a union recognition strike in Philadelphia.

Rayford’s death was a key turning point in the early days of the effort by 1199’s National Hospital Union to organize healthcare workers nationwide.

Soon after the fatal shooting, Pennsylvania Gov. Milton Shapp and Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo intervened

45. Robin Ringwood Growth in the Capital Region Robin Ringwood grew up in Rhinebeck, N.Y., a town she describes as “staunchly right-wing.”

“But I grew up in a union home,” she says. “My dad was a shop steward with the United Auto Workers at Schott’s Federal Bearing,” she says. “Some of my earliest memories are of him sitting at the dining room table writing grievances.”

Ringwood’s union background came in handy when she was working as an

46. Dennis Rivera Growth And Political Power When Dennis Rivera stepped down as 1199 president in 2007, the union had more than tripled in size since his initial election in 1989. He had become what The New York Times called “perhaps the most formidable and visible labor leader in New York politics.” And 1199 members enjoyed benefits and salaries unsurpassed by healthcare workers anywhere in the country.

Rivera moved on in 2007 to head the million-member healthcare union within

1199’s parent Service Employees International Union. In that capacity, he is spearheading SEIU’s important role in the campaign for healthcare reform.

Rivera’s legendary political skill was honed during annual budget battles against proposed New York State cuts in Medicaid.

Deftly employing massive member demonstrations, alliances with managements, pressure on pivotal legislators and personal contacts with key insiders, Rivera led the union in saving more than $10 billion in proposed cuts. Much of the restored funding went to maintaining

to me that that was the only way.”

Pagan grew up on a small farm near Ponce, Puerto Rico. He came to East Harlem in 1958 and a year later became a member of the Sinai Organizing Committee. The day the 1959 strike began, he recalled, “I was a little afraid” to join the picket line “because, you know, I didn’t know exactly what would happen to me. But then I told myself, ‘I’m going to take a chance.’”

Pagan was a steady presence on the Mount Sinai picket line for 46 days and soon afterward joined the Union staff,

where he worked in new organizing for nearly two decades.

One of his claims to fame was that he brought Mount Sinai orderly Henry Nicholas to Nicholas’s first picket line.

Nicholas went on to become the president of the National Hospital Union that grew out of 1199 and is now president of 1199C in Philadelphia.

47. William J. Taylor Father Of The Benefit Fund William J. Taylor rose from making sandwiches and sodas behind drugstore counters to building the nation’s largest union-run healthcare plan.

Taylor joined 1199 in 1937. He was a sodaman and a delegate when the Union consisted of 6,000 New York City drugstore workers in 1948. He was elected an 1199 vice president in that year, and three years later took on the leadership of the Union’s Pension Fund.

48. Doris Turner Up From The Ranks

Perkins says he didn't know he was making history, he was just doing what he thought was right.

“I’m just an outspoken person, a rank-and-file person. I’m not an professional organizer,” says Perkins. “But I always made sure people heard what we had to say. We made sure that management knew we were human beings and that we were the ones who were doing the work.”

Right from the start, Doris Turner was a fighter.

Turner, 1199’s president from 1982 to 1986, went to work as a dietary clerk at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan in 1956, three years before 1199 arrived in the hospitals. Turner, a black woman who had been raised in Pensacola, Fla., soon discovered two disturbing facts.

First, the white women working with her were paid $5 a week more than she

in 1199’s strike against the Delaware Valley Hospital Laundry. Recognition soon followed at the laundry and at six hospitals, including Metropolitan Hospital, where the shooting took place.

Rayford was shot during a night-time encounter with a security guard who was unloading a laundry van in the Metropolitan parking lot. The security guard charged Rayford attacked him with a knife. No witnesses confirmed this and the Union denied it.

The incident enraged 1199ers and other Philadelphians. It has been credited

with convincing Philadelphia managements to stop stalling and begin negotiating for first 1199C contracts.

Those contracts included an Aug. 28 paid holiday commemorating Rayford’s death, and other major gains.

Rayford left a pregnant wife, the former Katherine Neely, an LPN he had met in an organizing campaign at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania not long before he was shot. A fatherless son was born four months later.

LPN at Rhinebeck’s Ferncliff Nursing Home in the late 1990’s.

“I was always the outspoken one about patient care, short staffing, about supplies that we needed to take care of our patients and the care we needed to be giving our residents,” she says.

Ringwood led Ferncliff’s landmark organizing drive in July 1999, when the institution became the first nursing home represented by 1199SEIU in New York State’s Dutchess County. Today Ringwood is an 1199SEIU organizer with New Organizing. Her territory ranges from Long

Island up through New York’s Capital Region. The work can be exhausting, she says, but it’s a labor of love.

“We have so many missions. We have missions for ourselves and also for our communities,” she says. “We can’t just go and organize and win contracts for our own homes. We have to go out and keep organizing and help other places win contracts.”

and improving 1199 contract standards.

Organizing growth under Rivera’s leadership transformed 1199 from a New York City-based union to a statewide power, and then into the current multistate organization.

Rivera was born in Aibonito, Puerto Rico in 1950, came to New York in 1977 and was soon employed by 1199 as an organizer at Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. He was a leader of the Save Our Union campaign in the early 1980s and was elected 1199 executive vice president in 1986.

December • Our Life And Times

14

Skilled at building the Union’s infrastructure, he also was an indispensable negotiator, often serving as Pres. Leon Davis’s representative in dealings with hospital and political figures. He was a key leader in the 1959 and 1962 strikes that established 1199 as New York’s hospital union.

As 1199 grew in the hospitals, Taylor was elected secretary treasurer and named executive director of the fastgrowing 1199 Benefit Fund. Under his direction the Fund became second to none among union health plans, providing

was. Turner protested and won parity.

Second, male dietary workers got free meals while women did not. A walkout by Turner and the other women won them free meals.

When 1199 organizers arrived at Lenox Hill in 1959, Turner was ready. She was a leader in the 46-day strike that established 1199 as New York’s hospital Union. Soon after, she joined the Union staff as an organizer.

Her skills as a fighter for workers whose problems she herself had experienced propelled her up the Union

leadership ladder. She headed the Union’s Hospital Division for some two decades until, when 1199 founder Leon Davis retired in 1982, she was elected Union president.

Turner’s presidency was marred by internal strife over a then-unsuccessful effort at merger with the SEIU and a disastrous six-week 1984 strike by 50,000 workers at 41 institutions. The strike’s failure strengthened a dissident Save Our Union slate that ousted Turner in the Union elections of 1986.

49. Celia Wcislo Bucking The System

have been.”

For the next six years Wcislo would worked part-time as president of the Union while keeping her full time job at the hospital.

“We were the first all women’s slate that had ever won in Massachusetts. It allowed us to create our own rules,” says Wcislo. “We didn’t even know what the rules were, so we could break them.”

In 1981 Wcislo was a leader in organizing Boston’s first municipal strike in over 60 years. It was a gamble. But the three-day action at Boston City Hospital was successful.

It secured layoff rights for public workers.

Exec. VP Celia Wcislo, of 1199SEIU’s Massachusetts Region, took a job as a ward secretary at Boston City Hospital (now Boston Medical Center) in 1973 where a mobbed up SEIU local and an AFSCME local represented the workers.

“We eventually led a movement to get them thrown out. And then we got the local trusteed in 1978 or 1979,” she says. “It was such a wild time. Luckily we were young enough not to realize just how hurt we could

hospital, medical and prescription benefits at no out-of-pocket cost and pioneering in programs such as college scholarships, summer camp, dental care and much more.

Taylor retired in 1979. He became active in the 1199 retirees chapter in Florida and died in 2006.

“It was the first time city workers felt they had the right to buck the patronage system,” says Wcislo of the strike at Boston City Hospital.

Wcislo says she’s proud of dedicating her life to helping workers find their own strength. She ardently supported the 2005 merger of locals that created 1199SEIU's Massachusetts Region. “It was such an “ah ha” moment,” she says. “I was sitting in the room listening to Dennis [Rivera] talk about how we could build power for healthcare workers and I was like ‘Yes! We need to do this.’ It just made so much sense.”

Around the Union

Investing in Our Future Shop at Union pharmacies. uring the holiday season, many 1199ers look for ways to add value to their purchases. The price of an item is not their sole consideration.

When making a purchase, these members consider the working conditions for the workers who make the products and the policies of the establishment where they do their shopping.

Many members want to support fellow union members and help build the U.S.

D

15

economy by buying products and services from unionized companies. It is often difficult to determine which products are union made and are environmentally friendly. ne area in which members can shop with confidence is at their local pharmacy.

And although soda fountains, which employed many of the first 1199ers, are no longer part of today’s drugstores, countless household items and other

O

December • Our Life And Times

essentials can be found in 1199SEIU-represented drugstores. And virtually all over-the-counter and prescription medicines can be found there.

“I urge members of the 1199SEIU family and all consumers to buy union and to shop at drugstores like Rite Aid and Pathmark where there are good, unionized jobs,” says 1199SEIU Pres. George Gresham. “This is an excellent way to help ensure the future of our Union and the wellbeing of our families.

“I feel it's crucial that I belong to the Union in this economy,” says Riaz Hussain, a pharmacist at a Rite Aid in Highland Falls, N.Y. “And other Union members should go to organized stores like Rite Aid and support these employers so there are jobs that contribute to the growth of the Union.”

o find an 1199-SEIU represented pharmacy in your are, log onto www.1199SEIU.org and click the Buy-Union link or type the following web address into your browser – http:1199seiu.org/members/oc cupations/drug_store/union_p harmacies.cfm.

T

THE BACK PAGE 50. Leon Davis The Father of Our Union Leon Davis was born in Eastern Europe in the area then known as White Russia. His family immigrated to the U.S. in 1921 shortly before Davis’s fifteenth birthday. In 1927, Davis enrolled in Columbia College of Pharmacy, working after school in drugstores.

In 1932 he and a small group of pharmacists and clerks formed the drugstore union that became 1199SEIU. Davis became the union’s first full-time organizer, earning $15 a week when the union had it. By 1957 Local 1199 boasted 6,000 members and had organized 80 percent of the industry.

With the same tenacity, passion for justice and single-mindedness with which he had organized drugstore workers, Davis in 1959 turned the union’s attention to New York’s forgotten hospital workers. Under his leadership, 1199 transformed the lives of healthcare workers, their patients and New York’s labor movement.

Davis’s progressive ideology and hunger for equality enabled him to see clearly the relationship between race and class. His early connection to the civil rights movement helped pave the path to the unprecedented organizing of hospital workers, who were primarily women of color.

Davis also was a tireless advocate for world peace, but was always mindful of

democratic discussion and membership participation before having the Union take a position on controversial issues.

He stepped down in 1982 after half a century at the helm of Local 1199. He died of heart failure at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in 1992 at age 84. At the time, 1199 Pres. Dennis Rivera recalled Davis’s 1199 News column on the occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King’s death: “We will build our union in his image in the struggle to end poverty, racism, injustice and war.”

The street on which the 1199SEIU Manhattan office stands has been renamed Leon Davis Way.