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
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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.
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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.”