OVERVIEW

1. TWENTY YEARS IN THE HOSPITALS: A SHORT HISTORY OF 1199

1959 was a relatively quiet year for most American trade unions. Not only was organization practically at a standstill, but union membership in many major industries actually declined. Much of the nation was still gripped by the complacency and conformity that typified the 1950s.

Against this unpromising background, a small local union of drug store workers in New York City—the Retail Drug Employees Union, Local 1199, affiliated with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (AFL-CIO) undertook an organizational drive in New York City’s voluntary hospitals that was to shake the foundations of the nation’s health care system and provide the labor movement with an inspirational example that it was possible to organize the unorganized and forge an unshakable alliance with the rising civil rights movement.

If one were looking for the industry most unlikely to be organized in 1959, the New York City voluntary (private, non-profit) hospitals would have been high on the list.

The workers in these voluntary hospitals had been accurately described as “the most underpaid and poorly benefitted workers in the richest city of the richest nation of the world.” They had been forgotten by their employers, the unions, the government, and the public. They included nurses aides, orderlies, dishwashers, porters and laundry and dietary aides. Most were black and Hispanic women, and were poor. Their pay was as low as $28 for a work week of six and seven days and as many as 50 hours. Skilled technicians with Ph.D. degrees were receiving $60 a week. There was no job security and little chance for advancement. Thousands of full-time employees were compelled to apply for supplementary welfare assistance in order to support their families.

It was indeed ironic that New York’s voluntary hospitals were staffed by thousands of “involuntary philanthropists” who enabled the hospitals to balance their budgets through substandard wages and working conditions. They were denied such elementary rights as minimum wage protection, unemployment insurance, disability benefits, and, most important of all, the right of union representation.

There had been some sporadic efforts to organize these workers prior to 1958, but for the most part, they had been shunned by the organized labor movement. There were several reasons for this. First was the fact that the voluntary hospitals were controlled by rich and powerful trustees. Their rosters read like a “Who’s Who” in New York’s financial power structure. Then, too, the unions knew that hospital workers, lacking bargaining rights, would have little leverage other than to strike—and that was considered unthinkable. Finally, and sadly, few unions were willing to undertake the organization of large numbers of black and Hispanic women workers.

In 1956, Doris Turner, now executive vice president of District 1199, but then a dietary worker at Lenox Hill Hospital on the upper East Side of Manhattan, took home $29.71 each week. In order to survive, she recalls, she had to shop in second-hand clothing stores. Other workers were even worse off. “A man who worked there 30 years had diabetes,” she remembers, “and had to have his legs amputated. All they gave him was two weeks’ pay. . . . Then a woman who’d been there five years was hurt accidentally by an orderly pushing one of those heavy trolleys. They fired her, just like that.”

Al Kosloski, a maintenance worker at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx since 1937, remembers how he was expected to be available on Saturdays or even on hospital time to help a supervisor or administrator build his driveway or make other home repairs. “Your job depended on being cooperative,” Kosloski recalls.

A Montefiore cook who was sick of this treatment recalls “most of the workers were scared to join a union, afraid to be fired. We belonged to our stomachs.”

The union that defied all the odds and undertook the formidable task of organizing these “unorganizable” workers—Local 1199—had been formed in 1932 under the leadership of Leon J. Davis. By 1958, it included some 6,000 pharmacists, porters, clerks and other drug store workers. Although relatively small, Local 1199 had a long record of success in organizing campaigns, and an equally long record of opposition to discrimination.¹³¹

It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the role played by the late Elliott Godoff in spearheading the organizing drive. Godoff, a former hospital pharmacist with more than 20 years experience in organizing hospital workers, joined the 1199 staff in 1958. So, when 1199 made the decision to throw its resources into this new “crusade,” it was able to call upon the man who was probably better qualified to lead it than any other trade union leader in the city. When Godoff moved into 1199, workers he had organized earlier at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn decided to accompany him. Thus Maimonides became the only hospital in the city which had recognized the union when it began its hospital organization campaign.

That summer, 1199 decided to organize Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. President Davis assigned Godoff and Theodore Mitchell, a former drugstore porter who had become the union’s first black organizer, to Montefiore. They worked for months signing up 600 of the hospital’s 900 workers. “I walked all night with cards in my pocket getting them signed up and the bottom of my shoes burning like hot peppers,” recalls Montefiore cook Kenneth Downes, a member of the original organizing committee. In December 1958 the workers voted overwhelmingly for the union, and shortly thereafter the tremendous gains of the historic contract between 1199 and Montefiore Hospital were made public.

More important even than the contract provisions themselves was the fact that the union was able to negotiate a contract with the hospital. The news of this had a truly electrifying effect on workers in voluntary hospitals throughout the city.

Davis and his colleagues recognized early that a crucial factor in the organization of the nonprofessional workers in New York City’s voluntary hospitals, the majority of whom were black and Hispanic women, was the need for a working coalition between the union and the civil rights movement. 1199 brought good credentials to such a coalition. In addition to its early record of fighting discrimination against black pharmacists in Harlem, the union had solicited funds from its membership a support of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott in 1956. In the process, 1199 established a relationship with the boycott’s leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., that was to continue until King’s assassination in 1968. On more than one occasion, King called 1199 “my favorite union.”

Even as the Montefiore contract was being negotiated, 1199 was organizing workers from other hospitals all over the city. Hundreds of drugstore 1199ers joined “crack-of-dawn brigades” and distributed leaflets at hospitals at 6 a.m. before going on to their regular jobs. 1199’s midtown headquarters was alive night after night with organizing meetings of hospital workers asking questions, getting answers, taking on responsibilities.

By Feb. 4, 1959, President Davis was able to announce that the organizing drive had “brought 6,000 new members into Local 1199 in one month.” He sent letters to the directors of seven major hospitals where the union had signed up a majority of the workers. The letters requested union recognition and contract negotiations. Management refused. The union then demanded elections at the seven hospitals. But the trustees, confident that their exemption from collective bargaining legislation made their position impregnable, insisted that “nonprofit hospitals are no place for unionization.” When The New York Times, in an editorial supporting “Unions for Hospital Workers,” raised the question as to why hospital workers should be asked to accept wages lower than those offered in private employment, Dr. Henry N. Pratt, director of New York Hospital, replied, “There is no compulsion to work for a hospital.”

Strike votes took place on the sidewalk outside all seven hospitals, with the workers casting secret ballots in portable voting booths. The result was a pro-strike majority of 2,258 to 195.

On May 8, 1959, 3,500 hospital workers walked off their jobs. At 6 a.m., in defiance of a State Supreme Court order, picket lines were set up at Mount Sinai, Beth Israel, Flower Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn Jewish, Bronx and Beth David Hospitals. The next day, the workers at Lenox Hill made that hospital the seventh to join the walkout.

The leaders of 1199 perceived early in the strike that their only chance for success lay in rallying the conscience of the public behind “la cruzada” (the crusade)—as the city’s Spanish-language newspaper, El Diario, referred to the hospital campaign. In spite of the militancy and determination of the strikers, they could be replaced on a temporary basis, and the professional and technical workers, including the nurses, were not part of the strike.¹³² This, combined with the awesome power of the hospital boards, made it imperative that the union arouse public opinion to demand a settlement. The union used every possible means to bring the pressure of prominent public figures like Eleanor Roosevelt and Herbert H. Lehman, as well as of the media, to bear on the hospital managements. Coordinating this effort was Exec. Sec. Moe Foner. His effectiveness in this area was recognized by the American Public Relations Association when it gave its 1959 award to Foner for his role in conducting the union’s media and public relations during the strike.

Interviewing pickets during the third week of the strike, New York Times labor reporter A. H. Raskin wrote:

They seem determined to carry on indefinitely. They say they are tired of being “philanthropists” subsidizing the hospitals with their labor. One girl picket said: “Whenever we feel disheartened, we can always take out the stub of our last paycheck and get new heart for picketing.” She pulled out her own and showed that it came to $27 in weekly take-home. . . .

Financial hardship has been a part of their life for so long that the prospect of higher pay is less of a goal for many than the pivotal issue of union recognition. They feel for the first time that they “belong”—and this groping for human dignity through group recognition is more important than more cash.

This was particularly true for the women, who had to endure sexist as well as racist exploitation. It is not surprising that they were the most militant of the strikers, battling police and going to jail.

A decisive role was played by New York City Central Labor Council President Harry Van Arsdale. Under his leadership, more than 160 local unions, joint boards, and joint and district councils contributed over $100,000 to the support of the strikers, in addition to participating in picket lines, donating food, and providing other services.

Black and Puerto Rican leaders rallied to the support of the strikers. “Your effort to organize the voluntary hospital workers,” said Thurgood Marshall, NAACP leader and later Supreme Court justice, “could well be one of the most important organizing campaigns this city has ever seen.” Congressman Adam Clayton Powell led members of his congregation to the Mount Sinai picket line and shared a street meeting platform in Harlem with Leon Davis. Joseph Overton, president of the New York NAACP, expressed gratitude to 1199 for its efforts on behalf of New Yorkers of “Latin American and African descent.”

On June 22, 1959, the bitterly-fought 46-day strike came to an end. Even though a justice of the New York State Supreme Court told the hospital managements that their refusal to recognize the union was “an echo of the nineteenth century,” he could not budge them. To the end, they refused to grant union recognition. However, they did accept impartial grievance machinery and arbitration through outside representatives of the workers’ choosing. They also agreed to include in the settlement the provision that “there shall be no discrimination against any employee because he joins or remains a member of any union or because he has presented a grievance under the grievance procedure.” The agreement also included a minimum wage of $1 an hour, wage increases of $5 a week, a 40-hour week with time-and-a-half for overtime, seniority rules, job grades, and rate changes.

The settlement was known as the “PAC Agreement,” named after the “Permanent Administrative Committee,” which was established under the agreement. The PAC was a body of six management representatives and six public representatives. None had any connection with the labor movement. The Hospital Association, confident that under such an arrangement it could continue to dominate the scene, agreed to accept the PAC, and 37 hospitals signed the statement agreeing to the establishment of the grievance machinery.

On a hot June Monday afternoon, the hospital strikers jammed the non-air-conditioned ballroom of the Hotel Diplomat. The heat was intensified by the lights of the television cameras. The strikers listened intently as Leon Davis urged them to accept the settlement even though it provided only “back-door recognition” of the union. “Don’t worry,” he assured them, “We’ll be in the front door before long.” The strikers enthusiastically accepted their leaders’ recommendation.

The hospitals, however, were not through fighting. They rehired the strikers one by one, in some cases over a period of six or seven weeks. The majority of hospitals which accepted the machinery for reviewing wages and grievances soon made it clear that their acceptance did not mean abiding by the terms. In September, 1959, the union reported that only in the hospitals in which the workers were organized were the provisions in effect. And even in those hospitals that were living up to the terms of the settlement, “there was no way for the union to resolve anything directly with management.”

When management at Beth-El Hospital in Brooklyn (now called Brookdale Hospital Medical Center) tried to avert an election in June 1962, the nonprofessional workers struck. They were later joined by workers at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, who also struck for union recognition and higher wages. Because he refused to call off the strikes, Leon Davis was jailed for 30 days for “contempt of court.”

A short while after the strike began, 50 black and Puerto Rican civic and religious leaders met at the offices of A. Philip Randolph. The Committee for Justice to Hospital Workers which emerged from the meeting pledged to organize wide strike support in the black and Puerto Rican communities. Co-chaired by Randolph and Joseph Monserrat, and with Bayard Rustin playing a key organizational role, the Committee grew in numbers to 235 black and Puerto Rican leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, James Farmer of CORE, Whitney Young, Jr., of the Urban League, novelist James Baldwin and Judge Emilio Nunez. In a letter to The New York Times supporting the hospital strike, Randolph, Monserrat, and Baldwin wrote:

As leaders of the Negro and Puerto Rican communities, we believe that the hospital strikes symbolize in most dramatic form the second-class citizenship status and sweatshop wages of all minority group workers in our city.

The hospitals’ refusal to agree to such a simple request as a secret ballot election and the elementary right of union representation is unreasonable, unjust and cruel. Such refusal constitutes nothing less than a determination to perpetuate involuntary servitude among the minority group workers at the bottom of the economic ladder. . . .¹³³

The situation became even more potentially “explosive” when the union threatened 11 additional walkouts for higher wages and union recognition by July 31. Governor Nelson Rockefeller intervened. He promised to recommend to the Legislature the passage of a law granting collective bargaining recognition to the workers in New York City voluntary hospitals, provided that the union call off the strikes then in progress and abandon the threat to call out 11 more hospitals. In the words of The New York Times, Rockefeller was promising “for ill-paid hospital workers collective bargaining rights which workers in most other industries have had for more than a quarter of a century.”

On the basis of Rockefeller’s assurance, the union, after 62 days, called off the strikes at Beth-El and Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospitals. Martin Luther King, Jr., hailed the strike settlement as “historic” and said of the struggle of hospital workers:

It is part and parcel of the larger fight in our community against discrimination and exploitation, against slums, against juvenile delinquency, against drug addiction—against all forms of degradation that result from poverty and human misery. It is a fight for human rights and human dignity.

The struggle for collective bargaining rights for the workers at New York City’s voluntary hospitals, so pivotal to their right to genuine union representation, was followed with great interest in the press and throughout the labor movement. New York Post editorial writer James Wechsler wrote:

One feels a special elation about even the limited victory the hospital workers have won because they were fighting against such seemingly hopeless odds. Some of the most respectable, affluent and untouchable figures in the community were arrayed against them. But the miracle of democracy is a continuous one. . . . It was a large affirmation that no good cause is a lost cause. . . .

On Sunday, July 21, 1962, East 72nd St. between Second and Third Avenues was jammed with a cross-section of New York’s black and white communities. Speakers at the 1199 rally included Socialist leader Norman Thomas, Roy Wilkins, District 65 President David Livingston, Malcolm X, Bayard Rustin, Father George B. Ford, Representative William F. Ryan, A. Philip Randolph and Leon Davis.¹³⁴

By the beginning of May, 1963, the state legislature had passed and Governor Rockefeller had signed the law extending collective bargaining rights to hospital workers, but limiting its geographical coverage to New York City. This legislative victory was extended in 1965 to cover the entire state. The 1965 legislation followed a bitterly-fought eight-week strike for recognition by 1199ers at Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, N.Y., a wealthy Westchester County suburb.

With the way cleared for them to organize into 1199, thousands of hospital workers signed up. One after another, the workers voted in elections for 1199, and the voluntary hospitals recognized the union as the collective bargaining agent. A few weeks after the legislation had amended the state labor law to cover hospital workers, The New York Times described Local 1199 as “the nation’s largest organization of hospital workers, with contracts covering 8,500 employees at 24 voluntary hospitals.”

In 1964, a campaign was launched to bring a new category of hospital employees into 1199. The drive began with the formation of 1199’s Guild of Professional, Technical and Clerical Employees, directed by Jesse Olson, a former pharmacist and one of the 1959 strike leaders. The growth of the Guild not only brought the benefits of union membership to new members, but also strengthened immeasurably the bargaining position of all other workers in the hospitals.

By 1965, 1199 had scored a number of important achievements. Union membership had grown from six thousand in 1959 to 30,000. Wages had more than doubled, and health coverage for workers and their families, paid for by the hospitals, had been won in union contracts. Workers also enjoyed paid vacations, sick leave of 12 days a year, and the 40-hour week (and in a number of contracts, the 35-hour week), with time-and-a-half for overtime. There were three days’ funeral leave in the event of death in a worker’s immediate family, and, to top it off, two days’ matrimony leave.

On March 23, 1968, three weeks before his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, Martin Luther King, Jr. told an 1199 rally: “You have provided concrete and visible proof that when black and white workers unite in a democratic organization like 1199, they can move mountains.” One such “mountain” was moved shortly thereafter. In full-page advertisements in the leading New York City newspapers, 1199 announced “A Hospital Crisis,” and informed the public “that starting midnight, June 30, when our contracts expire, we will no longer work unless we win a minimum wage of $100 a week.”

The campaign was a success. Under the new agreement, workers who had been earning from $70 to $76 a week were to receive $88 immediately and $100 a year later. (Most of these workers had been earning $32 a week less than ten years before). In addition, for the first time, the contract included employer-financed pension and job training and upgrading funds.

In 1970, 1199 moved from a three-story building on Eighth Avenue to a 14-story structure two blocks south on 43rd St. named the Martin Luther King, Jr. Labor Center. The building’s entrance was dominated by a mosaic mural including the words of 19th century black abolitionist Frederick Douglass: “If there is no struggle, there can be no progress.”¹³⁵

At the ceremonies dedicating the new headquarters, Congresswoman Bella Abzug, herself one of the pioneers in opposing America’s involvement in Vietnam, praised 1199 for being “one of the first unions to cry out against the horrible, immoral war in Vietnam.” The union’s record justified this tribute. In July, 1964, President Leon Davis had warned against the “aggressive and dangerous foreign policy we are pursuing in South Vietnam.” In November, 1965, Executive Secretary Moe Foner played a key role in organizing the Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace gathering in Chicago, where over 500 leaders from 50 international unions vowed to “seek to express the underlying and deeply-felt peace sentiment of American workers.”¹³⁶

1199’s spectacular success in 1968 in winning the $100-a-week minimum for nonprofessional hospital workers in New York City climaxed a decade of dramatic progress in its organizing efforts and sent shock waves through unorganized hospitals throughout the nation.

During the 1960s, there had been some limited beginnings in organizing in New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island and Westchester county. Many of these campaigns were led by Vice Pres. Len Seelig, who took responsibility for the Connecticut area in 1968 but who died in an auto accident in 1971 at the age of 41. The $100-a-week victory, coupled with 1199’s success in organizing professional and technical employees, placed the question of extending organizing efforts to other parts of the country high on 1199’s agenda.¹³⁷

Even the realization was being fully absorbed by the leaders of the union. President Davis received a telegram from Mrs. Martin Luther King. It read:

I have always admired what your union has been doing to eliminate poverty wages and win dignity for hospital workers. My late husband also admired your substantial achievements. I am particularly interested in your current campaign because so many hospital workers are women—Black women, Spanish-speaking women, and white women—often the main supporters of their families. My husband used to say that they were forced to work at full-time jobs for part-time pay. May I suggest that when you have succeeded in winning a new contract with a $100 weekly starting wage for hospital workers in New York, that you undertake a new responsibility—the task of organizing the many thousands of unorganized hospital workers in the major cities of our nation. I believe that such an organizing crusade would represent a major contribution to the struggle to eliminate poverty.

The union announced in October 1968 the formation of the National Organizing Committee of Hospital and Nursing Home Employees, with Coretta Scott King as its honorary chairperson. Just at this time, events were unfolding in Charleston, South Carolina, which would become central to 1199’s national organizing effort.

In the spring of 1968, Charleston hospital workers, most of them black women earning $1.30 an hour, began holding meetings to organize. They tried to talk about union recognition with Dr. William McCord, president of Charleston Medical College and director of its hospital, a state institution. They were denied an opportunity even to meet.

The Charleston hospital workers got in touch with 1199. Local 1199B was launched to represent hospital workers in the city. When 12 union members were fired on March 17, 1969, 400 workers at Medical College Hospital walked off their jobs. A week later, 90 workers at the Charleston County Hospital walked out in sympathy. Demands included union recognition, a wage increase, a grievance procedure and rehiring of the 12 fired workers.

The hospital administration treated the strikers’ demands with contempt. Dr. McCord, for example offered to give the workers, almost all of them black, an additional holiday—the birthday of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. But contempt soon gave way to naked force. An injunction limited picketing to “ten people . . . at a time—twenty yards apart,” and no closer than eight blocks from the hospital. The workers defied the injunction and conducted mass picketing around the hospital site. They were promptly arrested. By the end of the first week of the strike, 100 of them were in jail. The strikers, and particularly the staff members of Local 1199, were also attacked by vigilantes. The room of Henry Nicholas, assistant director of the National Organizing Committee, who had come in to assist the local organization, was fire-bombed. The workers had to organize a security guard around the building as well as around their union hall.

With arrests piling up, staff members of both the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and 1199 arrived to direct the battle. Andrew J. Young coordinated SCLC activities and worked closely with 1199ers Nicholas, Elliott Godoff and Moe Foner. They made the nation aware that the strike of the black hospital workers in Charleston involved, in the words of a New York Times editorial, “values as fundamental as those in the original battles for school desegregation and equal employment opportunities.”

By the third week of April, Charleston had become the scene of mass meetings, daily marches, evening rallies in churches and union halls, and boycotts of stores and schools. It also became the scene of daily confrontations and mass arrests as the Charleston power structure, headed by J. P. Stevens, owner of 23 textile mills in South Carolina and an implacable foe of unionism, struck back. South Carolina Governor McNair quickly let it be known that the state would never recognize a public employees’ union, and Dr. McCord emphasized the same point in his contemptuous remark to a Business Week reporter: “I am not about to turn over the administration of a five million dollar institution to people who never had a grammar school education.”¹³⁸

The governor sent 600 state troopers and National Guardsmen into Charleston and announced a 7 p.m. curfew. Mass arrests were stepped up. Hundreds of police, state troopers and National Guardsmen with fixed bayonets, paraded the streets. One of the strikers, Edrena Johnson, kept a diary of her nine-day stay in jail. On April 25, she recorded the following:

As I lie here in a cell at the Charleston County jail, I feel the sympathy of all who are fighting for what is right. We, as black people in South Carolina, have awakened to the fact that we are no longer afraid of the white man and that we want to be recognized, not because of our race, but because we are human beings and we have a right—a right which we shall fight and go to jail for. We, the black people of South Carolina, will no longer sit back and be counted. We’re going to stand up for what is right. We’re soul from our hearts, and soul power is where it’s at.

The national heads of nine civil rights organizations and five elected black officials issued a joint statement in support of the strike. They noted that it was the first time black leaders had come together on a single issue since Martin Luther King’s assassination a year earlier.

The signers were headed by Coretta King, who throughout the strike gave herself entirely to the cause of the hospital workers. On May 1, The New York Times carried a full-page advertisement with a picture of Mrs. King on one side and on the other, the statement: “If my husband were alive today, he would be in Charleston, South Carolina.”

National television newscasts brought Charleston’s marching blacks, with their blue-and-white 1199 hats, courageously parading under the guns of Guardsmen, into millions of American homes.

Unions across the country sent delegations to march with the strikers. United Auto Worker President Walter Reuther joined the demonstrations in person and presented a check for $25,000 to Local 1199B. The AFL-CIO donated an additional $25,000.

The daily demonstrations and the nationwide publicity that the strike was receiving, most of it favorable to the strikers, finally persuaded Charleston’s businessmen to begin discussing a settlement.

The strike lasted 113 days, during which 1,000 persons, including 1199 President Leon Davis and Reverend Ralph Abernathy, were jailed. In the end, union power and soul power produced what the Richmond Times-Dispatch called “an unbeatable combination.”

The workers at the Medical College Hospital won wage increases of 30 to 70 cents an hour. They also won the establishment of a credit union and a grievance procedure in which the union could represent them. All workers were to be reinstated, including the twelve whose firing had started the strike. It was, to be sure, a compromise settlement; the union did not win recognition as a bargaining agent. But, as Mary Ann Moultrie, probably the first rank-and-file delegate to address a national convention of the AFL-CIO, told the delegates to that organization’s 1969 convention:

We 400 hospital workers—almost all of us women, and all of us black—were compelled to go on strike so that we could win the right to be treated as human beings. We had to fight the entire power structure of the state of South Carolina. . . . We had to face 1,200 National Guardsmen armed with tanks and bayonets, and hundreds of state troopers. All because 400 black women dared to stand up and say we just were not going to let anybody turn us around. A year ago, nobody ever heard of us. We were forgotten women, second-class citizens. We worked as nurses aides. We cleaned the floors. We prepared the food in the hospitals. And if it had not been for the union, we would still be forgotten people.

At a rally toward the end of the strike, Coretta King had brought a large audience to its feet cheering when she said: “We won this strike because of a wonderful marriage—the marriage of the SCLC and Local 1199. The first of many beautiful children of this marriage is Local 1199B here in Charleston, and there are going to be as many more children as there are letters in the alphabet.”

In August, 1969, again with strong support from the SCLC, including Mrs. King, and the black community, Local 1199E, the second “child” of the marriage, compelled Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland to agree to a representation election for 1,500 service employees, mostly black women. The union won by a two-to-one margin.

Other victories followed, in Baltimore and elsewhere. The Hopkins victory in Baltimore led to successful elections at other major hospitals there and to the eventual creation of District 1199E, which now has 6,000 members in Maryland and Washington, D.C. under the leadership of Pres. Ronald Hollie. In Philadelphia, 1199C won elections at several major hospitals and laid the basis for the current powerful district of 10,000 members headed by Pres. Henry Nicholas, 1199P began organizing elsewhere in Pennsylvania and now has 5,000 members in 25 different communities under the leadership of Pres. John Black, 1199 W. Va organized in West Virginia, 1199H organized in Ohio, 1199 Mass. organized in Massachusetts. During the same period, 1199 won elections covering 4,000 workers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees was created in 1973 at a founding convention in New York. District 1199 in the New York City metropolitan area became the largest of several districts and areas with a combined membership of 100,000 in 14 states and the District of Columbia. Continued growth up the present finds members from Rhode Island to Iowa in seven districts and in areas that will become financially self-supporting districts when they organize enough members to make this practical.

The two newest districts—Connecticut and New Jersey—are outgrowths of the original Local 1199. When they became big enough to stand as self-sufficient districts, their members voted to do so. District 1199J in New Jersey became a district in 1977 under the leadership of Pres. Aberdeen David. The former Connecticut Area of District 1199, headed by 1199 Vice Pres. Jerry Brown, is now completing the process of becoming District 1199 New England. The new district will include 10,000 members now under contract in Connecticut and Rhode Island, plus whatever new members are organized in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

The hospital and nursing home industry which the new national union first proposed to unionize in the early 1970s was the third largest employer in the country. Non-professional hospital workers were 90 percent unorganized, and administrators intended to keep it that way. Workers in voluntary hospitals had been excluded from federal law giving workers the right of union representation. There was neither National Labor Relations Board machinery for conducting union representation elections nor legal definitions of unfair labor practices. Hospitals were not legally required to recognize the union as the official bargaining agent of the workers.

The new national union pressed for federal legislation granting hospital workers collective bargaining rights. Victory on this front came on July 11, 1974, when Congress passed legislation extending the coverage of the National Labor Relations Act to employees of non-profit hospitals and nursing homes.

As the national organizing effort progressed, a considerable portion of 1199’s energies, finances and personnel were devoted to it. At the same time, progress continued in New York both in the Hospital Division headed by Exec. Vice Pres. Doris Turner and the Guild Division headed by Exec. Vice Pres. Jesse Olson.

An impressive display of strength came June 13, 1972 when 25,000 members of 1199 jammed onto Murray St. next to City Hall in lower Manhattan as a prelude to expiration that month of their contract with the League of Voluntary Hospitals.

Wearing their blue-and-white hats and chanting “We want a contract!”, the demonstrators carried signs stating “We can’t make it on $130 a week,” “Don’t force us to strike the hospitals” and “Don’t blame us for rising hospital costs.”

The latter was a reference to a development reported somewhat later by the President’s Council on Wage and Price Stabilization. The Council found that hospital workers’ wages were not responsible for the dramatic rise in hospital costs over the previous decade. It noted that wages were a steadily decreasing percentage of hospital costs and that other major elements in hospital budgets were rising faster than wages.

“We’re here today to let everybody know that hospital workers are not the forgotten people or the invisible people,” Exec. Vice Pres. Turner told the June 13 rally. “The jobs we hold are some of the most important jobs in the world. Without us, the hospitals would not run.”

Addressing himself to the city as a whole, Pres. Davis told the huge crowd:

This is a better city because of us. We are not making impossible demands, but only that which we need to take care of our children, our families. We will not permit anyone to destroy our dignity as an organized group of men and women who insist on the right and power to influence our own lives. We know all too well what it’s like to have things shoved down our throats. Well, no one is going to shove anything down our throats ever again!

Three weeks later, a citywide hospital strike was averted when a two-year contract brought raises to 33,000 workers of $24 a week or 15 percent, whichever was greater.

The first half of that raise was due July 1, 1972. But President Richard Nixon’s three-year-old Cost of Living Council, which discriminatorily imposed mandatory wage controls on 10 percent of the nation’s workforce, including hospital workers, held up the raise for 11 months. Members in dozens of other communities experienced similar delays at the hands of the COLC. The second New York raise was due July 1, 1973. Infuriated over their long wait for the first raise, New York 1199ers set a Nov. 1 deadline for COLC approval of the 1973 raise. When that date came and went without action in Washington, 30,000 members struck for one week. The result was a compromise. 1199ers did receive a second year increase, but it was less than what they had originally negotiated. Nevertheless, the union won respect across the nation for its courage in taking on Nixon’s arbitrary and discriminatory wage control apparatus. Part of the price the union had to pay for standing up to Nixon was an unprecedented $725,500 fine for violating a federal court anti-strike injunction. But most 1199ers shared the summary of striker Moshe Goldberg of Brooklyn Jewish Hospital. “Even though the money we lost by striking will be lost forever, the strike had a point. We cannot let them dictate to us,” he said.

New York 1199ers were forced to strike again for 11 days in July 1976 when the League of Voluntary Hospitals not only refused to negotiate for wage increases, but refused to agree to take the dispute to binding arbitration. A strike highlight was a rally of 10,000 strikers outside the opening session July 12 of the Democratic Party national convention at Madison Square Garden. In the face of the determination of 40,000 strikers and widespread public support for an arbitrated settlement, management finally capitulated. The disappointing award by arbitrator Margery Gootnick that came two months later convinced many 1199ers that in the future they should rely on their strength on the picketline rather than arbitrated decisions.

The early 1970s were a period of organizing growth for 1199 in New York City as well as in new areas. The biggest success came at the nation’s largest voluntary hospital, Columbia Presbyterian in upper Manhattan, when workers voted 878–507 for 1199 on March 1, 1973. Subsequent victories at St. Luke’s Roosevelt and Methodist Hospitals reduced those major New York voluntary hospitals without 1199 contracts to a very few conspicuous holdouts.

But perhaps the most dramatic new organizing effort of the 1970s came in an entirely new field. The nation’s two million registered nurses had become increasingly militant. They were tired of being ignored by the predominantly male medical power structure when they asked for better salaries and a voice in patient care delivery. They were frustrated increasingly by the inability of the American Nurses Association and its state affiliates to represent their interests effectively.

A few nurses in several states had joined 1199 over the years, but the big breakthrough came in 1977 when 650 RNs at Brookdale Medical Center in Brooklyn voted for 1199 representation and then struck for two days to win their first union contract. A significant factor in the strike victory was the cooperation of the 2,000 other 1199ers already under 1199 contract at Brookdale.

With the Brookdale victory, a fourth division of District 1199 became a reality. Joining the Hospital, Guild and Drug Divisions was the League for Registered Nurses, directed by Exec. Vice Pres. Sondra Clark, a former Brookdale RN who led the organizing drive there.

The 1199 RN Division now has 3,000 members at 35 institutions, among them major hospitals such as Brookdale and Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. An additional 2,000 RNs are under 1199 contract in other districts and areas. Some, like the 160 nurses at Fairmont General Hospital in Fairmont, W. Va., displayed tremendous unity and widespread membership participation in winning union contracts. The Fairmont RNs struck for 45 days to win their contract.

“Our people really stuck together because they finally got tired of years of having no say and being ignored,” said Fairmont RN Mary Shafer. “Women were held down in the past, but today they’re more ready to speak out on things.”

In addition to winning better salaries and working conditions, nurses in 1199 have quickly become involved in a variety of professional programs, ranging from RN Committee lectures and conferences on subjects such as the 1985 proposal or cancer care to the successful fight against the arbitrary voiding of the year’s RN licensing exam by New York State.

Another major development was the successful organization during the past year of 6,400 employees at 40 state-run health institutions in Connecticut. The new members include 1,800 professional employees in categories such as doctor, dentist, social worker, psychologist, RN and chaplain. The state employees, organized under the leadership of 1199 Vice Pres. Jerry Brown, form a major portion of the membership of the new District 1199 New England.

Elsewhere, 1199 organizing in the late 1970s slowed somewhat. Reasons included consistent unemployment nationally and retrenchment by many hospitals, a vicious offensive by hospitals willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for anti-union “consultants,” and frustrating delays by the National Labor Relations Board in processing applications for representation elections.

In spite of this, election wins brought unionization to new thousands of hospital workers in such widely separated communities as Gary, Ind., Davenport, Iowa; Huntington, W. Va.; Philadelphia; Detroit; Rochester, N.Y.; Portsmouth, N.H.; Aliquippa, Pa. and Providence, R.I. Following Elliott Godoff’s death in 1975, organizing drives were conducted under the leadership of National Union Director of Organization Bob Muehlenkamp.

By the end of the 1970s, unionization had brought about an unprecedented transformation in the lives of New York hospital workers. The average wage in the lowest paid job category was $230 a week, or more than seven times the wage received only 20 years earlier. Average weekly salaries in higher-paid categories at the end of 1979 were $315 for radiologic technologists, $258 for LPNs, $281 for laboratory technicians, $414 for pharmacists and $339 for beginning social workers. On top of this, a three percent raise was due to 1199ers at League of Voluntary Hospitals institutions on Jan. 1, 1980.

The union’s pioneering Benefit, Pension and Training and Upgrading Funds, financed entirely by management payments but administered jointly by the union and management, had become models in their fields. The Benefit and Pension Funds were directed from their beginnings by 1199 Sec. Treas. William J. Taylor, a former drug store luncheonette worker who retired last summer after 42 years in 1199.

Under the self-administered Benefit Fund, workers and their dependents could be assured of hospitalization, surgical benefits, medical care benefits in both their homes and the doctors’ offices, an optical plan, disability pay of two-thirds of their salary, diagnostic services including x-ray and laboratory work, maternity benefits, life insurance coverage, dental and free prescription coverage. Each year, the Benefit Fund also sends hundreds of members children to all-expenses-paid three-week summer vacations at camp and provides college tuition aid on the basis of need to hundreds of members’ children. In 1979, for instance, 460 children of members utilized the summer camp program. The tuition aid program has assisted 4,500 children of members since 1967. Its 1979 budget is $675,000.

The Pension Fund dispersed nearly $1 million to more than 6,000 retired National Union members this year. And Retired Members Division in New York and Philadelphia have been cited by government and private agencies for their outstanding role in providing retirees with a wide variety of programs to enrich their retired years. These have included classes in arts and crafts, languages, photography and film-making. A highlight of 1979 was a handsome exhibit of photo-essays of and by retired members, shown at District 1199 and at the Brooklyn Museum.

The Training and Upgrading Fund aided more than 1,700 New York members who studied for better health care jobs last year. Among graduates of full-time training programs were 32 registered nurses, 15 radiologic technologists and eight respiratory therapists. Full-time students receive tuition, a stipend of 85 percent of their net pay up to a maximum of $150 a week and costs of textbooks. Part-time Fund programs include tuition assistance for health-related courses, basic education, high school equivalency, English as a second language and college preparation. The program is widely recognized for its success in providing avenues to better pay and more challenging positions for workers previously stuck in dead-end jobs.

A democratic structure emphasizes the crucial role of rank-and-file delegates elected by secret ballot every two years by the membership. Currently, 2,000 New York delegates handle thousands of grievances each year and meet in monthly delegate assemblies to discuss and act upon all important union affairs. The delegates spend one weekend every other year at a training session in the refreshing rural atmosphere of Pawling, N.Y.

The union’s staff contains a high proportion of former hospital workers who rose from the ranks to take on responsibilities as organizers and officers. Typical of this process was Vice Pres. James Boykin, who died of a heart attack in 1976 at the tragically early age of 48. Boykin was a Flower-Fifth Ave. Hospital cook who became an 1199er in the 1959 strike and served as an active delegate before joining the staff as an organizer in 1963. He was appointed acting vice president and Hospital Division Bronx-Westchester Area Director in 1972.

The union’s growing attention to legislative affairs was illustrated by its success in building a coalition that won decisive support from political leaders in the effort to prevent the closing of Brooklyn Jewish Hospital. The district’s legislative director is Judy Berek, a former Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center laboratory technician.

Many 1199ers are living in the prize-winning 1,590-family cooperative 1199 Plaza housing development in East Harlem. The New York Times called the development “superb” and “one of New York’s most architecturally significant housing projects.”

Many of the New York district’s initiatives in social, cultural and educational affairs were matched in newer National Union districts. A leader in this area was District 1199C in Philadelphia, where a new training program has won national recognition and where the district plays an important role in the city’s political scene.

For many years, 1199 members have participated in a wide variety of social, educational and cultural activities designed to demonstrate that a good union doesn’t have to be dull. These include dances, picnics, moonlight sails, live theater programs with Broadway stars, film festivals, Christmas children’s parties, art exhibits at Gallery 1199, annual health care conferences, and regular meetings of special committees of pharmacists, RNs, LPNs, dietitians, radiologic technologists, laboratory technicians and therapists. The union produced three award-winning documentary films and a book of poems by staffer Marshall Dubin on the hospital strikes. Its monthly publication, 1199 News, has been among the most consistent award winners in the labor press.

Building on this base, 1199 during the past year developed the Bread and Roses cultural project, called by Business Week magazine “the most significant program ever undertaken by a U.S. union to bring culture to its members.” The program’s name is taken from the banner in the 1912 Lawrence, Mass. textile strike on which young mill women proclaimed “We want bread and roses, too.”

Supported by grants from federal and state cultural agencies and a number of private foundations and individuals, Bread and Roses offers cultural events to members inside major hospitals and nursing homes, at 1199 Plaza and at union headquarters. Its events include drama, music and poetry programs by professional companies; art and photography exhibits; a Labor Day Street Fair attended by 75,000; an original musical revue based on members’ oral history accounts of their own lives; conferences and seminars; videotapes and films; and much more.

Directed by National Union Exec. Sec. Moe Foner, Bread and Roses has already attracted favorable comment by newspapers and magazines across the nation. It is widely recognized as a prototype for the entire labor movement.

Earlier this year, two people with long 1199 associations paused to look backward in articles in 1199 News as the union celebrated its 20 years in the hospitals.

Actor, playwright and director Ossie Davis has been closely identified with 1199 for 25 years as writer, performer and volunteer organizer. He and his wife, Ruby Dee, are “deeply proud of our continuing involvement with the union,” Davis said. He added:¹³⁹

There is a spirit about 1199 that comes from a tradition of struggle. Being aggressive and feisty when the cause is right, 1199 didn’t hesitate to jump into any fight where peace, civil rights, race prejudice, corporate, greed, bureaucratic stupidity or political indifference were involved.

Edna Mallon, a central service aide at Flushing Hospital in Queens since 1962, recalled the union struggles that brought her wages from 75 cents an hour to her current $260 a week, “with beautiful benefits and the prospect of a nice pension.”

“The mural on our 1199 headquarters building tells the story of what we hospital workers were and what we have become, said Mallon. “If there is no struggle, there can be no progress.”

1199 News: A Special Issue, 14 (December, 1979): 3–47.

2. LOCAL 1199 MAKES REALISTIC GAINS FOR ITS NEWLY-ORGANIZED MEMBERS

By Moe Foner

A crusade to organize 35,000 workers in New York City’s eighty-two voluntary, non-profit hospitals has focused public attention on Local 1199, Drug and Hospital Employes Union, affiliated with the AFL-CIO’s Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

When the campaign started, early in 1958, few New Yorkers were familiar with “1199” whose 6,000 members, employed in some 1,800 retail drug stores in the metropolitan area and Long Island included 2,100 registered pharmacists. Increased public interest in the local was demonstrated in the course of a ten-day period this past summer.

Across the desk of its president, Leon J. Davis, came inquiries from union leaders in several states and far off Ghana requesting details on the local’s experiences in organizing hospital workers, and invitations to lecture at several schools and colleges including Harvard University’s Graduate School of Economics. Simultaneously, a feature article on the hospital campaign appeared in Fortune Magazine.

Local 1199 made headlines when 3,500 newly organized members in seven hospitals struck for forty-six days during the Spring and Summer of 1959. The nation’s first major walkout of hospital workers, the strike climaxed a whirlwind organizing drive that had enrolled 6,000 members in a one-month period.

Led by Harry A. Van Arsdale, Jr., head of the New York City AFL-CIO Central Labor Council, the entire labor movement rallied behind the strikers. Thousands of trade unionists turned out daily on the picket lines, tons of food were collected and 162 local unions contributed a total of $167,000 to aid the strikers in a display of labor solidarity unprecedented in New York City history in the memories of some of the oldest members of the labor movement.

Public support for the strikers came in the form of food, funds and resolutions from community, civic and religious groups, including the formation of a sixty-five member Citizens’ Committee headed by Dr. Reinhold Neibuhr and A. Philip Randolph.

When Local 1199 decided to organize voluntary hospital workers, few labor leaders held out hope for success. Except for a handful of abortive efforts in the massive drives of the 1930’s, unions had largely left the voluntary hospitals alone. The thousands of workers required to run them were truly “the forgotten men and women” of New York City—forgotten by unions, employers and the public. Within the shining hospital walls, there had simmered in silence thousands of unprotected workers whose daily tasks are essential for the hospitals’ maintenance. They were cooks and dishwashers, nurses’ aides and technicians, laundry workers and clerks, porters, housekeeping and maintenance workers.

These workers earned as little as $25, $30 and $32 for a six-day, forty-four workweek. Overtime pay was non-existent, split shifts prevalent. In some cases, to eke out a bare existence, many were compelled to seek supplementary relief assistance from New York City welfare agencies. Because they worked for charitable, nonprofit institutions, they were excluded from coverage under New York State’s Labor Relations, Unemployment Insurance and Disability Benefit laws.

While workers at city-owned hospitals in New York City have been organized for years, labor had shied away from the nonprofit hospitals. Denied collective bargaining protection by law, it was felt that voluntary hospital workers could not be organized. Some said that hospital workers would never unite in a common fight as members of trade unions. Still others feared that organization might create conflicts between hospital trustees and labor leaders who often sat together at trustee meetings of community and social agencies.

Some eyebrows were raised in December 1959 when Local 1199 scored its first major breakthrough at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx with a decisive 628-31 vote in a secret ballot consent election and quickly expanded its campaign to thirty hospitals throughout the city. Assisted by stories and editorials in El Diario de Nueva York and The Amsterdam News, the largest Spanish language and Negro newspapers in the city, “La Cruzada de Local 1199,” as it was termed in El. Diario, the drive soon resembled the mass organizing efforts of the 1930’s.

Dan Wakefield, a reporter who covered it from the beginning, described this aspect in an article in The Nation magazine, March 14, 1959:

“To walk into one of these organizing meetings is to walk back into a time of the five-and-a-half and six day week, the wages under a dollar an hour, the fears of firing from the boss for ‘talking union,’ and the almost revival-meeting enthusiasm of workers suddenly awakened out of their plight.”

Soon, The New York Times and New York Post took up the cudgels for the hospital workers. In an editorial on March 7, 1959 The Times called attention to the financial plight of the hospitals, but added: “. . . Why should workers performing the same kind of jobs as in private employment be asked to be philanthropists by accepting much lower wages and the human sufferings that follow. And why should collective bargaining be denied them when it is a policy overwhelmingly approved by the American public?”

Actively assisting in the campaign were some 500 drug store members of Local 1199. Recognizing that success depended on massive rank and file participation to distribute leaflets at hospitals throughout the city, pharmacists, clerks, sodamen, porters and cosmeticians enrolled in “1199’s” “Crack of Dawn Brigade.” At least once a week, these volunteers appeared at hospital gates at 5:30 A.M., distributed leaflets and talked union until it was time for them to report for work at the drug stores.

Today, Local 1199’s Hospital Division has a membership of 8,000 and holds collective bargaining agreements covering 3,200 nonprofessional, technical and office employes at voluntary hospitals and homes in the metropolitan area. The Statement of Policy issued by thirty-seven subscribing hospitals at the close of the 1959 strike was improved considerably this past July.

While it does not include union recognition, the revised Statement of Policy provides for a truly impartial board of six public members known as the Permanent Administrative Committee, appointed by the Chief Judge of the New York State Court of Appeals with six consultants equally divided among hospital trustees and labor. An improved grievance procedure has been established with the PAC acting as final arbiter of all disputes and the PAC will make annual reports on all issues affecting workers in the subscribing hospitals.

Since the union entered the scene, wages, still below standard, have improved markedly. Hiring rates, formerly as low as $25, $30 and $32 for a forty-four-hour, six-day week, are now $45 with some hospitals already planning to go to $50 for a normal forty-hour, five-day week. Overtime pay is a normal practice and split shifts have been eliminated.

Activity on the legislative front also has paid off for hospital workers. Bills were enacted in the New York State Legislature last year bringing nonprofit institution employes under the State Disability Benefits Law and a $l-an-hour minimum wage for the first time in the State’s history.

But what kind of union are hospital workers joining? The local that defied the warnings about the impractical and impossible task of organizing hospital workers is an outstanding example of professional organization. Its largest segment consists of registered pharmacists but also includes sodamen and women, drug clerks, cosmeticians, porters and deliverymen.

Local 1199 was established at the height of the depression in 1932 when a small group of pharmacists met in a dingy room in downtown Manhattan. Among them were Leon J. Davis, “1199’s” president for the past fifteen years. At that time those fortunate to be employed earned as little as $20 for a sixty-six-hour, seven-day work week. Their professionalism included sweeping, mopping and dusting floors as well as filling and delivering prescriptions.

The meeting coincided with the appearance of an editorial in the American Druggist warning that: “Unions in pharmacy will fail because pharmacy is a personal service profession and no drug clerk wants forever to remain a clerk. The job of organization is hopeless.”

But history confounded the experts. The pharmacists, prime movers in forming the union, soon recognized that their best interests lay in extending organization to the rest of their fellow employes. Through the long climb back to prosperity and since, improvements in working conditions and status have come to members in all categories. The starting rate for pharmacists is now $130 for a forty-hour, five-day week, in addition to welfare and pension benefits.

More than 85 per cent of New York’s drug stores have been organized by Local 1199. Unionization extends to such chains as Whelan’s and Liggett’s individual stores employing up to sixty workers and small owner-operated stores with only one worker employed for as few as fifteen hours weekly. Contracts are negotiated with seven major employer associations, individual stores, and the managements of the chains.

No local union, particularly one where most members work in one- and two-man stores alongside their employers, can long maintain vitality and effectiveness without membership participation. From the start, “1199” has sought to encourage such participation as decisive to the existence of the union.

The backbone of the local are its stewards. They are the line of communication with the membership, its grievance agents, and its spokesmen on the job. Some 300 stewards—roughly one for every fifteen members working in the same store or vicinity—provide the real leadership of “1199.”

Elected by secret ballot every two years, the stewards meet monthly as the Drug Division Council to debate and act on pending union affairs. Their actions, normally accepted, are subject to final approval and veto by the membership itself. Because they possess real responsibility and power in the union’s administration, their job has become one of commanding respect. For this reason, the steward structure functions efficiently and democratically.

Divided into geographical areas, usually on a borough-wide basis, the membership meets every other month. Meeting attendance averages about 40 per cent, with more than 60 per cent turning out at union-wide meetings called to discuss contract issues.

Local 1199 has never negotiated dues checkoff in its contracts with drug stores. Its members take the position that each “1199er” should make his dues payments directly to the union, helping to create a spirit of direct involvement in union affairs. The union has never had any difficulty in collecting dues in this manner.

Long ago, the local was faced with definite choices concerning its activities and progress. Its experience clearly indicated that if activities were limited to collective bargaining and grievance processing, internal life and participation would decline. What was needed, its leaders decided, was to bring together its widely dispersed membership into welfare, educational, social and cultural activities that would strengthen union bonds.

Before health and welfare plans became commonplace, “1199ers” decided to pool their resources in a mutual aid venture. In 1940, the local approved a sick benefit plan of its own. Each member contributed twenty-five cents a week, and in return was eligible for benefits for $10 weekly for a maximum of five weeks. In 1940 this was regarded as a very considerable benefit for store workers of any kind.

Out of this beginning, there came demands for employer support to a sick benefit plan and in 1945, agreement was reached with employers for establishment of a fund based on 3 per cent of payroll. Since then, it has been improved and expanded. Supervised by a union-employer Board of Trustees, its director is William J. Taylor, “1199” vice president and a former sodaman. Today, employer contributions have been increased to 3.5 per cent of payroll to cover a comprehensive program of sickness, accident, hospitalization, surgical, maternity and death benefits. A similar amount is contributed to the Local 1199 Pension Plan, established in 1950, which permits older workers to retire with a measure of security. Both plans are self-administered and self-insured paying no commissions to outside agencies and permitting savings to be translated into improved benefits and reserves.

Benefits have been increased to a maximum of $65 weekly for twenty-six weeks, something unheard of for drug store workers a few years ago. Under consideration today is a medical reimbursement program whereby members and their dependents would be reimbursed for doctors’ visits.

Since 1945, the Local 1199 Benefit Plan has paid out a total of $5,216, 000 in benefits to 26,650 members and their families and has reserves of $1,450,000.

The local has developed a diversified program of educational, social and cultural activities to meet the needs and interests of members and their families. Its class program, the Local 1199 “Unionversity,” offers courses to meet the on-the-job needs of members. To better equip them to service the growing number of Puerto Rican customers, classes in Spanish are conducted. Members interested in obtaining information on cosmetics products attend special courses in that subject.

For soda fountain workers, special classes are arranged in cooperation with the Food Trades Vocational High School. Latest developments in pharmacy are available to members at classes in Pharmacology and Management Problems taught by leading educators, including Dr. Arthur G. Zupko, dean, Brooklyn College of Pharmacy, who conducted an eight-session course last year attended by 180 members, the largest of its kind ever offered outside a college of pharmacy. Since the “Unionversity” program was organized in 1954, more than 2,300 members have attended courses at nominal fees to cover costs. Classes for stewards and new members are also an important part of “1199’s” educational activities.

Because the union recognizes that social and cultural activities play an important role in promoting unity among all sections of the membership, “1199” organizes such annual events as its Negro History celebration, Salute to Israel, and Latin-American Fiesta. These programs are attended by standing-room-only crowds and feature original dramatic-musical presentations with such stage and screen stars as Sidney Poitier, Ricardo Montalban, Sam Levenson, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee among others.

Children of members get into the act, too. Small-fry holiday parties and the local’s unique program of monthly socials for teenage sons and daughters of members, Teen Time at 1199, are regular events at union headquarters. Each year, through its camp program, the local has been sending forty children of members to all-expenses paid summer vacations at leading camps.

This program has been expanded to include the awarding of two annual college scholarships of $1,000 each to children of members. One award is for general college education while a second is for use at a recognized college of pharmacy. Selections are made by the “1199” College Scholarship Board, consisting of prominent educators headed by Dr. Hugo H. Schafer, dean emeritus, Brooklyn College of Pharmacy. The Camp-Scholarship Program is financed by annual voluntary contributions from thousands of members and hundreds of employers.

Local 1199 members also maintain their own Blood Bank and Credit Union. Arranged in cooperation with the American Red Cross, hundreds of “1199ers” donate blood each year on Blood Bank Day and are eligible to draw from the common pool in case of emergencies affecting themselves or their families. Its Credit Union, where members may borrow and save without red tape, has loaned almost $600,000 to 3,000 members in the past eight years.

The unusually high degree of participation in these activities led to strong support for a proposal that the union purchase its own headquarters. In 1958, the local opened its own auditorium, used as a meeting hall and for social events. Purchase and renovation of the building, located at 300 West 45th Street, was made possible when members oversubscribed to $175,000 of local building fund bonds.

Most drug store owners agree readily that Local 1199 has brought a measure of order and stability to the industry. Over the long pull, everybody has gained from the union, the owner and the general public, and, of course, the worker.

Local 1199’s Committee on Pharmacy has helped to advance the special interests of its pharmacist members and the entire profession. Through classes, forums and at regularly scheduled meetings, the committee constantly advances suggestions and programs designated to enhance the profession. “Professionalism” is not dead within Local 1199, but it has been integrated into the life of a union dedicated to the needs of drug store and voluntary hospital employes.

This year, two separate and independent divisions were established, one for drug store members and the other for the local’s newly organized hospital workers. The members of each division meet separately and make their own decisions on all matters affecting their interests. Over-all union decisions require a majority vote in each division. Thus, the rights and interests of both divisions are fully protected.

Hospital workers, still in the early stages of building a union, know from their own experiences that there is no magic to the organization and administration of a union. They are tapping a rich reservoir of experience from their fellow members in the drug stores, experience which indicates that the best answer to continued progress lies in democratic trade union principles and practices.

Industrial Bulletin of the New York State Department of Labor (November, 1960), reprint in District 1199 Archives,

3. LOCAL 1199 SPARKS NATIONAL UNION FOR HOSPITAL, NURSING HOME WORKERS

Content removed at rightsholder’s request.

Amsterdam News (N.Y.), December 13, 1969.

HOSPITAL WORKERS ORGANIZE

4. HOSPITAL STRIKE IS SETTLED; $40 MINIMUM, OTHER GAINS WON

The great strike of 3,000 workers in seven hospitals ended June 22 with a victory for all hospital workers. This was the first such strike in history—the first time that hospital workers ever joined together in a union to fight for justice for themselves and their families. With representation through their union won, as well as important wage and hour gains, the workers of the seven hospitals voted at a huge mass meeting at the Hotel Diplomat to accept a settlement of the strike worked out with Mayor Wagner, and go back to their jobs. Some managements have already begun to violate the settlement by discriminating against strikers returning to work. Local 1199 Pres. Davis immediately announced that the union would defend every single striker who is unfairly treated. He pointed out that Local 1199 has the right to take any violation of the agreement to arbitration, and every grievance will be pressed through to arbitration if that is necessary to make the managements live up to their word.

Terms of the settlement cover not only the seven struck hospitals—Mount Sinai, Beth Israel, Bronx Hospital, Beth David, Lenox Hill, Brooklyn Jewish and Flower-Fifth Avenue—but also will cover any one of the 81 hospitals where the workers organize into Local 1199 and elect their own representatives.

The agreement provides the following terns:

1. No workers will receive less than $40 a week (which comes to $173 a month). No worker will receive less than a $2 a week raise, and in most cases the raise will be bigger, running as high as $17 a week in some cases.

2. The work week will be 5 days a week, 40 hours a week.

3. Time and a half will be paid for overtime.

4. Wherever the workers are organized in Local 1199, they have the right to take up grievances through their own elected representatives of Local 1199. And if the union representative cannot settle the grievance with the hospital management, an impartial arbitrator will make the final decision. Never again—wherever the workers are organized in Local 1199—will management have the final say as to whether a worker is fired, or demoted, or anything else.

5. Wherever the workers are organized in Local 1199, they can present requests for wage increases and other benefits every year through their elected representatives to a committee which includes public members. At least three of the six public members must approve the wage rates and other conditions decided upon. Never again will the managements have the final say on how much you should earn, or how little.

6. The first review of wage rates and job classifications takes place next October. Wherever the workers are organized in Local 1199, they are assured of representation to set job classifications which will guarantee that they are properly paid for the work they do. This is important for all hospital workers, but especially for x-ray and lab technicians, social workers and clerical workers.

7. The agreement clearly states that every employee has the right to join the union and remain a member of the union; and that no employee will be discriminated against for being a union member.

Accomplishments—But Only the Beginning

These are great accomplishments for so short a time, but they are only the beginning in the hospitals of New York. Because of the fight put up by the strikers and their union, Local 1199, the eyes of the entire city—and in fact the entire country—were on the hospital workers and the terribly low pay they received. For the first time, people learned about wages of $32, $34 and $36 a week, no time and a half for overtime, long hours and no unemployment insurance.

Many improvements have already been made and promises made, but through Local 1199 hospital workers have a guarantee that promises will be kept—and that progress will be made steadily to bring up the wages that are still very low. Through their union, hospital workers proved that they have the courage to fight for their rights. The managements used to treat hospital workers like dirt, but wherever the workers organize solidly in Local 1199, things will be changed. Management now has respect for the fighters of Local 1199. They will have respect for their workers wherever they organize in Local 1199 and elect their representatives.

1199 Hospital News, July 9, 1959.

5. ONE BIG UNION ESTABLISHED FOR ALL HOSPITAL WORKERS: LOCAL 1199 HOSPITAL DIVISION, AFL-CIO

The powerful Hospital Division of Local 1199—with thousands of members who have come through a tough and victorious strike as a base—has now been set up as a functioning, active organization.

These workers understand that Local 1199 has been able to win substantial improvements for every hospital worker. They recognize that no other union has accomplished anything for hospital workers; that the “vultures” who did little else but pass out leaflets are now attempting to divide the workers and prevent them from achieving what is needed now—one big, united union of hospital workers, Local 1199.

At the meeting June 22 which settled the strike, Local 1199 President Leon Davis announced that the hospital workers will now run their own organization, although he will continue to give it leadership, as he has since the organizing drive began in the hospitals. However, he said, the organizers who had been “on loan” from the Drug Division of Local 1199 during the strike will now return to their duties in that division.

President Davis said that leading strikers were being added to the staff that has been directing the organizing drive, and together they would make up the top leaders who would continue the big job of organizing all voluntary hospital workers in New York. As the campaign expands, and more workers are organized, additional leaders will be brought on the staff from the ranks of hospital workers, he said.

The Hospital Division will function as a separate part of Local 1199, Davis said, with its finances coming from the dues of the hospital workers themselves. Dues for hospital workers are $3 a month, of which 50 cents is paid for a life insurance policy of $500 for each member during the first year and $750 in the second year of membership.

Membership cards for Hospital Division members will be issued every month. When a member pays his $3 dues at the union headquarters nearest his hospital, or at the main Local 1199 headquarters at 300 West 45th Street, he will be given the membership card for that month, which will show that he is a paid-up member.

1199 Hospital News, July 9, 1959.

6. MORE HOSPITALS ORGANIZING INTO LOCAL 1199

The campaign to build one great big union of 30,000 hospital workers in Local 1199 is moving ahead at a fast pace as the message of unionism goes out to more and more thousands of workers in many hospitals. The best organizers for 1199 are the workers in the seven hospitals where the historic strike took place. They have been handing out 1199 Hospital News and “talking union” to workers in dozens of hospitals, with good results.

Here are developments in some of the newer hospitals being organized into Local 1199:

Organizer Elliott Godoff reports three more hospitals in Upper Manhattan either with majorities organized, or about to be:

Daughters of Israel: The results of organizing the overwhelming majority of the 125 employees into 1199 are: A $1 an hour rate ($173 a month) is now in effect, as well as the 5-day, 40-hour week and time and a half for overtime. In this hospital rates were $108 and $110 a month for 44 hours a week. Godoff said the union would see to it that the hospital stops the 6-day week which it is still maintaining for some workers, and will discuss with the management the charges for 3 meals a day. The workers want to stop eating meals at the hospital. A committee has been elected to represent all departments.

Joint Disease: Workers here are taking advantage of the strike settlement to set up their organization as part of 1199, so that they will be represented by elected persons for grievances and other matters. Although the hospital is paying the $40 a week minimum and meeting other conditions of the settlement, it is not yet paying time and a half for overtime. The union has asked workers who put in overtime to bring their paychecks to the union office at 1421 Madison Ave., so that this can be corrected.

In the Bronx, Organizer Ted Mitchell reports:

Mount Morris Park Hospital has been organized, and the management has agreed to the $1 an hour rate and other conditions. Wages here were from $32 to $38 a week. The workers are becoming full-fledged members of 1199 by electing their representatives and taking out their July membership cards. Chief Steward is Ella Scott. Other stewards are Leotha Becknell, Bernice Godfrey, Luevena Sanders and Joyce Alvarenga.

In Brooklyn, Organizer Horace Small reports:

St. Johns Episcopal Hospital: The organizing drive is sweeping through the hospital, with entire departments signing up. Wages here are $32 and $34 a week for 40 and 44 hours, with no time and a half for overtime. Meetings of the workers are electing stewards for each department.

Lutheran Medical: The organizing drive here is doing very well as the workers sign up to improve wages as low as $32 a week.

1199 Hospital News, July 23, 1959.

7. STRIKE SETTLEMENT SETS STAGE FOR ORGANIZING DRIVE TO BUILD STRONG 1199 IN HOSPITALS

The most dramatic fight conducted by the labor movement in the past 30 years, the strike of 3,000 workers at seven voluntary hospitals under the leadership of ‘1199,’ ended on June 22 after 46 hard-fought days on the picketline with a victory for hospital workers throughout the city.

The end came at an inspiring and enthusiastic mass meeting of the strikers at the Hotel Diplomat where they cheered a report on the terms of the settlement worked out at City Hall meetings leased on proposals of Mayor Wagner’s appointed committee.

Terms of the settlement, reported to the strikers by 1199 President Leon J. Davis, cover not only the seven struck hospitals but will apply to any one of the city’s 81 voluntary hospitals where the workers organize into 1199 and elect their own representatives.

These terms provide:

1. A $40 a week minimum wage, raising the incredibly low pay scales of $30, $32, and $38 a week and a minimum raise of $2 a week. In most cases, workers will receive raises of $5, $10 and in some instances as high as $17 a week.

2. A 5-day, 40-hour week, with time and a half for overtime. Many workers put in 44 hours and longer work weeks before the strike; few received overtime pay.

3. A review of job classifications, wage ranges, sick leave and holidays on October 1, and annual reviews thereafter. A Review Board, made up of six hospital representatives and six public members appointed by the Chief Justice of the State Court of Appeals was established. At least three of the public members must agree with whatever wages and conditions are established, thereby giving greater weight and influence to their views than those of the hospitals representatives.

4. A grievance procedure which permits a worker to choose a union representative to speak for him with hospital management and provides also for arbitration of any unresolved disputes.

5. Reinstatement of all strikers to their jobs.

The settlement was interpreted in the press and labor circles generally as a major victory for the strikers. Pres. Davis hailed the terms as “back-door recognition,” and stated in press and television interviews that “we will be at the front door soon.” He noted that the hospital trustees had earlier vowed that they would never recognize and deal with representatives of the union; that they would never rehire the strikers (who had been “fired” repeatedly during the strike); and they would never surrender their “right” to make all decisions on wages, working conditions, and grievances in the hospitals.

Davis paid tribute to the strikers for conducting “a heroic struggle that had won the respect and admiration of the entire labor movement and the community at large, and awakened the city to the brutal oppression of hospital workers.” He also expressed the profound thanks of the strikers to Central Labor Council AFL-CIO President Harry Van Arsdale for “mobilizing the support of hundreds of thousands of trade unionists to this great crusade and making it the concern of the entire labor movement.

Among the scores of unions that “had contributed funds, food and forces to aid the strikers, Davis paid particular tribute to District 65 whose Organizational Director Bill Michelson and participated in City Hall talks and which had loaned 14 full time staff members to ‘1199’ during the strike. The members of ‘65’ collected over $10,000 for strike relief.

Hardly had the strike ended when a new wave of organization was in full progress with hundreds of hospital workers in all parts of the city joining the union. Encouraged by the important gains made as a result of the tremendous fight in the struck hospitals, large numbers of other workers signed up in ‘1199.’

At one hospital, Daughters of Jacob, all but a few of the 150 workers joined the union and an ‘1199’ committee met with management to work out representation rights. The $40 minimum and 5-day, 40-hour week went into effect early this month bringing wage increases of $20 to $40 a month.

Another important development was the union’s announcement of the establishment of the Professional, Technical and Office Section of the Hospital Division, seeking to enroll x-ray, lab technicians, social workers and office workers as a prelude to a campaign to win improved standards for these employees. Despite stories in the press about “non-professional workers on strike,” large numbers of professionals took part.

Concrete plans are also under way to set up the Hospital Division as a self-sustaining part of the union, with its own staff and all other independent features. Dues collections from the hospital workers are scheduled to begin with July and Pres. Davis announced that a full discussion of all phases of the organizational structure of the Hospital Division will take place at membership meetings in September.

Commenting on the results of the strike at a union-wide membership meeting on contract preparations, Davis declared: “These workers deeply appreciate the contributions 1199ers have made in building a union in the hospitals. Every 1199er can be proud that he has won the everlasting admiration and gratitude not only of the hospital workers but of the entire labor movement, locally and nationally.

“By extending aid and assistance to these workers, 1199ers have helped expose the unholy alliance responsible for inhuman wages and working conditions in our hospitals. These workers are now engaged in a campaign to build a powerful organization, to stand on their own feet, maintain themselves financially and bring the benefits of organization to others like themselves. They will forever be grateful to you in ‘1199,’ and you can say with pride, “I was one of those responsible for helping the hospital workers.”

You have demonstrated through your aid to these exploited workers that you believe in the best traditions of our nation, that we are our brother’s keeper, that wherever suffering and indignity exist we will not turn aside but will join in the fight to eliminate injustice.

“This strike was the most sincere and most decent thing that has taken place in this city in some 25 to 30 years. It makes me feel prouder of our union than ever before. People who think that we went into this fight looking for personal glory are way off base. They can only see things reflected in their own small images. Our union has emerged from this fight as a great and wonderful organization. We have won thousands of new friends, practical friends who can be counted on to help all of us move forward to join in the drive to make ours a better and finer nation.”

1199 Drug News, (July-August, 1959):9.

8. THE CHALLENGE OF BRONXVILLE: 1199 TAKES IT UP WITH ALL-OUT DRIVE TO WIN LAWRENCE HOSP. STRIKE

The seven-week-old strike at Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, N.Y., has become a challenge to all members of Local 1199. The challenge comes from a stubborn and aloof management with contempt for the human as well as the union rights of its employees and from the wealthy and exclusive Bronxville community, where Negroes and Jews are not welcome as citizens and only tolerated as workers.

In the face of this challenge, Pres. Leon Davis told the Hospital Delegate Assembly, “The one thing we can do is to bring masses of our members into Bronxville, to show them they can’t ignore us and our problems. It is the one thing we must do to shake the hospital management out of its plantation approach to its workers.”

The numbers who have come to Saturday demonstrations during the past few weeks have obviously not been enough. Davis said, in calling for a really massive outpouring for Saturday, March 6. If necessary, he said, massive turnouts would be repeated Saturday after Saturday until the Lawrence Hospital management agrees to a fair settlement.

The strikers, even after pounding the pavement for seven weeks in some miserable weather, are determined to carry on the fight. The civil rights movement, including all top national leaders as well as local leaders, has strengthened its support. The metropolitan press, including the New York Times, the Amsterdam News and Journal-American, and radio stations WMCA and WINS, have given strong editorial support.

The Lawrence Hospital workers’ battle, like some others in the history of 1199’s Hospital Division, is having and will have results that are important to many more hospital workers than those at Lawrence. Under the pressure of the battle of Bronxville, Governor Rockefeller has announced his support for legislation extending collective bargaining rights to hospital workers all over New York State. Vital support has also been assured by the leadership of the Democratic majority in the State Legislature, which has before it the Berking-Sutton Bill which implements extension of labor law coverage.

These developments recall the struggle of Beth-El Hospital workers in Brooklyn and the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital workers several years ago. It was through the determination of these workers that the first historic breakthrough in hospital employees’ union rights was won.

The Bronxville strike began on Jan. 16 when the Lawrence Hospital management refused to recognize 1199 as the union the workers have chosen to represent them. The hospital is located in one of the wealthiest and most fashionable communities in the United States. It is also a lily-white community, which only permits Negroes to come and work there, mainly at the more menial jobs. And Bronxville’s citizens like to pretend that the poverty wages, poor working conditions, and discrimination in their midst just don’t exist.

But even in Bronxville there are some who couldn’t remain silent about these conditions. Mr. and Mrs. John Richardson, Jr., and Mr. and Mrs. Harold Turner are four such people.

The Richardsons and Turners have joined the strikers on the picketline, invited them to their homes and organized the Concerned Citizens Committee in support of the strikers’ demands.

Both couples have withstood countless threatening phone calls in the middle of the night and other abuses and insults. The Richardsons’ family doctor, who is also an attending physician at Lawrence, told them that he will no longer care for their five children because of the parents’ support of the strikers.

CORE, NAACP, Negro American Labor Council, Urban League and church groups from neighboring New Rochelle, Yonkers, Mt. Vernon and White Plains have also rallied to support the Lawrence strikers. These forces are being coordinated by Joseph T. Jackson, head of the Westchester NALC.

Actor-playwright-1199er Ossie Davis, who lives in New Rochelle, and Wyatt T. Walker of Yonkers, former assistant to Rev. Martin Luther King, are co-chairmen of another support group, the Citizens Committee to Aid the Lawrence Hospital Strikers.

On five straight Saturday afternoons 1199ers and others have traveled to Bronxville to participate in mass demonstrations. They came face-to-face with hundreds of armed and helmeted cops, sheriffs and troopers, imported from all the surrounding town. The police were stationed in the streets, on top of the hospital and on the roofs of other buildings.

As the demonstrators have marched, hundreds strong, through the streets of Bronxville, they chanted, “No contract, no work” and “Jim Crow must go.” Black and white supporters walking hand-in-hand sang “We Shall Not Be Moved” and “We Shall Overcome.”

The curious and upset population of Bronxville lined the streets and stared. The town had never seen anything like it before.

1199 Hospital News, 7(February, 1965): 1.

9. THE BRONXVILLE STRIKE

Content removed at rightsholder’s request.

New York Times, March 5, 1965.

10. TRUCE IN BRONXVILLE

Content removed at rightsholder’s request.

New York Post, March 14, 1965.

11. BALLAD OF THE BRONXVILLE HOSPITAL STRIKE

Let me tell you the story

Of a union bound for glory—

Local 1199.

Amidst abundance and bounty

Up in Westchester County,

We collided with the color line.

Did we finally win?

Yes, we certainly did win—

And we know what the future’s like:

When freedom’s cause will ring out,

You’ll hear hospital workers sing out

The Ballad of the Bronxville strike.

First the Board of Directors

Said, “How can you expect us

To overcome our grief and rage?

You’re brutal and you’re callous,

And you’re full of spite and malice—

And besides you want a living wage.”

Did we have to give in?

Yes, they finally gave in—

But listen well before you shed a tear:

Their average Board member

Made more last December

Than the workers earned the whole damned year.

Just when our hopes were fallin’

Two fine couples came a-callin’

And we made a tremendous find.

With the Richardsons and Turners

Operatin’ on all burners,

They rekindled our faith in mankind.

Did we finally win?

Yes, we certainly did win—

We had the civil rights movement in our ranks.

With support behind our backs an’

With a guy like Joseph Jackson—

He’s worth more than all the dough in Bronxville’s banks.

We had what it took to save us

In two fellows named Davis—

I mean Ossie and Leon J.

Though they’re differently shaded,

Otherwise, they’re aptly mated:

They’re both fighting for a better day.

Did we finally win?

Yes, we certainly did win

Because the strikers’ morale was fine.

With Godoff, Nicholas and Black,

They turned the strikebreakers back

And they held fast to the picket line.

Then the gals from Sarah Lawrence

All expressed their abhorrence

At this medieval labor plan.

Lookin’ spruced up and pretty,

They paraded through the city—

They were equal to any man.

Did we finally win?

Yes, we certainly did win—

We had both justice and femininity.

Then that bright press agent, Foner

Brought the boys up fron Iona,

And they marched hand in hand for liberty.

Well at last we were able

To get around the table

With the hospital hierarchy.

While the pickets did the walkin,’

Phil Sipser did the talkin’

Harry Weinstock kept the big wheels moving free.

Did we finally win?

Yes, we certainly did win

When we pledged a thousand marchers, white and black.

We made plans for assembly—

We got white-lipped and trembly,

And they took all our strikers back.

Now we’ve got our pressure steady

And the Legislature’s ready

To fulfill our Bill of Rights throughout the state.

In our trade union jargon,

We’ll collectively bargain,

And they’re goin’ to negotiate.

Are we goin’ to win?

Yes, we certainly will win—

We’ll set the hospital workers free.

From Albany to Yonkers,

We’ve a formula that conquers—

It’s black and white unite for victory.

Like some great labor struggles of the past whose fighting memory is alive today in songs about them, the eight-week-long hospital strike of Bronxville will long be remembered in this song by Henry Foner. A brother of 1199 Exec. Sec. Moe Foner, Henry is president of the N.Y. Fur Joint Board of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union, AFL-CIO. The words are set to the tune of the The Ballad of the M.T.A., a song about the Boston transit strike of some years ago.

1199 Hospital News, 7 (March, 1965): 1.

12. FOR SAM SMITH, HOSPITAL ORDERLY: A BATTLE WHOSE TIME HAS COME

By John M. McClintock

We was making 40 cents an hour, working 12 hours at a stretch. And, man, I couldn’t cut it. I couldn’t make it with four kids.”

The frail 58-year-old Negro was talking the other day about his job in a Baltimore nursing home in 1962. The workers had organized a strike, only to return to their jobs a few days later. Nobody had enough money to stay out.

“We had nothing. We got nothing. We was nothing,” he said.

The worker’s comment is typical of the plight of the nation’s 2.5 million hospital and nursing home employees. And it partially explains the civil rights fervor that has characterized the recent union organizing drives at hospitals in the city. The workers are the dishwashers, nurses’ aides, cooks, attendants and so-called “menials” whom one sees but never really recognizes.

The television soap operas do not thrill us with the exploits of Sam Smith, hospital orderly. The romance and fire is reserved for doctors and nurses.

Everyone knows

The orderlies and dishwashers are essentily only to the unromantic, unmentionable processes of health care: the dirty linen, the bed pans, the scraping of plates, the pushing of wheelchairs. These are the lowest jobs, jobs that attract workers from the lowest rung of the socio-economic ladder—the Negroes, the Puerto Ricans, the Mexican-Americans.

When the Johns Hopkins Hospital talks about its workers as “employees whom we will continue to treat them with dignity and respect,” everyone knows they are talking about Negroes. And when New York-based Local 1199E of the Hospital and Nursing Home Employees Union (AFL-CIO) began its Baltimore drive last April, everyone knew that its appeal was to Negroes.

The union was then in one of the greatest battles of the American labor movement. It had confronted two public hospitals in Charleston, S.C., with a strike by Negro women hospital workers. The strike, which lasted 113 days, involved the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and for months television screens in the nation were filled with pictures of Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy marching in support of the workers.

It was not a labor battle in the traditional sense. The union was challenging racism in the home state of Strom Thurmond and Mendel Rivers.¹⁴¹

If the union could win there, it could win anywhere. The same conditions—perhaps to a lesser degree—prevailed in nearly every metropolitan hospital in the country. At stake were the allegiances of the nation’s health-care workers who, for the most part, had never been unionized. These 2.5 million workers are greater in number than the workers in the country’s basic steel industry.

The union victory in Charleston inextricably identified it with the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King, Jr. The union had won a series of tough strikes before in New York City, but this strike—with its curfews and National Guard troops—the flavor of Selma, Ala., of the white establishment beating down on an oppressed minority.

The effect on the organizing drive in Baltimore has been spectacular. In the past eight months, the union has achieved recognition at 5 major hospitals, including the Hopkins, and 14 nursing homes. With 6,000 members, it already has become one of the largest in the state; there are about 11,000 hospital workers in the Baltimore area. The union membership figure also includes nursing home employees whose total number is not known. The four other hospitals that have recognized the union are Lutheran, Maryland General, Franklin Square and Sinai. An election is to be held next week at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center and at the John F. Kennedy Institute for retarded children.

The victories at the hospitals were especially impressive since such nonprofit institutions are exempted from federal collective bargaining laws and they were not required to hold representative elections.

Flown in

But the Charleston message had been unmistakably clear. No one wanted a Charleston in Baltimore. The union was granted its elections.

And in the key election at the Hopkins—the largest, most prestigious hospital in the state—Mrs. King was flown to Baltimore to rally support. The workers subsequently voted overwhelmingly for the union. The handwriting of Martin Luther King, Jr., was on the wall. In only one case, that of tiny North Charles General Hospital, was the union defeated in an election here.

Charleston had been the kickoff to a national organizing campaign that went successively to Baltimore, Durham, N.C., Pittsburgh, Philadelphia-Harrisburg and Dayton, Ohio. Only in Baltimore, however, has the union achieved such open recognition. Two nursing homes have been signed in Philadelphia and a Pittsburgh hospital has recognized the union. The other campaigns are still in the organizing stages.

While much of the union appeal is oriented to minority groups, the union demand for such things as a $100-a-week minimum, improved fringe benefits and job mobility has an equally great appeal. A typical Baltimore hospital worker’s starting wage is about $72 a week—or about $3,744 a year, which is barely above the federal poverty line for a non-farm family of four.

The 22 metropolitan hospitals in the Baltimore area have estimated that the union demands would push up labor costs by $37 million. Hospital officials, though, are not worried so much by the $100 minimum as by the escalator effect it will have in pushing up the wages of other employees.

As a result, for example, the Johns Hopkins Hospital has estimated the rate for a semi-private room would be raised from $51 to $69 a day. The union counters the cost argument with the statement that the workers “are not philanthropists.” The union also says that higher wages insure against a hospital’s normal high rate of turnover among nonprofessional employees and thus reduce training costs.

Implicit in much of the union actions is the threat of another Charleston. At the contract negotiations last week at the Hopkins, Elliott Godoff, the union’s national organizer, warned a state official: “We could make Charleston look like a poker game.”

The union’s organizing drive is being made to expand its base in New York city, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Local 1199 has enjoyed a spectacular growth since its beginning in 1958. In 11 years its membership has increased from 5,500 to 42,500. The local is actually a division of the Retail, Wholesale Drugstore Union which was founded in 1932 by seven Jewish pharmacists in New York. The president of the union is Leon J. Davis, one of the founders.

The drug union, started during the Depression, was instrumental in breaking the color-line for many Negro pharmacists in Harlem, where stores were owned by whites.

The union also opened up to Negroes positions in drugstores that had hitherto been for white only. Negroes were usually hired as porters.

The hospital division was formed in 1958 after the union’s first victory at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx.

After two key 1199 strikes, in 1963 and 1965, the New York State Legislature smoothed the way when it granted unions the right to organize hospital workers who were previously exempted from collective bargaining laws.

Baltimore Sun, December 7, 1969.

13. THE PLIGHT OF HOSPITAL WORKERS

The basic issue at stake in the lengthening struggle here between two hospitals and Local 1199P is the right of working men and women to have union representation and collective bargaining. The minimum hourly wage at Presbyterian-University and Mercy Hospitals is about $1.75 or $70 for a 40-hour week, which is barely above the officially defined poverty level for a breadwinner with a family of four.

The National Union of Hospital & Nursing Home Employes (the “P” in 1199P stands for “Pittsburgh” and distinguishes the local here from the union’s other locals in the South and the East) is aiming for a $2.50-per-hour minimum. That would come out to $100 a week for the approximately 600 service and maintenance unit personnel at Presby and the 650 similar workers involved at Mercy.

The battle over the organization and bargaining rights of workers was, ironically, fought and won largely in Pittsburgh in the first half of this century. But in the ensuing national and state legislation which codified these rights of labor, certain groups—such as hospital and farm workers—were excluded from minimum wage and collective-bargaining guarantees because they were then unorganized and not very vocal. The rationale for excluding hospital workers was that they worked for non-profit institutions.

One result has been that hospital workers have, in general, been helping to subsidize the community’s health establishment by working for lower wages than workers in private-profit enterprises. Hospital boards of directors, often themselves captains of industry and banking who deal with unions in their own fields as a matter of course, have generally been reluctant to grant union recognition to hospital workers and have argued that making salaries competitive with those of workers in private industry would boost the costs of hospital care to patients. This is undoubtedly true. But it is unfair to deny hospital workers—janitors, food preparers, plasterers, painters, etc.—collective bargaining rights and expect them, just because they labor in a non-profit institution, to subsidize indirectly the community’s health care, the costs for which are, after all, the responsibility of the whole community.

Both hospitals should adopt the position taken by the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged here, which was that although it did not believe its workers needed union representation it would not deny them the right to vote on it. (The workers at the Jewish Home and Hospital did, and now Local 1199P represents them). All unions which wish to represent the workers should be welcome on the ballot.

As for the problem of increased costs—which admittedly will arise as a result of the granting of bargaining rights to hospital employes—the hospitals must be preparing now for this later eventuality. They must increase their efforts to curb waste and to achieve greater efficiency. In the case of Presbyterian-University Hospital, the University of Pittsburgh will have to appeal to the state Legislature to help it to meet the higher costs of decent wages for employes. Finally, patient fees must be raised if this is necessary to avoid paying substandard wages. A real effort now to settle the hospital worker dispute on an equitable basis could avoid the confrontations and the suspension of health care services that have occurred in some other cities.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 8, 1970.

14. HOSPITAL WOES

If there is anyone who doesn’t know that hospitals today are in need of more money, he hasn’t been reading the newspapers.

One of the reasons why the city of Pittsburgh’s attempt to impose the “sick tax” on hospitals was so obviously myopic was the fact that these institutions simply do not have excess funds. The tax, since struck down (but being appealed), would have resulted in another hike in already soaring hospital bills.

Another fact; Non-profit hospitals are legally exempt from recognizing employe unions.

At this time in Pittsburgh, however, a strong effort is being made to organize hospital workers. If successful, it will undoubtedly result in wage increases. The hospitals are resisting.

What does one make of it all?

We submit that the right of workers to organize is a basic human right that every corporate entity, profit-making or non-profit, should recognize.

We say this with full sympathy for the economic plight of the hospitals. Wages and fringes may be negotiable, but the right to organize is not, with or without legal support.

To say that unionization would launch a wage-price spiral is not only beside the point; it is also to admit that low wages are, in effect, subsidizing the hospitals. If hospitals are in a bind, (and we believe they are), increased operating revenue should be devised from other sources, not clipped from the paychecks of hospital workers.

It is particularly distressing to see a Catholic hospital refuse to recognize the right of its workers to organize by falling back on the claim that the law does not compel this recognition.

Certainly any Catholic institution—particularly one so overtly concerned with suffering as a hospital—has a higher obligation. That obligation is to operate within the spirit of the social teaching of the Church, and one of the principles consistently articulated in that teaching is the right of workers to organize unions.

This is not just a hospital problem; it is also a community problem. However reluctant the hospitals may be, the right to organize will probably be recognized, wages will increase, and somebody will have to pay. Unless the sick are forced to carry the total burden or be refused care (unthinkable), monies from the public sector will have to be diverted into hospitals.

Perhaps partial relief could also come from a reorganization of priorities by agencies administering private contributions—churches, Community Chest, foundations, etc.

We suggest not only that the hospitals recognize workers’ organizations, but that they also form a strong organization of their own to talk tough to the civic community. If the citizenry wants medical protection, it will have to pay for it—or at least that portion of the cost beyond the reach of the sick.

The economic salvation of hospitals lies in making demands on the community and private charities, not in denying care to the sick or denying the right of workers to organize.

Pittsburgh Catholic, January 9, 1970.

15. PITTSBURGH: HOSPITAL WORKERS FIGHT FOR UNION RIGHTS

The big labor story in Pittsburgh this winter has been the refusal of millionaire hospital trustees to extend the elementary right to vote for the union of their choice to $1.75-an-hour hospital workers.

It’s a story that will get even bigger, because the 2,500 members of Local 1199P are determined to get the simple right to vote.

In Pittsburgh, a cradle of the labor movement where workers for almost 40 years have taken for granted the right to choose or reject a union at the ballot box, Presbyterian and Mercy Hospitals refused that right to 1199P last December. Presbyterian and Mercy are major Pittsburgh hospitals employing a total of almost 1,500 service and maintenance workers.

National Hospital Union Sec.-Treas. Henry Nicholas, who is leading the Pittsburgh organizing drive, made clear immediately after the refusals what caused them:

“The plain truth is that the vast majority of the workers are members of Local 1199P. They are sick and tired of working for poverty wages. They are fed up with being treated as second class citizens. They are determined to have a union, and they are prepared to take any and all steps necessary to win this basic right.”

Pittsburgh hospital workers repeatedly have pointed out that, while the last thing they want is a hospital strike, they fear management’s unyielding position may lead to one.

And, if one comes, the workers add, they will win it. One reason is their desire to win the $100 minimum attained by 1199 in New York, Baltimore and elsewhere.

Helen Lyles, waitress in the Presbyterian gift shop and chairman of the hospital’s 1199P organizing committee, reflects this determination. “People here are really getting together even though there’s been lots of intimidation. They’re ready for anything,” she said.

Mrs. Lyles knows about intimidation. After 20 Presbyterian gift shop workers were locked out January 5 for handing out leaflets, she was arrested the following day while leading a group demanding to see Administrator Edward Noroian. The charges were later dropped. The hospital also has harassed union members by suspending four dietary workers for wearing union buttons, obtaining an injunction against picketing and leafleting and trying to label the union as a bunch of outside agitators.

The outside agitator charge is put to rest by Presbyterian Co-chairman Labrone Epps, a plasterer. “1199 is a beautiful union because here the local people do their own thing,” says Epps, who adds he became interested in the union when he saw plasterers working in private industry were earning twice as much as he was.

Presbyterian workers reacted to the hospital’s injunction with an orderly evening march to the hospital January 7 by several hundred workers in weather that was two below. Despite an unusually bitter winter, 1199P organizers have criss-crossed the city, signing up large numbers of workers at over 20 institutions. Among them are St. Francis, Western Psychiatric, Allegheny General, Magee, Montefiore and Uniontown Hospitals.

When management granted an election at Jewish Home and Hospital, workers there voted in 1199P January 5 by a 157-40 margin.

Presbyterian and Mercy conducted a boycott of their hospital cafeterias January 15 that 99 percent effective. It honored the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by protesting the hospitals’ refusal to grant such a basic freedom as the right to an election. Black and white workers cooperated in making the boycott a success. On the eve of Dr. King’s birthday Presbyterian assistant housekeeping manager Archie Brooks resigned and joined the 1199P staff, commenting, “I can no longer be associated with an institution that denies the basic freedom for which Dr. King lived and died.”

City-wide support for hospital workers’ right to an election has mushroomed since the organizing drive began last October. Support has come from religious leaders like Pittsburgh’s Roman Catholic Bishop Vincent M. Leonard and the city’s Presbyterian clergymen; from many of the city’s major unions; from a complete cross-section of civil rights and community groups; from major newspapers like the Post-Gazette and the Pittsburgh Catholic; and from students, professors, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Americans for Democratic Action.

Leading representatives from many of these groups joined to form the Committee for Justice for Pittsburgh Hospital Workers, chaired by University of Pittsburgh professor David Montgomery.

Over 100 1199ers lobbied at the state Capitol in Harrisburg January 26 for a bill that would require hospitals to hold union representation elections like other employers. The next day in Presbyterian Hospital, x-ray escort Mary Woodson, noticing the patient she was wheeling into x-ray was State Sen. Jack McGregor, went right on with the lobbying, getting Senator McGregor’s assurance he would vote for the bill.

Chairman of the Mercy Hospital organizing committee is Woodrow Frasier, Jr., Mercy committee member, Thelma Lewis, a $1.75-an-hour housekeeper and mother of eight, says, “If it comes to a strike we’ll go out and stay out. We need the union.”

Mrs. Lewis recalls registering a complaint with a nun at the Catholic hospital and being told, “You have no rights here.”

“I don’t see any religion in that,” says Mrs. Lewis. “That’s why we’re all pulling for the union here.”

1199 Drug and Hospital News, 5 (February, 1970): 11–15.

16. BATTLE IN PITTSBURGH

By Dan North

A six-day strike at Presbyterian Hospital brought Local 1199P representation a step closer for Pittsburgh hospital workers March 26 when management agreed conditionally to an election.

“1199P is in Pittsburgh to stay,” announced National Hospital Union Sec.-Treas. Henry Nicholas at a press conference at strike headquarters announcing the settlement.

The sole issue in the strike was the right of Presbyterian’s 650 service and maintenance workers to an election to choose their own union.

A similar strike by 1199P for the right to an election was in progress at Uniontown (Pa.) Hospital as this magazine went to press.

A key part of the Pittsburgh settlement was management’s promise to support pending state collective bargaining legislation for hospitals. The hospital agreed not to obstruct a speedy election once the bill is passed. It also returned striking workers to their jobs without reprisals, despite earlier threats that strikers out for five or more days would be fired. National Hospital Union Exec. Vice Pres. Eliott Godoff flew in from New York as strike tension mounted and led the negotiating efforts that brought about the settlement.

Jubilation by workers over the settlement was tempered by their realization that should the legislation not pass, Local 1199P will be forced into further action.

The Pittsburgh strike followed a pattern that led to the organization by Local 1199 of 40,000 hospital workers in the New York area. Strikes in New York City in 1952 and Bronxville, N.Y. in 1965 led to passage of state laws that made representation elections mandatory in hospitals.

The Pittsburgh strike, through focusing public attention on the plight of underpaid hospital workers and on the need for collective bargaining legislation covering them, paralleled the New York experience.

Important factors:

The dramatic appearance of Mrs. Coretta King, honorary chairman of the National Hospital Union, before a March 19 strike rally of 2,000 people. “It is depressing that in the year 1970, here in Pittsburgh, the cradle of the American labor movement, low paid hospital workers are being compelled to strike for the elementary right to have a union,” said Mrs. King.

The willingness of 91 strikers and strike supporters to go to jail March 23 to concentrate public attention on the strike issue of the right to an election. The 91 arrests came during mass early morning picketing by 400 demonstrators protesting an anti-picketing injunction issued by Judge Gwilym Price, Jr., son of a Presbyterian Hospital trustee. Among those arrested were Father John O’Malley of St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church. Rank and file strike leader Lynwood McBride, along with National Hospital Union Vice Pres. John Black, spent three days in Allegheny County Jail. The others arrested were released the same day with $15 fines.

A 26-hour sit-in by Org. Kay Tillow and eight workers in the office of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Corp. Director David Hill focused attention on just who the Presbyterian Hospital trustees are. Hill is one of 26 trustees whose corporate affiliations read like a Who’s Who in industry—U.S. Steel, Mellon National Bank, Westinghouse and other big names in Pittsburgh business.

Vital support for the strike came from clergymen, professors, black community leaders, students, the Pennsylvania Nurses Assn., the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers and other local unions, and from the editorial page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the city’s only morning daily newspaper, which urged the hospital to grant an election.

Finally, the strike could not have been won without the dedication of strikers, most of them women making $1.75 per hour who braved picket duty through daily rain or snow. “We didn’t come out here to lose,” said striking nurses’ aide Henrietta Goree on a wet and freezing 5:30 a.m. picketline on the steep Desoto St. entrance to Presbyterian.

In Uniontown, workers led by Black and volunteer organizer Walter Tillow struck February 26 in a soft coal mining community with a trade union tradition so strong one striking nurses’ aide said. “The first good thing my mother-in-law said about me in 23 years was when she found I was out on strike.”

Pickets from 1199P shut down the businesses run by four of the hospital’s trustees. These included the long shaft of Robena Number 2 mine, the country’s largest coal mine and a part of the U.S. Steel empire, where some 200 United Mine Workers refused to cross the 1199P line.

Striker Delbert Livengood, an elder in the local Christian Church and a hospital custodian for 12 years who now earns $302 per month, said: “This is actually a fight between rich and poor. The hospital trustees control this town and the men who work in the hospital need two jobs to stay alive.”

It was, as Mrs. King said, “part and parcel of the struggle going on everywhere for dignity, justice and human rights.”

And the meaning of the strike is that for hospital workers throughout Pennsylvania, 1199P is indeed here to stay.

1199 Drug and Hospital News, 5 (April, 1970): 14–15.

THE STRUGGLE IN CHARLESTON

17. HUGH A. BRIMM, OFFICE OF CIVIL RIGHTS, TO DR. WILLIAM M. McCORD, PRESIDENT OF MEDICAL COLLEGE OF SOUTH CAROLINA, SEPTEMBER 19, 1968

Dear Dr. McCord:

Unforeseen circumstances prevented me from writing to you on the schedule I promised. I sincerely hope the delay has not been too inconvenient for you. I apologize for the length of this communication, but I am attempting to spell out all of our findings and recommendations as clearly and concisely as possible.

Our review was concentrated in three major areas. They were, a) Equal Educational Opportunities, b) Equal Health Opportunities, and c) Equal Employment Oppotrunities. I will list both our findings and recommendations for each of these areas of investigation.

Equal Educational Opportunities

Findings:

1. The Medical College of South Carolina had not established an affirmative program designed to attract Negro students.

2. There was no systematic or comprehensive recruitment program for predominantly Negro schools.

3. The minority community had not been informed of loans or scholarships that were available to them.

4. There were segregated housing advertisements on the college’s bulletin boards.

5. Students were placed with practicing physicians for the purpose of receiving on-the-job training. It appears from reports that some of these physicians practiced racial discrimination.

6. The Medical College Hospital is owned and operated by the Medical College of Charleston. Physicians at the hospital have faculty status—all are white. In order to practice medicine in the hospital, physicians must be members of a specialty board. No Negro physicians in Charleston County are members of a specialty board. There are several Negro physicians in Charleston.

7. The School of Pharmacy places students for “apprenticeship” training with some pharmacies that engage in discriminatory practices.

8. The fraternities in the School of Pharmacy discriminate racially in membership requirements.

9. The School of Allied Sciences has affiliations with white schools only. This policy tends to limit the potential of the Negro students of the State of South Carolina.

Recommendations:

1. That the Medical College catalogue, brochures and other printed promotional material and applications clearly indicate the nondiscrimatory policy of the college.

2. That comparable action be taken to recruit Negro students to pursue a medical education at the Medical College. These steps should include:

a. Broad dissemination of information as to the availability of a medical education, and the availability of financial assistance to undergraduate colleges and high school counselors (especially to Negro colleges and high schools) in the state, and to Negro colleges throughout the eastern and southeastern states.

b. Due to the history of discrimination, special efforts should be directed toward the pre-med advisors at Negro undergraduate colleges and possibly high schools to help motivate more Negroes and minority group members toward a medical career.

c. The Medical College might consider developing a recruitment team from all of its related schools (e.g., Pharmacy, Nursing, Allied Sciences, etc.) which could make concentrated recruitment efforts, some of which would be directed specifically toward minority students. Various techniques should be developed which would have considerable potential for recruitment of minority group students including:

(1) Contact with Negro professional, civic, and social groups to elicit their help in recruitment, and In dispelling the image of the Medical College as a segregated institution.

(2) Promotion of visits to the Medical College by Negro pre-med students over the state.

(3) Visits to Negro college campuses, by Medical College staff.

(4) Sponsorship of health-related career days, especially for Charleston County High Schools.

3. That the College assure itself that no arrangements are made between the college and private physicians for the purpose of teaching students when the physician discriminates on the basis of race in his practice.

4. That the Medical College assure itself that no notices for rental or sale of living quarters are posted or lists kept by the College unless such housing is available to all students without regard to their race.

5. That the School of Pharmacy assure itself that every pharmacy to which they refer a student for work in an “apprenticeship” arrangement, will accept those who are referred without regard to race.

6. That the fraternities that have engaged in racially discriminatory policies and practices be informed of the College’s posture on civil rights and asked to change. If they do not comply, that the organization should be banned from campus by the administration.

7. That the School of Allied Sciences establish affiliations with Negro colleges in the state immediately in order to give all students of South Carolina an equal educational opportunity.

Since the School of Nursing has not previously enrolled non-white students, the following steps are recommended:

1. There are several non-white persons who have applied and have been admitted to study practical nursing. Persons in this category should be screened carefully as potentials for full professional training as graduate nurses.

2. That predominantly Negro schools be informed of the opportunities and policies in the School of Nursing.

3. That continuous attempts be made to identify students with potential at the high school level. Local Negro school counselors can be of great help in this endeavor.

Equal Health Opportunities

Findings:

1. There were no written nondiscriminatory policy statements.

2. It was alleged that the clerk at the admission office called the floor and gave the nurse the race of the patient, and asked what bed assignment should be made. This suggests that room assignments might follow a racial pattern.

3. We were informed in the community that patients were shifted around to achieve a bi-racial mix in anticipation of the H.E.W. visit. When white patients complained about rooming with Negroes, the Negroes were moved.

4. No comprehensive or systematic methods have been used to notify all of the people of Charleston (both Negro and white) of the hospital’s nondiscriminatory policy..

5. Mr. Porter, who was assigned the responsibility for civil rights, has not developed any kind of affirmative action program. The subject of civil rights has not been a formal part of the staff meeting agenda.

6. It was alleged that courtesy titles are seldom used and staff members are often rude to Negro patients at the clinics.

7. Service (non-paying) patients and private patients are separated and are alleged to be treated differently.

8. It was alleged that senior medical students attend to private patients, while junior medical students attend service patients.

9. There is some degree of desegregation in the wards, but the separation of the service and private patients has created an apparent imbalance.

10. From interviews and observation, private patients appear to have received better nursing and other care than service patients. The majority of the private patients are white.

11. Private patients have three visiting periods per day; service patients have only one. It was alleged that on one floor, a white patient’s sister was allowed to visit while the Negro patient’s sister was not allowed to visit.

12. It was also alleged that husbands of Negro patients are not allowed in the labor room, while husbands of white patients are.

13. In many parts of the hospital, it was found that there are essentially “dual” restroom facilities, although “white” and “colored” signs have been removed. It is apparent that these signs have only recently been removed because outlines of the old signs are still visible. This suggests the possibility that old customs are still being practiced in the use of these facilities.

14. In the out-patient clinic, patients appear to be seen on a first-come, first—served basis, however Negro patients are told to wait in Room 18, while white patients are told to wait in Room 53. However, it was alleged that when an observer who appeared to be concerned with civil rights procedures was seen near the admitting station, patients were told to wait in either Room 18 or Room 53.

15. White staff members were observed acting in what appeared to be a rude manner to Negro out-patients. Courtesy titles were not being used.

Recommendations:

1. That policy statements regarding nondiscriminatory practices be written and widely distributed immediately.

2. That room assignments be made at the admitting desk without regard to the patient’s race.

3. That a daily racial census be taken and forwarded to the Office for Civil Rights each week for one month, and thereafter upon request.

4. Since everyone will not read distributed material, and since it is the responsibility of the administration to see to it that everyone understands his/her responsibility, it is recommended that seminars be conducted which include the following topics: (a) specifics of the application of Title VI to hospitals; (b) Title 45; (c) H.E.W. guidelines; (d) equal opportunity in hospitals and all health programs; (e) the Federal dollar and nondiscrimination; (f) the Civil Rights Act of 1964; and (g) civil rights obligations of staff members at all levels. A schedule of when and where these meetings are held should be kept for your record.

5. That discussions of developments in civil rights accomplishments be placed regularly on the agenda at staff meetings.

6. That all staff be specifically instructed about the necessity for the use of courtesy titles. The breech of this policy should be dealt with severely by the administration.

7. That the quality of service be equalized immediately as between private and service patients.

8. That waiting rooms be truly integrated.

9. That staff restrooms be posted as such and all staff be advised accordingly.

Equal Employment Opportunities

Findings:

1. Bulletin boards did not have Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) posters.

2. Personnel policy statements did not reflect contractor’s equal opportunity posture.

3. There was no Equal Employment Opportunity Officer.

4. Advertisements for employment do not reflect that the facility is an equal opportunity employer.

5. Recruitment and employment sources were not informed of contractor’s posture on EEO.

6. The old established personnel policies and procedures precluded affirmative action, which was needed to guarantee equal employment opportunity.

7. Interview reports are evaluated by a clerk who does not have personnel experience.

8. Applicants are given a written test that has not been validated. For some job categories, the test is irrelevant.

9. Some job descriptions require in-house experience for jobs that minorities have not had the opportunity to get. There is no training program to fill this gap.

10. Department heads and supervisory staff are not conversant with the contractor’s position regarding equal employment opportunity.

11. Employment patterns clearly suggest a stratification of employees with regard to race, i.e., administrative and professional positions are occupied by whites; nonwhites are concentrated in service and non-skilled categories.

12. The application for employment requires each applicant to submit a photo.

13. The contractor (Medical College of Charleston) has not taken appropriate steps to insure the compliance under Executive Order 11246 by the company building the new addition to the Medical College.

Recommendations:

1. That there be a proper display of posters at key points such as main lobby, personnel office, and all employes bulletin boards.

2. That there be put in writing a firm equal employment opportunity policy statement to be disseminated to all department heads and supervisory personnel.

3. That an equal employment opportunity officer be appointed. This officer will assume the duties of, (a) disseminating information concerning equal employment opportunity; (b) keeping surveillance over the implementation of the equal employment opportunity policy; (c) planning equal employment opportunity actions and goals; and, (d) evaluating equal employment opportunity progress.

4. That all advertisements contain the tag line, “An Equal Opportunity Employer.”

5. That all recruitment and employment sources be notified of the contractor’s posture on equal employment opportunity. It will be desirable to receive an acknowledgment of this notification. This may be done by leaving a space at the bottom of the letter for endorsement, or in any other manner which the contractor chooses.

6. That purchase orders contain a reference to Executive Order 11246. This will serve to notify sub-contractors of their responsibility to the prime contractor in accordance with Executive Order 11246.

7. That all personnel procedures serve to support affirmative action as exacted by Executive Order 11246.

8. That all department heads and supervisory personnel be made fully conversant with the contractor’s position with regard to equal employment opportunity.

9. That training programs support the total equal employment opportunity effort.

10. That persistent efforts be made to break the old patterns of stratified racial employment which have concentrated white employees in administrative and professional positions, while shunting non-white into the unskilled and service categories.

11. That the equal employment opportunity officer maintain a day-to-day file relating to the problems and progress of the implementation of the equal employment opportunity policy of the Charleston Medical School.

12. That anything that would identify the applicant, and which might cause him/her to be subjected to discriminatory acts, not be a part of the application form. Such information should not be a part of the employee’s personnel folder.

13. That the contractor (Medical College of Charleston) take the necessary steps to ensure that the building contractors who are currently constructing the new physical plant for the school, comply fully with the requirements of Executive Order 11246 in all phases of phases of their employment.

In your response to the recommendations which are set forth above, it will be helpful if you will structure your reply so as to address yourself to each of the three areas separately. Upon receipt of your letter, this office will evaluate your response and then advise you of our findings.

Please let me say once again, on behalf of our staff, that we appreciate your cooperation and that of your entire staff on whom we called. Your personal concern and intentions to correct problem areas made our task much easier than it would have otherwise been.

Sincerely yours,

Hugh A. Brimm

Chief, Contract Compliance Branch

Office for Civil Rights

District 1199 Archives.

18. CAROLINA STRIKE UNITES RIGHTS, LABOR GROUPS

Efforts of Charleston Negroes to Form Hospital Union Could Spread Across U. S.

By Murray Seeger

CHARLESTON, S.C.—Two powerful forces, the civil rights movement and organized labor, have formed an alliance in this unlikely location with the potential of spreading through the rest of the South and much of the nation.

The specific issue in this old seaport is the desire of a group of hospital workers to form a union to bargain with their employers, the county and state governments, for higher pay and improved working conditions.

On March 20, more than 400 service and maintenance workers at State Medical College Hospital walked off their jobs. An additional 100 workers from Charleston County Hospital, a block away, followed March 28. The strikers are nearly all women and all are Negroes.

Below U.S. Minimum

Most of them earn less than $1.60 an hour, the Federal minimum wage for most workers. Hospitals have a special statutory minimum—$1.30 an hour, the starting wage for many of the hospital workers here.

The scene in Charleston bears a remarkable resemblance to Memphis a year ago, where a group of Negroes who worked for the city sanitation department struck and won union recognition.

In that case civil rights groups allied themselves with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers, the union representing the sanitation men. Dr. Martin Luther King had gone to Memphis to address a rally in support of the strikers when he was assassinated April 4, 1968.

Now the organization Dr. King once called “my favorite union” is attempting to gain recognition as bargaining agent for hospital workers here.

State Won’t Talk

State and county officials insist they cannot bargain with the union representing the workers. They argue that wage scales and conditions are set by law and they have refused to meet with the union committees.

Frustrated by this lack of communication, angered by what they consider second-class treatment because they are black and determined to win union recognition, the women have stepped up their battle.

Five persons were arrested and jailed Thursday, accused of interfering with other workers entering the hospitals and of fighting with the police who tried to enforce a court edict limiting the number of pickets at the buildings.

Friday, 35 more were arrested when a mass picket line was established in violation of the courts injunctions. The confrontation with the police was peaceful—the women, augmented by male volunteer pickets, waved and cheered as they climbed into three paddy wagons.

Talk to Governor

The escalated campaign was agreed to by the women at a union meeting Wednesday after a committee returned from the state capitol in Columbia where they talked for 45 minutes with Gov. Robert E. McNair.

Asked how many of them were ready to go to jail in support of their campaign, dozens of the women stepped forward.

“It was one of the most dramatic things I ever saw,” Elliott Godoff of New York, a veteran organizer sent by his union to help the Charleston group, said later.

The Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Dr. King’s successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is expected to return here for a second visit to help generate more support in the large Negro community. Other AFL-CIO unions in Charleston have given their backing to the walkout and will be asked for more help.

More Money Needed

The strikers need to raise money since contributions received so far total only about $5,000. The union has no money to post the bonds for the arrested pickets.

The organizing effort started last fall at the state hospital, a training facility attached to the only publicly supported medical college in South Carolina.

The Negroes were convinced that they were being paid too little, that the few whites doing similar jobs such as nurses’ aides, practical nurses, orderlies and kitchen workers were paid more and that other grievances could be settled only through representation. They also contended that Negroes were barred from entering the better-paying jobs such as those of registered nurses.

Grievance Offer

Dr. William M. McCord, president of the State Medical College, replied that individuals could always enter a grievance through an established procedure. He would name grievance committees, he said. Anyone on the staff who unfairly discriminates “will be gone today, not tomorrow,” he pledged.

For help, the women turned to a local labor leader, Isiah Bennett, business agent for a local of the Retail, Wholesale Department Store Union which represents 1,000 workers at the American Tobacco Co. cigar factory and three other companies here.

Bennett, after deciding a majority of the women wanted to affiliate with the union, asked McCord for a meeting last October. He was rejected.

In a staff memo that month, McCord said: “have notified this union that I am sure that a majority of you would not want to get mixed up in an outfit such as this and I, of course, have no intention of meeting with this tobacco workers’ union.”

“We don’t want a union here at the Medical College,” he continued. It would mean “nothing worthwhile or constructive to any of you.

“This union is interested in only one thing and one thing only. That is money, your money. This union is like a business—it is out to make a profit. It is our intention to resist this union in its attempt to get in here with every legal means at our disposal—make no mistake about that.”

Attached to the memo were two antiunion cartoons, one showing a fat union boss with a cigar in his mouth, a wine glass in his hand and a young girl sitting on his lap. The characters were white.

The dispute came to a climax when some of the workers walked out of a grievance meeting, complaining that Dr. McCord had added antiunion workers to the group to outvote the militants.

12 Women Fired

Twelve women were fired. The union said it was for union activity and the hospital asserts it was because they had left their duties for more than an hour.

More than 400 other workers went on strike in sympathy for the 12. Eight days later the 100 county workers who had joined the union also walked out.

Earlier this year, Bennett called for help from local 1199 of his parent union because he knew it had been remarkably successful in organizing hospital workers in the New York area. Starting 10 years ago, the union has grown to 40,000 members, mostly Negroes. It recently negotiated a minimum starting wage of $100 a week for workers at private hospitals in New York.

Local 1199 has expanded its efforts nationwide by forming the National Organizing Committee of Hospital and Nursing Home Employes. Although aimed at private institutions, the group has taken on the Charleston campaign as its first among public employes.

“I’m hearing again all the arguments I first heard 10 years ago in New York,” Godoff, the New York organizer, commented last week.

The 2 million nonprofessional hospital employes in the country represent one of the largest low-paid group of workers in the economy.

Several unions have shown interest in trying to organize them.

The handicaps to organizing here are many. This state is notoriously inhospitable to unions. There are only about 40,000 AFL-CIO members in the state, but about 25% of them are in the Charleston area including many who work for the huge U.S. naval base.

Public employes are not covered by the National Labor Relations Act which guarantees other workers the right to organize and provide machinery protecting those rights. In addition, South Carolina has a series of right-to-work laws designed to discourage organizing.

State officials are afraid that if the union wins at the hospitals it will open the way for organizing in other parts of the state and local governments.

They are aware that unions are scoring more success in organizing the vast field of public employes than any other segment of the work force.

When Gov. McNair met with the workers’ committee headed by Miss Mary Moultrie, they talked about the other groups of workers, especially teachers, that have been agitating for higher pay.

While attention has been directed to the women strikers, 150 Negro men were fired from their jobs for staging a one-day strike at the State Port Authority docks. They had signed up with the International Longshoremens Assn., the union that represents stevedores employed by private companies operating on the same docks. These firings. Bennett feels, have created unrest in the Negro neighborhood.

The strike has made this city nervous since it comes at a time when tourists are flocking here to see the famous gardens in full spring bloom.

After his first bitter blast at the union, McCord has moderated his statement. He now emphasizes the legal limitations on changing working conditions.

“Wages are requested and appropriated annually by the Legislature,” he said recently. “I cannot delegate authority of the Medical College to any other outside agent.”

Some improvements have been made at the state hospital since the union started organizing. Annual leave policy was made more generous in mid-March and requirements for taking time off for holidays were loosened in January for the birthday of Gen. Robert E. Lee.

New Pay Minimum

Only in February, however, did the minimum wage of $1.30 go into effect.

In answer to a written question, McCord said he was aware that “some states have laws that permit public hospitals to negotiate with unions.

“However, this has no bearing on the question of South Carolina because the laws of South Carolina do not so provide.”

Legal advisers to the union contend that while the state may not explicitly provide for granting union recognition, neither does the law bar such recognition.

McCord will not answer reporters’ questions directly. Before hospital spokesmen will talk to reporters they are required to check with a recently hired lawyer for authority.

U.S. Also Involved

“We are trying to handle this very carefully and delicately so we don’t inflame the community,” one official said. Officials are also concerned because representatives of the the Department of Health and Education and Welfare are here checking on complaints of employment bias against Negroes.

In old Charleston, the portion of the city which is on a peninsula between two rivers which contains the famous homes and other historic buildings, Negroes represent 70% of the population.

The city’s six hospitals including one operated by the Veterans Administration are situated in the same immediate vicinity downtown. The city’s whites live mostly in the restored, older part of downtown and in recently annexed neighborhoods across the Ashley River.

One of the workers’ grievances that the VA hospital, organized by Service Employees Union, has a higher pay scale and more generous benefits than the state and county hospitals.

Recognition Due

One of the other nearby hospitals, St. Francis Xavier, has indicated it will recognize the union when it can show it represents the majority of the workers.

A small citizen’s committee representing clergymen, civil rights groups and the Young Democrats has tried to open communications between the public authorities and the union with no success. A settlement proposed by the group of clergy was dismissed as “biased” by Dr. McCord.

The struck hospitals are operating on a “near normal” basis, according to spokesmen, with the use of volunteers, nonstrikers and hired replacements.

Both sides appear determined to hold out indefinitely. South Carolina, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired, has escaped the kind of bitter civil rights confrontations seen in its sister states of the Deep South. The hospital strike has the elements to end that record, however.

“I’ve told these people that they have to organize or they will be 20th-century slaves,” Bennett said.

Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1969.

19. MRS. KING’S CRUSADE

Content removed at rightsholder’s request.

New York Post, April 21, 1969.

20. NATIONAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE HOSPITAL AND NURSING HOME EMPLOYEES

TEXT OF STATEMENT SIGNED BY NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS ON CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA HOSPITAL STRIKES ISSUED BY MRS. CORETTA S. KING FOR RELEASE MONDAY A.M., APRIL 21, 1969

We wish to speak out in full support of the 600 black hospital workers on strike for union and human rights at the Charleston Medical College and Charleston County Hospitals in Charleston, South Carolina. The fact that these workers earning as little as $1.30 an hour should be compelled to strike for the simple right to have a union tells much about what is wrong with America today.

We view the struggle in Charleston as more than a fight for union rights. It is part of the larger fight in our nation against discrimination and exploitation—against all forms of degradation that result from poverty and human misery. It is a fight for human rights and human dignity.

We, therefore, applaud the efforts of Local 1199B of the RWDSU/AFL-CIO’s National Organizing Committee of Hospital and Nursing Home Employees and the Concerned Citizens Committee of Charleston for spearheading the campaign to win justice for the terribly exploited hospital workers.

Already, 180 workers have been arrested. And while there have been only minor clashes to date, tensions are mounting. We cannot fail to recall that the right of workers to be represented by a union is precisely the same issue that led to tragedy in Memphis last year.

We call on South Carolina’s Governor, Robert E. McNair, and the hospital officials to grant the workers this elementary right as a minimal gesture of justice and humanity.

[SIGNED BY:]         NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS¹⁴²

[MRS.] CORRETTA SCOTT KING, honorary chairman, National Organizing Committee of Hospital and Nursing Home Employees

RALPH D. ABERNATHY, president, Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC]

ROY WILKINS, executive director, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP]

A. PHILIP RANDOLPH, national president, Negro American Labor Council

WHITNEY YOUNG, executive director, National Urban League

ROY INNIS, national director, Congress of Racial Equality [CORE]

BAYARD RUSTIN, executive director, A. Philip Randolph Institute

[MISS] DOROTHY I. HEIGHT, national president, National Council of Negro Women

GEORGE A. WILEY, executive director, National Welfare Rights Organization

OTHERS¹⁴³

REPRESENTATIVE SHIRLEY CHISHOLM, member of Congress, Brooklyn, New York

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN M. CONYERS, member of Congress, Detroit, Michigan

MAYOR RICHARD G. HATCHER, Gary, Indiana

MAYOR CARL B. STOKES, Cleveland, Ohio

JULIAN BOND, member, House of Representatives, State of Georgia

District 1199 Archives.

21. A GATHERING STORM IN CHARLESTON, S.C.

Content removed at rightsholder’s request.

Washington Post, April 30, 1969.

22. TEXT OF SPEECH BY MRS, CORETTA SCOTT KING AT DINNER HONORING A. PHILIP RANDOLPH TUESDAY, MAY 6, 1969

Governor Rockefeller, Mayor Lindsay, Mr. Rustin, distinguished members of the dais, I want to tell you how proud and happy I am to be at this dinner to pay tribute to A. Philip Randolph, a true giant in the struggle for justice and equal rights for all Americans, especially black Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Just a week ago while I was enroute to Charleston, South Carolina to address a mass rally in that city, I mentioned to one of my campanions, Miss Doris Turner, a Vice-President of Local 1199, Drug and Hospital Union in this city, that I had been invited to speak here tonight.

Miss Turner, a former hospital worker, waxed eloquently over the role Phil Randolph had played in her union’s great struggle to win union and human rights for voluntary hospital workers in this city.

She recalled that ten years ago—as a matter of fact, the 10th anniversary is this Thursday, May 8—that the hospital workers of this city, virtually all of them black and Puerto Rican workers and most of them women who earned as little as $30 and $32 a week, were compelled to strike for 46 days for the right to have a union.

The point I want to make is that the man who played a decisive role in this hospital organizing crusade is the man we honor tonight—Phil Randolph.

And now, exactly ten years later, a similar struggle is taking place in Charleston, South Carolina where 500 black workers, almost all of them women who earn as little as $1.30 an hour, are on strike for the same elementary right to have a union.

What began as a little known struggle by black hospital workers for elementary rights has captured the imagination and touched the conscience of decent-minded Americans everywhere. The Charleston strike is now a major national issue with tremendously important implications for the civil rights movement, for organized labor and for all Americans.

For as the New York Times noted in an editorial last week, this strike “involves values as fundamental as those in the original battles for school desegregation and equal employment opportunities.”

You know, several months ago I was privileged to assume the position of honorary chairman of the National Organizing Committee of Hospital and Nursing Home employees of the RWDSU, AFL-CIO. You may have seen pictures of me wearing my Local 1199 hat in Charleston last week. I am interested in hospital workers because so many of them are women—black women, white women, Mexican- and Puerto Rican women. All of them are poor.

They work full-time jobs at part-time pay. Many of them are the sole supporters of their families.

I know you will agree that $1.30 an hour is not a wage, it’s an insult.

I spent two days in Charleston last week speaking at two overflow rallies and participating in an inspiring march from the church to the hospital. More than 7,500 people attended these rallies. When you consider that this represents almost 30 percent of the entire black population of the inner city of Charleston, you appreciate the tremendous unity that has been forded here.

The alliance that Mr. Randolph has devoted a lifetime to building—the alliance of civil rights groups and organized labor—is a reality today in Charleston. The members of Local 1199B, the SCLC, the NAACP and all the other rights groups working together with the clergy, the students, with old people and young people, with Protestants, Catholics and Jews—are solidly united in support of a clear cause—union and human rights for the Charleston hospital workers.

I will not burden you with the facts of this strike. By now, they are all well known. What is not too well known is the precise nature of the opposition. For example, the president of the Charleston Medical College, Dr. William M. McCord, expressed the management’s point of view in an interview with a reporter for a national magazine. He said, and I quote: “I am not about to turn over a $25 million complex to people who never had a grammar school education.” This same gentleman attempted to head off the union organizing drive a few months ago. He offered some goodies to the workers. Dr. McCord announced an additional paid holiday—the birthday of Robert E. Lee.

Listen to the columnist of the Charleston News and Courier, Ashley Cooper, who wrote last week, and again I am quoting:

“It seems—at least to me—that the only way the illegal uprising can be stopped is by force. That may have the ring of fascism—which I hate—but honestly, what other conclusion is there?”

It is perfectly clear that we are dealing with a combination of stupidity, arrogance and insults from a group of powerful people who refuse to join the 20th century.

Last week, when I arrived at the Charleston airport, I was greeted by a reporter just back from covering the war in Southeast Asia. He came up to me and said, “Mrs. King, welcome to Charleston, South Vietnam.” The plain truth is that the city of Charleston is an armed camp. More than 1,000 national guardsmen wearing gas masks and flashing bayonets encircle the black community. Armored tanks rumble through the streets. Helmeted state troopers surround Charleston’s churches and hospitals. And hundreds of decent men and women, young and old, black and white, have suffered jailings and mass arrests. Why?

Simply because a courageous group of terribly exploited hospital workers have dared to stand up and say to the people who run the city of Charleston and the state of South Carolina that they are sick and tired of being sick and tired.

And once you have seen these people. Once you have talked to them. Once you have marched at their side—you know that they are determined to continue this fight no matter what it takes. Because these people just ain’t gonna let anybody turn them around. And Charleston and the rest of the nation had better believe it.

For the hospital strikers and their supporters have faced the tanks and the bayonets with the unity of their souls. And with that spirit—the spirit of non-violence, militantly conceived and massively organized, they shall never give up until they win.

I wish I had time to tell you about the new breed of union leaders that has emerged in this struggle. For one of the most remarkable aspects of this most remarkable strike is that it has dramatized the emergence of black women leaders like Miss Mary Ann Moultrie, Miss Rosetta Simmons, and many others.

When you talk with people like Mary Moultrie, the dynamic president of Local 1199B, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the hospitals stubborn resistance is doomed. The only question is how much blood and tears must be shed before the victory is won. For these women are determined to achieve a measure of dignity on this earth. And there comes a moment in their lives when they decide to assert their humanity, no matter how large the risks, and the prospect of defeat becomes unendurable, no matter how rough the road.

These women are following in the footsteps of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth—of Rosa Parks and Daisy Bates and Fannie Lou Hamer. And they will be a source of great pride to the black people and to the entire labor movement.¹⁴⁴

The hospital workers and the people of Charleston are making history. For Charleston, like Selma and Memphis, has now become a national test of conscience.

I believe with all my heart that what is now at stake in the state of Strom Thurmond and in the city of Mendel Rivers is more than just a battle for union and human rights for oppressed hospital workers. For Charleston now represents a tremendous challenge and a great opportunity.

These magnificent women, these courageous people are prepared to fight on, no matter how long it takes. The question before us now is whether we will understand the nature of this challenge and face up to this test. For if we win—and I know we can win—Charleston may become that moment in our history when the unity of black and white, of the civil rights movement with organized labor, may be recaptured. That unity was my husband’s dream. That dream will never die. And I know that if my husband were alive today, he would tell you that this dream can be realized today in Charleston, South Carolina. All of which brings me back to our honored guest, Phil Randolph.

I believe that the best way we can honor Phil Randolph is by advancing the principles for which he has devoted his entire life. With that in mind, I say that at this moment in our history, the single most important issue before the forces of progress in this nation—the labor movement, the civil rights movement, our political leaders, the clergy—is the cause of the hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina.

I want to appeal to you, and through you, to the organizations you represent, to demonstrate in whatever way you can your solidarity and support for these workers. I do not pretend to be an organizer of mass movements. But you are. The strikers and the people of Charleston are poor. They need funds desperately. I want to urge you to contribute as much money as you can to help these strikers. There are other ways in which you can personally identify with this struggle. There will be opportunities for to participate in marches and demonstrations in Charleston and elsewhere. I am confident that you will meet this challenge.

I learned last week that Charleston was the birthplace of the tune that now bears the title—“We Shall Overcome.” Deep in my heart, I believe we will overcome in Charleston. That victory will be the best birthday gift that we can give to a true fighter for the rights of oppressed people everywhere—our good friend, Phil Randolph.

District 1199 Archives.

23. THE CHARLESTON COALITION

George Meany and Walter P. Reuther have parted company in organized labor, but they are standing together in support of striking Negro hospital workers in Charleston, S.C. A similar unity has been established by all the country’s major civil rights groups, which rarely agree on tactics these days. They have put aside their differences to help a wretchedly underpaid work force win union recognition and a measure of human dignity.

The coalition that has been forged between the labor movement and the civil rights organizations in the Charleston struggle is as firm as the one that existed on Capitol Hill through the long fight to put across the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That coalition was re-formed during the Memphis sanitation strike before the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Its emergence now suggests that the coalition is no one-time thing and that, in easing the plight of the exploited black worker, both unions and civil rights groups have a role to play. Each can draw strength from the other in a period when both have seemed to flounder in many of their recent efforts.

Unions have been lagging in membership. Civil rights groups such as Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, now headed by the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, need fresh victories. They have a mutual interest in the 500 striking Charleston hospital workers who are mostly women, mostly blacks, employed as non-professional nurses’ aides, orderlies, cooks, at wages as little as $1.30 an hour or thirty cents below the Federal minimum wage which establishes a floor for most jobs. Unions calculate that there are 2.5 million non-union black, Puerto Rican and Mexican hospital workers across the country suffering similar wage injustices.

The best hope for ending the Charleston strike without a racial explosion or a tragedy of the type that struck down Dr. King lies in intervention by the Federal Government—precisely the kind of intervention that brought labor peace after tragedy struck in Memphis a year ago. At a meeting in the White House yesterday, Dr. King’s successor, Mr. Abernathy, urged President Nixon “to use his great and powerful office” to speed a settlement. “He said nothing,” was Mr. Abernathy’s report after the session. That is not a good enough answer; it cannot be the final one.

New York Times, May 14, 1969.

24. CHARLESTON’S RIGHTS BATTLEGROUND

By Ronald Sarro

CHARLESTON, S.C.—Mary Moultrie is a soft-spoken, almost shy black woman who is trying to move a mountain of Southern tradition and economic power.

The 27-year-old nurses’ aid, a native of this historic city where the Civil War. started 108 years ago, is the leader of workers who have been striking two hospitals in this city of 80,000—half Negro, half white—since late March.

“She has always been quiet,” said a fellow worker at the South Carolina Medical College Hospital. “But she was brave enough to take the leadership.”

The 500 hospital workers, mostly Negro women, went on strike over union recognition, discrimination and wages. Since Miss Moultrie took them out, there have been these developments:

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which had other civil rights plans for the spring, has committed itself to helping the Charleston strikers indefinitely.

The AFL-CIO Executive Council last week established a Charleston Hospital Strike Fund with $25,000, and urged all affiliates to support the strike.

United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther has given $10,000 to the strikers as a “down payment,” and is providing $500 a week to SCLC to aid Charleston activities.

President Nixon has sent Justice Department representatives here to apprise him of strike developments, and has called for the disputing parties to “resolve their differences in a calm atmosphere of mutual good faith.”

Seventeen U.S. senators have urged Nixon to send a federal mediator to Charleston, emphasizing that the strike “is a test of the principle of nonviolence at a time when many in America are losing faith in that principle as a strategy for social change.” South Carolina’s two senators objected.

A Mothers Day rally and march supporting the strikers was attended by 7,000 to 10,000 persons, Including union and civil rights officials from throughout the nation and five congressmen. SCLC officials said they were surprised by the number of Charleston whites who hand-signaled the “V” for victory during the march. “We’ve never had this in a Southern town, said the Rev. Andrew Young, executive vice president.

What started out essentially as a labor dispute has developed into the number one civil rights test of the year. It promises to equal Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham, and Memphis as a milestone of the movement led by SCLC.

Although the workers have been seeking union recognition since last August, the crisis didn’t develop until March 17, when 12 of them, including Miss Moultrie, were fired in a dispute with hospital officials.

As a result, about 400 janitors, kitchen workers, laundry workers, maids, nurses’ aides, orderlies and practical nurses walked out of the 550-bed Medical College Hospital, largest of six in the city, on March 20. Another 100 struck Charleston County Hospital, which is the city’s second largest with 150 beds, on March 28.

Both hospitals have been struggling along since with the aid of volunteers and extra duty by working employes. The College Hospital has cut back its patients by 35 percent.

The conflict boils down to this: The workers want Hospital and Nursing Home Workers Local 1199B or some other agreed-upon association to represent them. The state’s policy is that union recognition for any government employes is against the public interest.

Union officials say meetings with Gov. Robert E. McNair are fruitless, and the latest attempt—on May 8—to get the workers and hospital trustees together disintegrated in a dispute over the presence of national union officials.

The prospect for another meeting? “We have met with Miss Moultrie before,” said William Hoff, vice president at the Medical College.

Meantime, Charleston’s economy has been crippled by the effects of the strike.

There has been sporadic violence, and about 300 state highway patrolmen and 700 National Guardsmen have patrolled the city day and night since April 25, when they were sent in to curb the threat of further violence.

A curfew has been in effect since May 1.

More than 650 persons have been arrested on charges of violating the curfew or a court injunction, which first prohibited strike activities, then was modified to allow picketing.

Unionism at Issue

The stakes in South Carolina are considerably bigger than those sought by the hospital workers alone. Only about 7 percent of the workers in the state are unionized, despite its growing industrial development.

Textile magnates fear the labor movement could spread in a state where cheap labor and a “right to work” law have helped attract industry. State and local government officials fear all government employes from garbage workers to teachers, would organize once the door was opened.

The union movement, with its support from civil rights and union officials, have been severely attacked. Leaders have been accused of Communist connections, “using” poor people, and Nazi and Mafia tactics. Local newspapers and politicians have emphasized what they see as divisions in the movement.

Racial slurs from the patrolling troops—most, if not all white, and many from rural areas—are not uncommon.

But the strikers’ supporters vow to stand by them to the end.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s widow, Coretta, and 13 other civil rights leaders issued a public statement saying, “We view the struggle in Charleston” as “part of the larger fight in our nation . . . against all forms of degradation that result from poverty and misery.”

The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, SCLC president, told the strikers, ‘As long as there is life in my body, I will never desert you until you are recognized.”

When asked the minimum the strikers would accept, Mary Moultrie says, “We are going to have some kind of recognition” even if it is only some kind of grievance committee.

WAGE RISE SOUGHT

On wages, the strikers seek an unspecified increase in their $1.30 an hour minimum, which hospital officials say most exceed handsomely and which is scheduled to rise to $1.45 on July 1.

Unless the dispute is settled soon, South Carolina, which has escaped major civil rights confrontations could be in for greater economic losses and mounting tensions as the summer gets hotter.

SCLC could get serious about a boycott of stores it now describes as “half-hearted.” And it is the kind of fight that could attract college students who soon will be getting out of school for the summer.

In the battle, the county government, which has a similar policy against unionizing, sits back and lets the state government fight it out with the strikers. Most of the strikers’ attacks are aimed at the governor, and the Medical College and its president, Dr. William M. McCord.

McCord is quoted as telling Business Week Magazine, “I am not about to turn a $25 million complex over to a bunch of people who don’t have a grammar school education.”

Union officials say McCord has upset scheduled meetings with them, and they point to a staff memo he sent out saying:

“I have notified this union that I am sure that a majority of you would not want to get mixed up in an outfit such as this and I, of course, have no intention of meeting with this tobacco workers’ union.”

The parent union also represents tobacco workers.

Gov. McNair, whose position is supported by 16 statewide business and industrial groups and was backed up by a state legislature resolution April 30, gave a major speech on the strike early this month.

“This is a test really of our whole government system as we have known it in South Carolina,” he said.

Reuther Takes Stand

The UAW’s Reuther told the Mothers Day rally: “Before we are finished, we are going to have the governor of this state catch up to the 20th century.”

In addition to state policy, the governor’s office also points to the scheduled increase in the hospital workers pay, saying the strikers’ demand for bargaining would upset plans to equalize pay for similar jobs.

The scene of the dispute is a quiet Southern city which boasts the traditions of the Old South. It is noted for its magnolia, cypress and azalea gardens and old plantation mansions. The Cooper and Ashley Rivers flow by the city into Charleston Bay, where Fort Sumter, site of the start of the civil war, is located on an island.

Miss Moultrie went to Burke High School in Charleston and has lived in the same area all of her life except for five years in New York City. She has been a nurses’ aide for three years at College Hospital.

Her movement to organize workers there started in January 1968, after three practical nurses and two nurses’ aides were fired, then reinstated.

Workers started discussing a union and meeting weekly with organizers, Miss Moultrie said, and in August, a letter was sent Dr. McCord asking for an initial meeting to discuss a union. Other meetings—with the governor, citizens groups, “anyone who could help us”—followed.

A key session was the one set 10 a.m. on March 17 which led to the strike.

Union Foes at Talk

McCord brought eight workers all “definitely against the union,” Miss Mouotrie said, and she and her committee of seven objected.

And, because she had informed her membership of the meeting, some 265 on-duty personnel also showed up. McCord called off the session, the workers staged a sit-in, police were called and they returned to work by noon.

At quitting time, Miss Moultrie and the 11 others who worked on the same floor with her were dismissed because of the incident—for abandoning patients on an entire floor.

Miss Moultrie said she then issued a call for help from the SCLC. “There was no other group we could think of, and then do it in a nonviolent way,” she said.

But as strike activities increased, with marches and rallies scattered violence tension in the city rose, and Gov. McNair first sent in the patrolmen and Guard, then on May 1 put into effect a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew.

The parking lot of the Francis Marion Hotel on Calhoun Square looks like a used car lot for police cruisers. In the lobby, where there is a display of Civil War antiques including a rebel flag, police gather and trade stories and eat.

But “we wouldn’t have any business at all if the highway patrol wasn’t staying here,” said the owner of the hotel, reflecting the bitter complaints of other hotelmen, cab drivers and bar owners about the way business has fallen off.

F. William Broome, executive director of the Charleston Chamber of Commerce, minimized the effect of the strike on the city’s business in general and its $34-million-a-year tourist trade. “Only four or five conventions actually cancelled,” he said, although he acknowledged a heavier impact on night-time business.

Pressure Discounted

He maintained that business in Charleston was not putting on pressure for a settlement.

Businessmen are more concerned with principle than economics, he said.

On May 12, Gov. McNair shortened the curfew hours to 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. Wayne Seal, his press secretary, said.

“Businessmen have been suffering pretty badly financially. We want to keep the economy moving.”

SCLC officials say the situation ultimately is going to have to be settled by the businessmen.

“It is only when you create the same kind of a crisis in the life of the community as you have in the lives of the workers that the community will give in,” Rev. Young said.

The official center for this community’s business, the city hall, is, like many buildings here, historic. It was built in 1801 as a bank, with solid brick walls. The city council chambers doubles as a gallery for portraits of Southern heroes.

Presiding as mayor the past 10 years has been J. Palmer Gaillard, Jr. A Democrat, he supported Republican Richard M. Nixon for president last year. He is a longtime friend of the area’s congressman, conservative Democrat L. Mendel Rivers.

On the strike—an issue between the state and its workers—Gaillard is a man in the middle in a racially split city where political futures could be decided by a man’s stance during the dispute.

Asked where he stands, he said hospital officials and the state “made it abundantly clear they will not recognize the union.” What will eventually happen, he said, is that the workers and administrators will get together and talk it out.

Gaillard set up a special committee, not to recommend a solution, but “to get the problem off the streets and onto the conference table.” But it failed in its attempt to get the two sides to a meeting.

Streets Cleared

Despite the businesses losses, the curfew and troops “did the trick,” he said. “It cleared the streets and got the troublemakers off the streets.”

The chief of Charleston’s police, John F. Conroy, agrees the troops have prevented violence from erupting.

“I don’t question their sincerity in not wanting violence,” he said of the SCLC. “I question their ability to prevent it.”

Conroy, a native of New York State who was a Marine for 22 years and studied criminology at Florida State University, is in his rookie year as chief of the 150-man department which includes 22 blacks.

He and the SCLC have one big thing in common—they find each other easy to work with, as he puts the emphasis on restraint.

He has used plainsclothesmen to hold down vandalism and small fires, instead of more provocative uniformed men in cars with flashing lights. He did not make arrests when stragglers in the Mothers Day march technically violated the 9 p.m. curfew.

Overall, he said, “We are trying to avoid the racial aspect of the thing and keep in it the labor context—a dispute between the workers and the hospitals.”

The labor headquarters for the strikers is the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union’s hall at 655 East Bay St.

New York Minimum

The local, 1199B, is named after another arm of the RWDSU, Local 1199 in New York City, which was formed 18 months ago to represent hospital workers ranging from janitors to research technicians. Last July it negotiated a $100 a week minimum covering 30,000 workers in private New York City hospitals.

The rundown union hall here—a former VFW building which has several bullet holes in the walls, apparently some of the livelier dances—is the scene of constant activity and daily meetings.

Many of the strikers start coming in around 6 a.m. They help process contributions and handle a growing number of union applications coming in from other parts of the state.

The strikers are allowed two meals a day, plus snacks, and $15 a week in benefits. Churches and members of the community help keep them in food.

There are outdoor rallies at churches and almost daily marches led by SCLC officials along King Street, a main business street where the featured attraction at the Lincoln Theater last week was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

At one union meeting, in February, Mrs. King said, “My husband always used to say that 1199 was his favorite union because 1199 is always out front, always in the lead in our battle for justice . . . You see a nation in which two million hospital and nursing home workers earn as little as $50 or $60 a week and you want them to do better . . .”

Beyond Charleston, there is the prospect of organizing the more than two million similar hospital workers throughout the nation—many of them blacks, Puerto Ricans and poor whites—who constitute the largest block of unorganized workers in the nation.

As one of the signs carried in Mother’s Day march: “THE WORLD IS WATCHING 1199B.”

Washington Evening Star, May 21, 1969.

25. TEXT OF ADDRESS BY MRS. CORETTA SCOTT KING TO RALLY AT CHARLESTON’S STONEY FIELD STADIUM, THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 29, 1969

I am happy to be back in Charleston.

On the plane this morning, I was reading a magazine article with the title, “South Carolina Is Charming.” It went on and on about Charleston’s “soft and pervasive charm, its lovely gardens and colonial homes,” and so on.

You know, I just couldn’t find one word about some of Charleston’s other attractions—the national guard, the tanks, the state police, the curfew and those terribly awful people, those outside agitators and foreign agents. You know who I mean. I’m referring to those remarkable women—the heroines of 1969—the hospital strikers.

I spent several hours with these women this afternoon over at the headquarters on East Bay Street. And I can really understand why the city and state officials are so worried about them. I was impressed by their determination and their dedication to continue this struggle no matter how long it takes. One of the strikers put it this way. She said, “Mrs. King, you know if this strike had never taken place I guess nobody would ever have heard of us. We would have lived out our lives as nurses aides, dietary and housekeeping workers. But now the whole world seems to know what we’re trying to do here. We never knew too much about demonstrations and picketing, about going to jail and having to suffer for what’s right. But we do now. And, we also know a great deal more about ourselves.”

“And Mrs. King, we’re grateful to all the thousands of people from all over America who are helping us. Please tell them tonight, because the television people will be there. Tell them for us that we know how important this fight is—not only for ourselves and our families—but for people everywhere. Please tell them for us that we are going to keep on marching and we’re going to keep on fighting until we win.” So I want to say to you that these remarkable women just ain’t gonna let anybody turn them around. And Charleston and the state of South Carolina had better believe it.

After talking to the strikers today I had a feeling that in addition to such phrases as soul power, black power and green power, we’re going to have to add another one—and that’s woman power. For these women and their leaders are displaying the kind of quiet determination that can move mountains. I guess that’s why I was happy to become the honorary chairman of the National Organizing Committee of Hospital and Nursing Home Employees of which Local 1199B is a part.

The hospitals of our nation are staffed by hundreds of thousands of women—black women, white women, Mexican women and Puerto Rican women. They have one thing in common. All of them are poor. Most of them earn as little as $50 and $60 a week. They are sick and tired of working full-time jobs at part-time pay. And as Mary Moultrie has put it, they are simply sick and of being sick and tired.

You know, we always hear so much about menial labor. My husband used to say that no labor is really menial unless you’re not making adquate wages. And if you’re making four or five dollars an hour, that isn’t menial labor. What makes it menial is the income, the wages. And the time has come for people of good will to understand the dignity of labor. The time has come to see that a black person working in a hospital, even if she happens to be scrubbing floors, is in the final analysis as important to that hospital as the physician.

Very frankly, I am not impressed by complaints from the Charleston County Medical Society that the union and the SCLC have raised the issues of race and poverty in this strike. They say these issues are not what the strike is all about.

Well, I should like to ask these distinguished physicians how many of them would like to try to support their families on $1.30 an hour? And when was the last time they took care of a patient and charged a fee of $1.30 an hour? And since they have raised the issue of race, how is it that black hospital workers earn less pay and get poorer treatment than white workers who do the identical jobs? And when is the federal government going to do its duty and expose this injustice? After all, the Medical College is receiving federal funds and I don’t know why they should be permitted to continue to violate the federal law with federal funds.

Personally, I feel a bond of true friendship with the members of Local 1199B. I feel a bond of firm friendship with the wonderful students of Charleston who have made so great a contribution to this struggle. I am proud to be identified with the civil rights organizations of this city, with the concerned clergy, with the organized labor movement all of whom have united together behind 1199B and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference under the inspiring leadership of my husband’s close associate and friend, Rev. Ralph David Abernathy.

For ours is a common struggle. A struggle to make it possible for all of God’s children to walk the earth in dignity and self-respect. Everywhere I go people ask me about this strike. For what began as a little known strike by black hospital workers has captured the imagination and touched the conscience of millions of Americans.

The truth is that you are making history here in Charleston. You have won the active support of every major civil rights organization in the nation. You have won the full support of the organized labor movement. Just last week, the AFL-CIO Executive Council set up a National AFL-CIO Charleston Strike Fund with an initial contribution of $25,000. You have won the support of all major religious groups. In Washington last week, 17 United States Senators, including Senators Kennedy, Muskie, Brooke, Mondale, Javits, Harris, Yarborough and others, endorsed your campaign and urged President Nixon to intervene. Most of the major national newspapers have published editorials backing you in your just fight.¹⁴⁵

Every day, every week, more organizations add their voices to your struggle. Mrs. Jackie Kennedy Onassis sent an unsolicited contribution to express her support. And hardly a day goes by that I do not receive letters or telegrams from young people in schools all over America informing me that they are contributing their lunch monies, or organizing cake sales to help the Charleston hospital strikers. School teachers write and ask how they may obtain your beautiful blue 1199 hat for their students. Your 1199 hat has become a symbol of freedom and dignity wherever decent people gather. And it has become the most fashionable hat of the spring season.

The fact is that millions of plain, ordinary, decent people want very much to be able to identify with you, to extend their hands in friendship and solidarity. They do so because your cause is so genuinely decent, so inherently just and so supremely right. It is one of those clear causes which united all decent-minded Americans.

That is why I say without any hesitation that at this moment in history your fight is the single most important social issue facing the forces of progress in America.

Unfortunately, those in positions of power in this state have failed completely to understand what is happening here in Charleston. They have already spent close to three-quarters of a million dollars to prevent black hospital workers from obtaining their inherent rights of first-class citizenship. They have failed to understand that the black people of Charleston will never give up this struggle for justice and dignity. And understand that fact, they will continue to send in troops and police against people who are determined to reply with the power of their souls. And no amount of force can overcome that determination.

Good people all over America have a right to ask some important questions. How many times must the terribly exploited hospital workers be compelled to go on strike and suffer jailings for the simple right to have a union? How many times must heroic men and women and children be compelled to place their lives on the line in daily confrontations with national guardsmen for this elementary right? And how long will it be before the leaders of this city, state and nation finally understand that the tensions now building up here in Charleston may explode into another horrible tragedy?

I expect that this will not be my final visit to Charleston. For I am determined to see this fight through to its final victory. There will be stormy days ahead. Freedom doesn’t come easy. Freedom is never voluntarily handed down by the oppressor. It must be demanded. That is the lesson that history teaches us.

As I said at the beginning I am now supremely confident that the hospital strikers are going to carry on until they win this fight. Such leaders as Mary Moultrie and Rosetta Simmons are not going to stop fighting no matter how stormy the days ahead, no matter how great the sacrifice.

I thought about that as I read a report on this strike by the editor of the South Carolina Methodist Advocate. I recommend this article for careful study by the white citizens of this city and state. Here is what he wrote:

“Why has it happened? And to this everyone will have his own answer. Mine is simply to say that too many whites have not had the kind of experience which will enable them to understand the depth and strength of the black resolution to have a part in shaping his own destiny, even if it means that he chooses death.”

Something deep inside of me tells me that this is an accurate statement of the problem now confronting many thoughtful and troubled white citizens of this city. And in this connection, I should like to read you a statement my husband wrote several years ago.

“If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live. And if a man happens to be 36 years old, as I happen to be, and he refuses to stand up because he wants to live a little longer, or he is afraid his home will get bombed, or he is afraid he will get shot, he may go on and live until he’s 80. But a man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. So we are going to stand up right here letting the world know that we are determined to be free.”

I know that if my husband were alive today he would be at your side. He would be marching with Rev. Abernathy, with the hospital strikers, with the students, with the clergy, with the labor movement, demonstrating to this city and to the nation that Charleston can become that moment in our history when the unity of black and white, of the civil rights movement with organized labor may be recaptured. For that unity was my husband’s dream. That dream will never die.

And if we will continue to work together, to march together and to fight together we will win this historic fight and help bring into being that day when America will no longer be two nations, but one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

District 1199 Archives.

26. CHARLESTON: OUR STRIKE FOR UNION AND HUMAN RIGHTS

A strike of 550 hospital workers in Charleston, S.C. has captured national attention as a test for the civil rights and labor movements.

The strike combines within it some of the most important issues facing Americans everywhere today. The black community of Charleston knows this, and has put its whole heart and soul into the struggle. Starting out as a fight for the simple right to have a union, the strike has become a nationally important struggle for the right of black people to live as first class citizens in the city where the first shot of the civil war was fired and where slaves first sang to the tune of what became “We Shall Overcome.”

National television has brought Charleston’s marching thousands with their blue and white 1199 hats into millions of American homes. Daily press coverage throughout the country has stressed the significance of the unity forged between labor and the civil rights movement. For their continued unity spells victory in Charleston and powerful inspiration to poor and black Americans everywhere to organize for a better life.

Charleston’s black community is united as never before. When Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to address a rally April 29, two churches overflowed with a total of 7,500 people, nearly 30 percent of the city’s ablebodied Negro population. Thousands of Charleston’s people turn out regularly for marches along a route lined with local police, state troopers and national guardsmen brandishing fixed bayonets. Standing at the ready in side streets are more troops with tanks and other armored vehicles.

Heavily armed National Guardsmen patrol the streets. A curfew is in effect. Boycotts of stores and schools by black people have slowed Charleston’s normal activity to a trickle. A dozen scheduled conventions have been canceled.

Members of the state legislature have criticized the unyielding anti-union position of Gov. Robert E. McNair, but state and county officials have refused to give an inch.

At first the opposition treated the movement with contempt. A sample was the offer by Dr. McCord, head of the Medical College Hospital, to give the workers an additional holiday—the birthday of Robert E. Lee.

When these actions backfired, contempt was replaced by force. The mood was expressed by Charleston and Courier columnist Ashley Cooper, who wrote, “It seems—at least to me—that the only way the illegal uprising can be stopped is by force. That may have the ring of fascism, which I hate, but honestly, what other conclusion is there?”

Close to 500 people have been arrested—mainly black women, whom Mrs. King called “these magnificent women”—but the arrests have become another symbol of the people’s readiness to sacrifice freedom temporarily in order to win it permanently.

The black churches of Charleston are at the heart of the strike there. Nightly rallies overflow churches such as the Rev. Z. L. Grady’s Morris Brown A.M.E. Strikers and young people who march and picket all day return at night to sing, talk and listen at hand-clapping, cheer-filled church meetings. Speakers include dedicated local ministers, union leaders like Mary Moultrie and SCLC leaders like Coretta King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy. One black minister announced from the pulpit that scabs in the congretation had two choices: get out of the hospitals or get out of the church.

Local Catholic schools were closed so students, nuns and priests could participate in marches. Several priests were sentenced to jail, including Father Duffy, the prison chaplain.

Charleston’s Catholic Bishop Ernest Unterkoefler affirmed the right of workers to decent pay and union membership, and urged hospitals to negotiate.

The interracial Concerned Clergy of Charleston continued strike support despite nonsense like an open letter from 59 right-wingers who accused clergymen of cooperating with “the forces of the anti-Christ.”

Song propelled much of the strike, songs of freedom and of unions. Churches shook to “We Shall Not Be Moved” as well as “We’re Gonna Roll the Union On.” One thousand National Guardsmen turned Charleston into what the New York Times called an “armed camp.”

Tanks, armored troop carriers, carbines and bayonets were used to seal off the black community from the rest of the city.

Gov. McNair declared a state of emergency May 1 and imposed a curfew from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. The state which can’t afford more than $1.30 for hospital workers admitted it was paying $10,000 a day to keep National Guardsmen in Charleston.

The military build-up was, as the Washington Post said in an April 30 editorial, “out of scale with the issue.” A prominent State Senator from Charleston is reported to have denounced the show of force and told Gov. McNair “if anything happens the blood is on your hands.”

Black students, who said the city was like a “concentration camp,” were led by the SCLC in daily marches despite the attempted reign of terror. The marches were directed by Rev. Andrew Young of the SCLC.

In one confrontation the students ran full speed at rows of helmeted, masked, rifle-carrying Guardsmen. The startled Guardsmen lifted their bayonets to the ready. Inches from the extended bayonets the students stopped their rush and dropped to their knees in prayer.

“The jails of Charleston are jammed—not only with such prominent figures as the Rev. Ralph Abernathy and Local 1199 leader Leon Davis but with hundreds of anonymous strikers for whom this is the battle of a lifetime.” New York Post editorial, May 2.

It was the battle of a lifetime, not just for Charleston’s strikers but for the city’s entire black community and its allies. Jails bulged with almost 500 strikers, students, white priests black ministers, longshoremen, white garment workers and housewives.

They sang spirituals, freedom songs and union songs. They slept among roaches on stinking mattresses and ate meals that at times were literally bread and water. But their courage and spirit of cooperation never wavered. After eight days in filthy cells, Davis said, “I feel cleansed.” Cleansed, he explained, by “the friendliness, the unity, determination and understanding of people ready to make every sacrifice until victory is won.”

People like those pictured here are the unsung heroes who win strikes. They are why Mary Moultrie could say with confidence: “We’re not even thinking about going back without a union.” For example:

Sadie Brown, with ladies like Ernestine Bryant and Luraline Terry, works 18-hour days at union headquarters. Asked what she did on a long-overdue day off, she said, “I marched.”

Besides Miss Moultrie, other hard-working local leaders are Local 1199B Vice Pres. Jack Bradford, and Alma Hardin and Rosetta Simmons, co-chairman of the Charleston County Hospital unit.

“Hey, Mister,” shouted a Charleston student to NOC Director Elliott Godoff, “I’m going to jail but I haven’t got an 1199 hat. Can you get me one?” Black students boycotted schools and volunteered for jail. And blue and white 1199 hats have been everywhere in Charleston.

“We’re so happy for the kind of people you’ve sent us,” said Mary Moultrie about the New York 1199 staffers sent to help. Working efficiently with a minimum of fanfare were NOC Director Godoff and Ass’t. Director Henry Nicholas, Guild Area Director Dave White, Exec. Sec. Moe Foner, Vice Pres. Doris Turner and press aide Dave Prosten.

From Dave White’s strike diary: “The grass roots support is terrific. Donations come from the poorest people. Morale is excellent. . . .”

America took notice late in April when Coretta Scott King arrived in Charleston. A year earlier her husband was killed in a similar struggle in Memphis. Now she told 7,500 rapt listeners:

“I want to make it clear that I am in this historic struggle no matter what the consequences.” Her audience, nearly 30% of Charleston’s black population, overflowed a church that once served as an underground railway center for escaping slaves.

“I believe that Charleston, like Selma and Memphis, has now become a national test of purpose, with tremendously important implications for decent-minded Americans everywhere,” she said.

“After we win here in Charleston,” she added, “I would like to see our organizing crusade extend to other cities and states. The newly formed locals can be called Local 1199C, Local 1199D, until we run out of letters.”

The New York Post said editorially May 1 that Mrs. King’s very appearance in Charleston “dramatically underlined the national dimensions of this conflict.”

Mrs. King led a march to Medical College Hospital April 30 through a cordon of heavily armed National Guardsmen, state troopers and local police. She had been invited to Charleston by 1199B Pres. Mary Moultrie and 1199 Vice Pres. Doris Turner.

A key breakthrough in Charleston is the way the strike story has zoomed to national prominence through press, television and radio coverage.

National television networks have had several crews in Charleston. Their nightly newscasts brought marchers wearing the blue and white 1199 hat into millions of American living rooms.

Newspaper readers from New York to Los Angeles read thorough and often sympathetic stories written from Charleston by special correspondents as well as wire service reporters. Veteran newsmen repeatedly remarked in private that they were amazed and moved by the dedication and unity of the strikers.

Newsweek, Business Week and Time magazines gave the story major coverage. It also appeared in such diverse places as Stars and Stripes, radio reports in Jamaica, W.I. and a daily newspaper in Santo Domingo.

Editorials in the New York Times, New York Post, Washington Post, Atlanta Constitution and Charlotte (N.C.) Observer urged President Nixon to intervene in Charleston.

N.Y. Post columnist James Wechsler in his April 24 column summed up the role of publicity by observing that the Charleston story was escalated from a local to a national matter largely due to the work of Exec. Sec. Moe Foner, 1199’s public relations director. Wechsler added that the publicity “mingled with the extraordinary solidarity of the strikers, is why there will be a hospital union in Charleston. They shall overcome.”

The hospital strike in Charleston saw the first joint action by the nation’s major civil rights groups since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King over a year ago.

“We cannot fail to recall that the right of workers to be represented by a union is precisely the same issue that led to the tragedy in Memphis last year,” the rights leaders said in a statement that received national press coverage. The 14 leaders pictured at right signed the statement.

Other strike support actions:

AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany telegraphed Mary Moultrie: “The AFL-CIO fully supports your struggle for decent wages and a sense of dignity as first class citizens.”

The South Carolina AFL-CIO and several predominantly white unions in Charleston have given money. An anonymous white plumber sends $10 every week. White motorists occasionally flash a V-for-victory signal while passing pickets.

In Washington, 21 Democratic Congressmen appealed to Pres. Nixon to intervene in the strikers’ behalf.

Strike support was also expressed in a letter to the New York Times April 16 from first black Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton and actor Ossie Davis.

Editorials in both the black press and the general press backed the strikers. Many called for intervention from Washington.

The outside of strike headquarters at 655 E. Bay St. is shabby, but the spirit inside is pure gold.

Busy strikers and their leaders labor up to 18 hours a day and often spend the rest of the night there on a tattered sofa. When someone suggested a party for a change of pace, he was told by the workers no party was necessary and there were more urgent uses for the money.

Meals at headquarters for strikers and their families consist of Kool-aid, rice, beans, turkey necks and bologna sandwiches. Sometimes there’s real meat. But whatever there is, all say the cooks do a magnificent job. Some food is donated by local merchants.

Ladies who answer the phone at headquarters frequently use the greeting: “Union recognition.”

Around-the-clock security is provided at headquarters by young men who have volunteered their services. Area Dir. Dave White’s strike diary notes that “We are not permitted to stand in front of union headquarters at night for fear of being shot from a passing car. The local leaders sleep from place to place on different nights. It is not exactly fear, but precautions the local people feel must be observed.”

1199ers in New York feel especially close to the Charleston strike for more reasons than you can shake a picket sign at.

Many fought a similar battle when 1199 was brought to New York hospitals in 1959 and 1962. Others have relatives in Charleston or places like it.

New York and Charleston 1199ers were brought closer when Vice-Pres. Doris Turner, veteran of the 1959 strike, introduced 1199B Pres. Mary Moultrie to last month’s General Delegate Assembly. Recently released from 11 days in jail, Miss Moultrie moved many in the audience to tears. “We’re asked to be treated equal and as human beings,” she said. “And we are not going to let anybody turn us around, jail or no jail.”

In a few weeks members in all divisions had collected more than $10,000 in badly needed cash support for the Charleston strikers.

Margaret Carter, a delegate from Mt. Sinai and a veteran of the ’59 strike happens to be at home now recuperating from a heart ailment, but she said, “I wish I could go down there and help out.” Bernest McRae of Brooklyn Jewish, another ’59 veteran, said “we’re raising money every payday for the strike. We remember what it was like before we had the union, and we know it’s even worse in Charleston. We’re proud our union is down there.”

Marie Umstead, of Knickerbocker Hospital, who has relatives in Charleston, said, “Down there whites talk to blacks like they talk to dogs. Those workers aren’t just fighting for better pay, but for self-respect as human beings.”

1199 Drug and Hospital News, 4 (May, 1969):11–21.

27. 113-DAY HOSPITAL STRIKE IN CHARLESTON

“The strike enabled me to be enlightened about life itself. It helped me to realize how important I am as a person, which I’m afraid I didn’t quite realize before . . . I further realized that the power structure isn’t all-powerful, but that they are ready to do the bidding of the people and the people can make them do it.”

The lady who wrote this is Mrs. Claire G. Brown, a worker at Charleston’s Medical College Hospital, wife, and mother of five. She and several of her children were jailed for strike activity. “For anything else,” she wrote, “I would never permit myself to be jailed. Looking back, I know if I had it to do again I would do the same thing.”

Dozens of other strikers wrote similar letters to the union. They represent on the scale of the individual the changes that the 113-day strike brought about among Charleston’s blacks as a community. As a result, Charleston, with its magnolia-scented memories of plantation days, will never be the same.

What happened in Charleston couldn’t have happened in a more appropriate place. The city is full of history. The kind of history is suggested by the lovely old mansions and the gardens with moss-hung trees. It is plainly stated by the Old Slave Mart, a museum on the site where human beings used to be bought and sold. Recently, during the strike, the city dedicated as a historic site an island that used to be a prison for captured Union soldiers in the Civil War. Part of the ceremony was the raising of a Confederate flag.

But the strike, and the workers’ victory brought the message to Charleston loud and clear: The times they are a-changin’.

Before the strike, Charleston whites considered that the black population was “happy.” The fact is, the civil rights movement of the 1950’s pretty much passed the city by. When desegregation became a legal fact in the early 1960’s Charleston desegregated public facilities without too much pushing by blacks. Efforts to organize a civil rights movement in the city were never successful. It was said the people weren’t interested in coming out to meetings, or marching on picket lines.

To say that Charleston was shocked by what it saw during the hospital strike is to put it mildly. 1199 Vice-Pres. Elliott Godoff, head of the National Organizing Committee of Hospital and Nursing Home Employees, said the first 100 days of the strike saw more than 100 rallies that brought out tens of thousands of people. “This was something that was considered impossible to accomplish—and this was the opinion of blacks as well as whites,” he said.

A Fighting Community is Born

Not only the rallies and marches held day after day, but the numerous confrontations with police and National Guardsmen showed that the black community of Charleston was far from quiet and “happy.” Any question about the people’s willingness to put everything on the line for this struggle was answered by the hundreds who went to jail for its sake. Many were jailed several times in what finally totaled about 1,000 arrests.

How this was accomplished has been documented in virtually all of the countless news articles and editorials about the Charleston hospital strike that appeared all over the country. Local 1199B Pres. Mary Ann Moultrie calls it “The combination that loves the people and that the people love.” It’s 1199’s ability to organize hospital workers and call public attention to their need for decent wages and union rights, plus the SCLC’s ability to “turn a town around” by organizing all parts of the community—students, poor people, middle class people, churchmen—to come to the hospital workers’ support.

This combination itself marks a sharp change in the way black people have organized before. In an analysis of the strike for the magazine New South, Charlotte (N.C.) Observer reporter Jack Bass wrote of the strike victory, “. . . it may have opened a new era in the struggle for economic improvement for poor people in the South.

Labor, Rights Movement Unite

The New York Times joined many other observers in pointing out that “The broader significance of the (Charleston) affair is that it successfully brought into cooperation the civil rights movement and organized labor, segments of American society that have too often viewed their interests as conflicting rather than common . . . They not only expect to win further economic gains in the South, but work together for voter registration and other goals.”

As elsewhere in the South, Charleston politics has been the unchallenged activity of whites. Although they are a majority of Charleston proper, not counting suburbs, Negroes have no black representative on the County Council. The reason, say Asst. NOC Dir. Henry Nicholas and Area Dir. Dave White, who have been working on this problem, is that few are registered and fewer vote.

A registration campaign was started by the union, and since the College Hospital settlement July 1, more than 500 people have registered as voters. The campaign is community-wide, including everyone, not just 1199B members.

Lesson in Political Action

The idea of connecting politics with the strike came quite naturally, Godoff said. He told how the workers, trying to see state, county and city officials to explain their grievances before the strike, were repeatedly ignored by the politicians. “The fact that most of these officials got their jobs with the considerable help of the Negro vote meant nothing. The strike made the politicians sit up and take notice, and the workers began to realize that they had to form as solid a block in voting as they did in marching in order to get results in the future.”

The strike also provided firsthand experience in organizing a movement to hundreds of people who never did anything of the kind before. The results of this on-the-job training were seen mainly among hospital workers, who helped organize the church rallies, marches, and shopping boycotts in Charleston. But the idea spread quickly and widely during those 113 days to other groups—in the city and elsewhere. Several strike rallies were held outside Charleston by citizens of Johns Island, James Island, Edisto Island and other communities, some as far away as 35 miles.

All of the strike activities, of course, were held under the banner that is becoming nationally if not world-famous—1199’s blue and white hat. It became the height of fashion in Charleston to wear the hat as a badge of support not only for the strike but for the whole freedom movement around it. One group of women, not union members, organized a demonstration to protest cutbacks in the federal food stamp program. They delayed their action until they could get 1199 hats to wear for the occasion.

The courage and willingness to sacrifice that led to the victory in Charleston have been translated by the enormous press and TV coverage of the strike into inspiration for many thousands of hospital workers in other cities. As a result, requests for help in organizing have come to the NOC from a dozen cities in the Midwest and the South. Meanwhile, NOC continues to expand existing campaigns in Baltimore, Philadelphia and other cities. Godoff noted that the emphasis everywhere is on voluntary hospitals, unlike the situation in Charleston. There, he explained, NOC was thrust into the organization of workers in the State College and County Hospitals.

The outlook for widespread organization, Godoff said, is great. “There are about 2-1/2 million unorganized hospital workers in this country, most of them members of minority groups, mostly women, and mostly victims of poverty wages,” he said. “I think it’s clear to everyone after the Charleston experience that these workers want to and can be organized. There’s just no question that the combination of the NOC and SCLC, with support from the labor movement, churches and other groups of decent people have set the stage for a campaign to end poverty among hospital workers.”

1199 Drug and Hospital News, 4 (September, 1969):7–10.

28. LETTERS FROM CHARLESTON STRIKERS

What the Strike Meant

Letter 1

I feel that the Charleston hospital strike was one of the most exciting, hardest and important period of my life.

I went places I had never been before in my life. There were times I even experienced how the other half lives. I met people from all walks of life which enable me to be enlightened about life itself. It help me to realize how important I am as a person, which I’m afraid I didn’t quite realize before. I saw that when people are determined to do or get something accomplished, they can if they would just ban together and work hard for it. I further realized that the power structure isn’t all powerful, but that they are to do the bidding of the people, and the people can make them do it.

It surprised me, and maybe it did because I never lived with anything like this before, that people like Reverend Abernathy, Mrs. King, our ministers, some of our teachers, a couple of whom was fired from their jobs, our precious students, and organizations like 1199 and SCLC would risk jail, time, money and their very lives to help poor people like me and hundreds of poor people like me, whom a lot of other people may think wasn’t important enought even to consider. And all the thousands of people who came to aid us in our troubles. Our own people in Charleston and the wonderful people all across the country. God bless all of you.

It wasn’t all exciting, however. There was some hard work involved. The walking, walking and more walking. The hours and efforts spent trying to get programs together for mass meetings. The sacrifice to my husband and children. Many times my husband performed many of the duties that were mine as a wife and mother, and at times became quite upset, but he beared with me. There were times my children didn’t see me all day and sometimes not even at night because of the time I had to spend away from home. But I believe the sacrifice was well worth while because it has made me a better and stronger person due to the fact that I will now stand up and fight for their rights and mine if the need arises.

I have learned to accept criticisms and not worry about it. I have learned to disagree with anything, and say I don’t agree, if I don’t believe it’s right and don’t worry about it.

There were days I wanted to cry, I was so depressed, because it seemed that inspite of all the hard work and sweat, that we weren’t accomplishing anything, but I knew within myself that I had to keep on working even harder because 1199 didn’t lie to us, they laid it on the line and let us know just how hard it was going to be, and that it might have been harder than it was. I felt that I was prepared, maybe that’s why I kept on pushing.

I had to go to jail a couple of times, for anything else, I know if I could help it, I would never permit myself to be jailed, looking back I know if I had it to do again I would do the same thing.

Working around and with people of all sorts have been most rewarding, especially with that bond binding us together.

Now if I didn’t learn but one thing from this strike it was, if you are willing to help yourself, people will be more than willing to help you.

Mrs. Claire G. Brown

Obstetric Technician

in charge of program

in jail 6 times

5 kids, some of kids in jail

Letter 2

Having gone thru most of my young life, working as a slave for white power structure type people, being a member of 1199B, I feel that I am reborn.

I have learn from the hospital strike in Charleston that black people can be united together as one. And as brothers and sisters.

I have also learn that when united Black people mind is set upon an effort to better its way of living, it doesn’t matter who is on the other side of the street, and it doesn’t matter what’s being said about them on the other side of the street. They just keep on doing their thing and bring victory their way. That’s 1199B.

I’ve seen sometimes in 1199B meetings and picket-line Satan comes our way. But it appears to me that whenever Satan comes 1199B has a prepared way to deal with him. That’s the good part about being 1199B member.

SCLC, students of Charleston, our many friends here and abroad will always remain in my heart. Because their helping hands help the united Black people at the Medical College receive their goal.

Lottie Mae Glover

aide

Medical College

Jail once

Letter 3

1. First of all to me the union is like a guidance counselor.

2. It’s a lover.

3. It’s a friend.

Now to explain the above statements.

The union guides its people to better their conditions, to stand behind them and with them in any struggle that might ensue and believe me they are many. The unionist are sincere people because they have lived your struggle long before now.

They were little people too. But the time came when they weren’t going to be foot mats any longer so on thought came to mind. Get all the little people together and decide now or forget forever the hope of becoming a real American Citizen to say what you believe in and be what you want to be without having anyone push you around because you see no one dares to push a crowd. And being bonded together with your fellow man gives you a wonderful feeling of strength. And with the union a wonderful feeling of self respect, love for your fellow man and security. The union give us its complete aid and guidance 24 hours a day. When we are asleep the union was walking sentry doing our thing. I will never forget the people from 1199B because they have truly been my guidance counselor.

To belong to the union is to love the people. There is always someone to talk to. Someone who understands and after your little talk they make you glad that you came.

To belong to the union is to have millions of friends. Friends that will come to your aid and stand with you through trials and tribulation surrounding you with strength and love. The union takes care of its own. The union is like an oak tree in a petrified forest and I am so happy to be a leaf on it. May it stand forever and ever. 1199B and 1199. I love you both.

Mrs. D.P. Heyward

P.S. You will notice that I did not call names of any one of the union leaders. Well that’s because they are all so wonderful and I’m in love with each and every one of them and I want to give you ladies and gents a chance to express your love so my hopes are that wherever I go from here that I will remain a member of 1199B and see them in every city in America doing their thing. And when it’s my turn to go and take my stand I have confidence that was given to me free of charge by the union 1199B and my thoughts are elevated to new heights. I am somebody now!!

Letter 4

To me, the strike was a means of letting the city of Charleston, the state of South Carolina, as well as the nation, know that I, along with about 550 black hospital workers were standing up for justice and human dignity.

We were 550 black men and women committed to the well-being of the sick men, women, and children of Charleston. As a reward, we only asked to be paid decently so that we could invest in a better way of life for ourselves and our families; we only asked for the justified right to unite and organize ourselves into a stronger body of hard working people who could walk down the hospital corridors, as well as our community with dignity and self-respect and with the assurance of representation in a time of grievance.

The strike was also symbolic of the fact that the hospital workers at the Medical University Hospital and the Charleston County Hospital would no longer accept part-time wages for a full-time job and that they would no longer stand quietly in a life of poverty, exploitation and discrimination. Yes, this was the time to stand up and yell loudly for an end to these conditions, this was a time to stand up and be counted for what we know in our heart was right.

As the strike continued with the expectations of a long, hard struggle, I realized that this was not just a fight for union, dignity, self-respect and higher wages for us, but it was a fight for union, dignity, self-respect and higher wages for black and oppressed poor people.

A hidden slogan in the far corners of my mind during the strike was “if Mr. Charlie can have union representation, Annie Lou can have hers too.” With this in mind, I continued in a fight for justice through a strike to better my conditions, hospital workers’ (present and future) condition, and most important, my fellow brothers and sisters’ condition with the vow to hold on, keep my eyes on the price and let nobody turn me around.

I would like to take this time also to express my thanks to 1199 of New York and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for their undying spirit and undying willingness to help in this struggle.

lots of arrests, in jail twice

31 days - 11+9+11

photo (being dragged in street)

3rd sister, student, also in jail

Donna M. Whack

Ward Clerk

Charleston County Hospital

Letter 5

The meaning of this strike to me, can be summarized in two incidents.

First: one of my church sisters, whom I have much respect for, didn’t understand why I saw fit to picket or join in a march. She said, “I would walk out but picketing and marching are against my religion. You should pray to God for what you want instead of picketing and marching.”

Then one day as we demonstrated on King Street telling people not to shop, a black woman came bursting through the crowd with a package under her arms. Well, she was pretty mad but my soul Sister gave me some great advice. She said “I don’t know what you fussing for, you ought to be out working for what you want.” I think I got more out of that statement than all of the beautiful expression ever said in our strike.

“You ought to be out working for what you want.” It can’t get any plainer. Praying is not the only answer. You have to work for what you want.

Right there and then I felt a new meaning to the hospital strike which in itself was a very delicate situation in which sick people were involved. But it is plain that South Carolina is a sick society and maybe a strike like ours was God’s way of making his people realize that. It just wasn’t a matter of higher wage or love of a job. Discrimination against Black “non-professional workers,” who were intrusted with the lives of sick people, became our main target which really made us unite and love unity.

In church, the one thing I did learn was that salvation didn’t come on a silver platter. There would be suffering and sacrifice like what Jesus spoke of and if wanted victory you had to work for it and hold out to the perfect end; keep you eyes on the prize! And Soul Power!

During this strike my eyes were open to new strength I didn’t know I had. Now that it is over I pray that I never fall into the same old routine but that I be as new born and tell black people everywhere that our strikers stuck together. There was unity through love and respect for each other. This is the only way to survive; through each other.

long terms in jail twice

Miss Virgie Lee Whack

Ward Clerk

Charleston County Hospital

Letter 6

The best thing happen to Charleston is when Medical College and County Hospital walk out on strike. We were fighting for what we’ll velieve in. The strike was a hard struggle. We picket, day and night. We went to jail. We did not have a fair fight, but we kept the faith in what we believed in, but in this struggle we found out that the mayor of Charleston, S.C. and the government is not our friend. Who we voted for, they proved to us that black and poor white people belong in poverty, but 1199B and SCLC proved to them that they are wrong. We have made it possible that we can walk in dignity and respect. The strike have brought us together to love each other and try to understand ourself as a person, to believe in our self that we are somebody. No matter how things may be with us, the strike have brought strength to us to love each other as sisters and brothers. 1199B and SCLC made it possible that the nation was looking at Charleston, the struggle had made it possible that the salary was raised from $1.30 - $1.60 which is great. We the 1199B and SCLC have brought a new day to Charleston through the strike so that black and poor white people can walk in dignity and respect in 1969.

I would like to say to the organizer Mr. Nicholas May God Bless you for trying to help others to live a better and happier life in places where things look so hopeless.

Keep the faith.

Nurses’ Aide at County

Mrs. Georgetta Waye

87 Line St.

Charleston, S.C.

Letter 7

I feel that the strike was a great experience for me. It gave me the opportunity of learning how unions are operated and mainly how to deal with people. It helped to motivate me to the point where I actually wanted to participate in all the activities involved in awakening the people of our community and acting as “strike leader.”

It also eliminated any fear I might have had about speaking out in public, before large groups or being firm with the power structure.

During this struggle I was really shock by the support given by some of our local leaders who I heretofore had considered our leaders, only to find that some of these people were really Dr. Thomases and Miss and Mrs. Ann. There were really only a few real leaders. But I was very much elated of the interest and support shown by the grass-root people in our community.

The strike also made me conscious of other people around me. Although the majority of the people that were out on strike worked in the same hospital with me and attended membership meetings, I really didn’t get to know them individually until the strike came about. I feel that walking the picket line, participating in the various demonstrations, mass rallies and sharing problems have really created a closer relationship between me and the other members.

It also made me aware of how important it is to make certain sacrifices, if one wants to accomplish his goal. When one is involved in a struggle it is not a crime to go to jail without bail, it’s a pleasure. When one is in a struggle such as the one we were in, it is not to difficult to live on $15.00 a week, as we didn’t earn much more than that anyway.

The fact that people all over the country made sacrifices and supported us financially and morally made me aware that there are still people that are concerned about poverty and the poor. It has injected in me the desire of wanting to make right that which is wrong. Whenever or wherever people are struggling to be treated with dignity and respect and the right to be free is where I want to be.

By working with the great Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference my comprehension of their philosophy of nonviolence have been made much clearer. I, too have adopted non-violence as a way of life and intend to work with this organization as close as I can.

But most of all, I have discovered that although we have already put in a lot of work, there is still a lot more to be done. I am not worried because I know that “only the strong survives.”

Mary A. Moultrie

Letter 8

I was asked on several occasions why was I participating in the strike of non-professional workers against the Medical College and Charleston County Hospitals, by both relatives and friends . . . in my reply I was never hesitant, I answered them the same as I would answer you or any questioning agent, by saying, that it is true that I am not a non-professional worker, but neither were the LPN’s who are affiliated with this union. These LPN’s along with several of my co-strikers required as much training as I did for my secretarial position.

My sincere reason for becoming a part of Local 1199B is because I was tired doing professional work and receiving the wages of a non-professional.

I will say now and again that 1199B has been and will be the greatest organization that has ever come to Charleston, and I am immensely overwhelmed to be a part of such a terrific union.

In my conclusion I must not forget to say “Thanks” to the SCLC staff who worked so diligently to see that we as a union . . . seek and win this great battle. I must add that it took a long time coming, but Thank God it is here and not for only a month, but to stay.

A quote from our great Black leader, Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.

“Free at last, Free at last

Thank God we are free at last.”

in jail 9 days

Brenda Brothers

Pediatric Secretary

Letter 9

This has been the most astonish struggle in the history for poor black and poor white people in the world.

Let me start from the beginning. On September of 1968 I heard of about the organizing of a union for all hospital workers. I went to the meetings and took cards to let all interested persons working at Charleston County Hospital Workers to join. The High Noon and sitting on the lawns at Medical College Hospital was showing, but was not effective. The politicians was changing one way or the other. This took place all because twelve (12) members were fired from the Medical College Hospital. We took an oath “That an injury to one - is an injury to all.” Then we came out to support the Medical College Hospital Strike. We had a lot of support from Local 15A for letting us use their hall and really you wouldn’t think it belong to Local 1199B.

The people in the community felt that the struggle was worth fighting for.

At first I felt tense being with people that I didn’t know. But after being with them, I got to know and understand their problems; and try to listen to them. I really went through a struggle. During the struggle I met a lot of people of importance. I’ve seen interesting places.

I really enjoy the hit and run demonstrations. This was very offensive to me, especially blocking the traffic on the historic Cooper River Bridge, finding out where the Governor was having luncheon; which I think was very funny.

The young girls and men with Civil War clothing on, you should have seen them.

The strike have taught me to take criticism and take a lot of kidding from other people. I have help other members from the medical establishment sign cards and even visit them in their homes. One member was so afraid of the boss it hurt very much to see how a person can be like that. Mr. Bradford and I would keep going and talk with them but so far I haven’t succeeded as yet. We will keep on especially since we won our freedom from both County and Medical College Hospitals.

One thing I enjoy, is that the community was with us and that no matter what we have done - Charleston, S.C. will never be the same. The historic sights will not be historic any more. The sacrificing Black people in Charleston has been historic.

I thank everyone for their help. I will start from 1199, SCLC and the community and the Concerned Clergy, we will remember that God takes care of his own.

co-chairman,

1199B chapter at County Hospital

Alma Harden

aide

County Hospital

Letter 10

The way that I feel about the strike and surrounded events is I’m certain the views of many of the poor people of Charleston. I’m sorry that so many innocent people had to suffer, but I’m also glad that it was experienced.

The strike brought a lot of things to light. And although the strike involved whites as well as blacks, the press here made a special note of “Striking Negro Workers.” I was present on King Street when the State troopers brutally beat Miss Richards in the open eye of the public, the press failed to inform the public of this.

The strike maybe outwardly settled, but the scar which it left will always be evident. Civil rights had a great part to play in the strike, but the principles of integrity played a much stronger part. I believe that as long as people are subjugated the inevitable is protest.

I enjoy helping people, that’s why I became a nurse. I didn’t go on strike to hurt the patients, I feel I did what was necessary to make award conditions which were unfair. We live (supposedly) in a democratic society and that gives everybody the right to a fair share and opportunity, and we did no more than execute our rights.

Everyone pays taxes to pay for the protection of the police, and their job is to keep peace and quiet and enforce constituted laws. And when I see State troopers beating on women and the youth of the community (Black) I wonder who they are really protecting.

I feel that the curfew was mainly for the Blacks of Charleston, and the tensions were greatly focused on black and not white. I thought South Africa was the only place where blacks couldn’t exercise the same rights as whites.

Everyone on earth wants their children to have, and be able to live like humans. I believe a sincere effort is being made to better the conditions, and I’m sure it will pay off for everybody all the way around.

The strike had a real meaning, and it’s up to all involved to warrant its success.

Mrs. Beverly Kennedy

Nurses’ Aide

Medical College

Letter 11

First of all it gives me the opportunity to meet new people with knowledge of unions, someone whom I can lean on where I have lack of understanding. It means hope for better living, recognition as a human being and my ability to serve humanity. I wish to say also that it had brought more community relationship, people who we had seen each and every day, were strangers until this union unite and brought us so close together, close enough for us to become sisters and brothers. It gives me a pride which I wish to show off proudly, with dignity and honor. I will never disregard or disrespect its concrete meaning, as long as I am a member.

One moment that instill within me a determination, and to fight whatever may come, “was” one afternoon in New York City, I went to make a speech there, in behalf of our President, “Miss Mary Moultrie,” which I felt very honored! I met a group of people hard at work sorting and packing clothing to send to the striking hospital workers in Charleston, S.C. To see how faithful and untiring these people were at work, shock my mind to thinking and as I was being introduced to the other members of 1199 National Vice-President Mrs. Doris Turner they said to her she is our sister that is all that matters, one young lady in particular, “Isabelle,” said to me, and I can hear her voice ringing in my ear, Mama, there are lots of work to do. Come over here and start folding and separating things in like manner because before time for the rally we want to have the most of these things packed in boxes and tied up. She was right because with the supervision of Mrs. Turner work was a pleasure when it was nearing the time for the Rally. I was invited upstairs to the “Office of the National 1199.” Where we refreshed ourselves and got dress and on to the rally, which I thought was beautiful, the moral support given me, I couldn’t but shed some tears of joy and happiness. People who were strangers, treated me as though I was one of them and as if they had known me all of their lives. People there were very generous financially as well as morally. I must mention Mr. Leon Davis, a great guy! I met him before, in Charleston, S.C. Also when he went to jail with Rev. Ralph Abernathy, but this night he was different, but still sincere. We said, we are going to dinner and have a good time. This night is ours to remember. After a very healthy meal, I went to Mrs. Turner’s home for the night, here is where I really got to know her. Here is a woman with a family, a home, and every day problems, same as many of us, but finds time to share in the problem of humanity and not just sharing but are doing much to deflate poverty.

Another thing I will always remember and I learn this in Baltimore the moment I step off the plane. I didn’t know who was suppose to meet me, but as I was walking across the ramp and into the airport building, this beautiful well attractive young lady was standing inside holding a Local 1199 hat in her hand, I went over to her, and she said to me, Are you the delegate from Charleston, S.C.? No answer was necessary, we embraced with happiness, and I think at that moment, we both found out that this is a good code. If you are lost and you are a sister or a brother, Local 1199 hat will find you a guide. Then Gwendolyn and another Associate drove me to the church where the rally was held. The next day was when I really got to know Mr. Elliott Godoff. Waiting for plane time, we had a chance to talk and get to know each other better. I wanted to know that the advice given to me by him will go a long way. I learn also that people variated, I found this out in Washington, D.C. when I was a guest at the ALA Convention at the Washington Hilton Hotel, but we are greatful for people like Mr. Myers; a delegate from New York City who was very helpful. Also Iran Brown and Mr. Robinson from Detroit who made me very comfortable, but the most exciting eventful period, was, when Mr. T. presented a check for $25,000 to me for Local 1199B in support of the striking workers. The person or persons who are responsible for me to enjoy this wonderful experience are Mr. Henry Nicholas and Miss Mary Ann Moultrie, in the past, few months I learn to rely on these two person’s ability for guidance. This union means togetherness. We have had good day, bad days very trying day, days when some of our demonstrators were man handle, and thrown in prison: But, as our president always say, “and I quote:”, only the strong survive. “Unquote”. I find myself working with people, using their ideas that were helpful, going to jail working with young people who were eager to assist, what ever the outcome may be. I also know that it takes sacrifice, loyalty, dedication, and money to build a union. And this is what it means to me. Plus the determination of people who for sake themselves to help someone who are not able to help themself but with the right help and guidance, can do wonders. And in turn do the same for someone else.

photo appears on May 1969 cover

Mrs. Hermina Traeye

LPN

County Hospital

Letter 12

The strike as a whole brought out a lot of changes in me. It has taught me how to economize, how to go without things you really don’t have. It has taught me really to understand people and their well beings. Probably one time or another if someone would’ve come to me with a problem I might’ve shun them a little or never even considered their problems, but as the strike went on I found myself being a little more consideration.

It also made me look more at the political aspects of the situation in Charleston and all over the country.

Also with the help of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and with their great President Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, I’ve also learned the concept of non-violence. Without their help the strike would’ve lasted probably for a long time. Most of all I could never thanked the members from Local 1199 in New York for their support and their moral support and their financial support.

I would like to thank everyone from 1199 for their help.

Thank God. Bless you all!

Mrs. Ernestine Bryant

LPN

Medical College

Letter 13

I cannot express what the strike means to me as we progressed as best we could during the 100 days I was not able to march or picket very much but I was able to pray. This is some of the words that came to me.

0 Lord God to whom vengeance belongeth show thyself. Lift up thyself, thou Judge of the earth, how long shall the wicked triumph, how long shall they utter and speak things, and all the workers of iniquity boast themselves. Lord who will rise up for me against the evil doers, or workers of iniquity. Who did rise up for me against these - 1199B and SCLC did. With God’s guidance, and our prayers together, we won. Today I am glad for the small part I had in breaking the states’ right to work law.

1 can now go forward with dignity and respect.

I am somebody. I am still praying that we can still go further.

Soul Sister

Mrs. Annie G. Fobbs, LPN

4–13 Felix Street

Charleston, S.C. 29403

July 4, 1969

Letter 14

To me, personally, the strike was an eye opener. During the strike I was able to see how long the Black and poor people of Charleston and the State of South Carolina were asleep.

I knew that, we as Black people were not getting our equal rights, decent wages, nor were we able to enjoy the many privileges and opportunities that were made possible for us but now that the strike has open our eyes to the fact that if we as black and poor people do not stand up and fight and be counted for, we will remain in slavery.

I also learned during the strike that the “Light of Freedom begin to shine for the poor and black people of Charleston and South Carolina and if we are to keep it shining we will have to unite and remain united. And when we say that: “An injury to one, is an injury to all.” We will have to show it whenever the times come.

We will have to let the white men know that slavery is gone forever and that the black men and women of America will stand united and will fight and also be ready to pay any penalty that is required to maintain their freedom.

Forever Grateful,

Mrs. Rosabelle Deas (NA)

Letter 15

To me the strike show the way to fight for my dignity and freedom. It also gave me the strength to fight for my rights.

By going on strike, it unite the workers together, giving us security and courage to stand up for what we believe in, and this something we don’t have before.

The strike has taught me that deep down, we had the ability and the power we neede to fight slaveries.

These 100 days has taught me that the love of my Black brothers is greater than all the money in this mix up world.

Now that we are united, we have the ability to change unjust laws.

I believe that with unity we have, we should not stop at Medical College Hospital and County Hospital, but united all workers in South Carolina.

We are organized now and with help of our brothers we will make it.

Mrs. Pearline R. Canty

July 31, 1969

District 1199 Archives.

BREAD AND ROSES

29. IS THIS ANY WAY TO RUN A UNION?

Results of Local 1199’s Cultural Activities Say ‘Yes’

In this organization, members seem to be going to one continual round of cultural happenings—dramatic presentations, concerts, recitals, poetry readings, forum discussions, exhibits, film festivals—all of them (except the last) live events sponsored and produced by the organization itself.

Is this a cultural society? An educational institution? A club for self-improvement? Yes and no. While it does have some elements of all of them within it, the organization in question is basically, and very functionally, a trade union.

In the labor community of New York City, it’s not exactly a revelation that Local 1199, Drug and Hospital Employes Union (AFL-CIO) has been blending all of this cultural ferment with bread-and-butter trade unionism for many years.

But a bewildered outsider wonders: “Is this any way to run a union?”

And the answer given by Local 1199 President Leon J. Davis is: “You bet it is!”

“What our union and our members are doing,” Mr. Davis explains, “merely is demonstrating again what most labor leaders know—that the fight for a living wage and decent working conditions is the start of the struggle for all the good things in life.”

So pervasive throughout the organization are the cultural activities of Local 1199 that now they are part of its day-to-day operations. The union, which started out as a small group of retail drug store employes 35 years ago, has a current membership of almost 27,000 and is affiliated with the AFL-CIO Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

The great growth of Local 1199 has taken place in the last eight years as it organized more than 20,000 workers employed in New York’s hospitals as orderies, nurses’ aides, porters, kitchen and housekeeping staff; plus a mounting number of their technical, professional and clerical employes.

It was during the early part of its hospital period—marked by strikes in 1959 and 1972—that the cultural program underwent its first modern expansion. Since most of the non-medical hospital workers are Negroes and Puerto Ricans, the fights became intertwined with the escalating battle for civil rights, which in turn furnished its own impetus to the program.

Reporting on 1199’s monthly live theater series featuring top stage and screen stars, The New York Times observed that “the members have dug the drama to a degree that could have the motivation research folks uncovering a whole new set of motives to research.”

But 1199 Executive Secretary Moe Foner, who directs the program, thinks that organized labor folks do not have to dig too far back in their own experience to know what those motives are; and to know, too, that they’ve been there all the time.

“Long before our hospital organizing campaigns, we in 1199 had learned that speeches and reports at meetings alone are not enough,” says Mr. Foner. “And we developed some educational and cultural activities pretty early in our history. So part of the foundation of our present program lay there.”

But, Mr. Foner emphasizes, the breadth and depth of the new needs could not be filled simply by more of the same things the union had been doing.

“What continues to be needed,” he said, “are quality programs bringing to our members the best there is by way of information and inspiration. ‘A good union doesn’t have to be dull,’ is the way we looked at it . . . So, in addition to stepping up and expanding the education and other programs already in operation, we developed two major new projects—Theater 1199 and the forum-discussion series.”

Local 1199, whose headquarters are located in Manhattan’s theater district, has had contacts with stage, screen and TV stars who have appeared at its social events over the years. Of this group, the now famous theater couple, actor-playwright Ossie Davis and actress Ruby Dee, have been devoted friends of the union for 15 years. They have participated in the union’s happenings throughout that period—writing, directing and presenting dramatic material for the union’s Negro History Week celebrations and other events.

Other early members of Local 1199 “repertory” group included Sidney Poitier, Godfrey Cambridge, Sam Levenson, Ricardo Montalban, Alan Alda, John Randolph, Morris Carnovsky and Will Geer.

“With this wonderful talent available to us and our union headquarters containing a 400-seat auditorium,” Mr. Foner said, “we had the primary ingredients for a program of live theater.”

Time: January 1965—Enter Theater 1199. A panarama of the two years of the series would show scenes from Sean O’Casey’s plays performed by John Randolph and Sarah Cunningham, annotated by notes on Mr. O’Casey’s life and work by Professor Frederick Ewen . . . scenes from works by Twain and Whitman performed by actor Will Geer . . . the Group Theater Workshop with Robert Hooks in scenes from “In White America” . . . readings from an 1199 organizer’s poetry by Davis and Dee . . . scenes from Shakespeare by the Theater-in-Education . . . and a folk-song concert by The Mitchell Trio.

It has been an enriching experience for everyone involved in Theater 1199, Mr. Foner says, especially the patrons. Most of them, he pointed out, never had seen a live play and they found in these performances a remarkable rapport with “those who show us to ourselves.”

That the actors have enjoyed these events “as much as the audience,” he added, has been happily evident in the post-performance coffee klatches, when they mingle with the spectators.

Certainly no one has enjoyed it more than Mr. Foner, who in addition to being a talent scout, producer and impresario-at-large for Theater 1199, is editor of the union’s award-winning magazine, 1199 Drug & Hospital News, and producer of the union’s two 30-minute organizing movies.

Program credits for the success of Theater 1199 would not be complete without a strong one for the rank-and-file Affairs Committee, Mr. Foner underlines. “This group,” he says, “acts as a sounding board for project proposals and provides the brains, arms and legs for the many small but vital jobs.”

Right now, there’s a long intermission at Theater 1199. And this, paradoxically, is due to the union’s organizing successes of the past few years. So much extra office space has been needed to take care of all the expanded administrative work for the union’s increased membership, that much of the auditorium area in the headquarters had to be expropriated for this purpose.

However, a new home for Theater 1199 is on the way. It will be part of the union’s new home, a 14-story building to be constructed just around the corner from its present building and scheduled for completion in 1969.

The other new segment of the union’s cultural program is the series of Friday night forum-discussions. Designed mainly for 1199 delegates and active members, these events have presented talks on poverty by Michael Harrington, on the civil rights movement by Bayard Rustin, on peace by Norman Thomas, and on other key issues of the day by other prominent Americans. The floor is thrown open for comment and questions after each lecture and the lively exchanges that follow show that speakers and audience have definitely communicated.

A union publishing a book of poems? That may seem far-out even for such a heavily culture-oriented institution as Local 1199. But one finds that it’s not really so distant when the volume’s 60 poems deal with union life and experience, specifically the 1959 and 1962 strikes of hospital workers during the initial organizing drives.

The press acclaimed the event of publication, if not necessarily the contents of the book, “Talking With My Feet,” in 1965. The former New York Herald Tribune did a long feature article on the volume and its author, Marshall Dubin of the 1199 organizing staff; The New York Times gave it a proper notice; and many union publications applauded, some with awe.

The Machinist, publication of the AFL-CIO International Association of Machinists, in an editorial on the book, said the poems “will warm the heart of anyone who has ever walked a union picket line.” The editorial quoted several of the poems, ending with the lines:

“Where is the union now,

friend,

At the strike’s end?

Inside my heart, friend . . .”

and, added, “It’s the only place where a labor union has ever lived. We’re indebted to Marshall Dubin for saying it so well.”

A favorite poem of Mr. Davis in “Talking With My Feet” is one that he thinks helps workers “to understand what they’ve won—and, more important, what it means to be organized into a force whose very numbers bring a sense of dignity and self-respect unknown before.” It reads:

“I’ve been called ‘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 his porter.

A cyclone has upset the

social order.”

Incidentally, the 1962 hospital strikes led to historic legislation in whose enactment Governor Rockefeller was instrumental. Intervening to end the work stoppage, the Governor promised a State bill that would give hospital workers something that was not available to them at that time—collective bargaining rights. Such a law was enacted in 1963, giving those rights to employes of non-profit hospitals in cities of one million or more. In 1965 the law was extended to all voluntary nonprofit hospitals throughout the State.

One of the earliest expressions of the union’s cultural aspirations was the annual celebration of Negro History Week in February. In recent years, the title of the event was changed to “Salute to Freedom”; but under either name, it has been an SRO highlight on the 1199 calendar for 17 years.

This year, the event broke all records. The doors of the 2,000-seat auditorium of the High School of Fashion Trades had to be closed an hour before curtain time with hundreds outside seeking admission. Reason: Miriam Makeba, Pete Seeger, the La Rocque Bey Dancers, and an address by Cleveland Robinson, national president of the Negro American Labor Council. Local 1199 contributed $2,650 to major civil rights organizations that night including three $500 NAACP life memberships awarded to George H. Fowler, chairman of the State Commission for Human Rights, Herman Badillo, Bronx Borough president, and Rev. Milton A. Galamison, pastor of Brooklyn’s Siloam Presbyterian Church. Mr. Fowler is a former deputy industrial commissioner of the State Labor Department.

The most recent event on the 1199 cultural calendar is a photo exhibit. Under the title, “Never to Forget; Never to Forgive!” the photos dramatically depict the extermination of six million jews by Nazi Germany. With this event, Local 1199 commemorated the Warsaw Ghetto uprising 24 years ago.

Generally, management people at the hospitals organized by Local 1199 have come to acknowledge the union as a social agency dedicated to constructive social ends and serving the social and economic needs of low-income wage earners who largely are members of minority groups.

Industrial Bulletin Of the New York State Department of Labor (May, 1967), copy in District 1199 Archives.

30. BREAD AND ROSES

By Moe Foner

Hearts starve as well as bodies; Give us bread, but give us roses!

The lines are from a poem by James Oppenheim, commemorating the famous strike in 1912 by more than 20,000 multi-ethnic textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Young female workers carried picket signs reading, “We want bread, and roses too.”

That bread and roses theme has become the focal point of the most ambitious project ever undertaken by a union in this country to bring culture directly to its rank-and-file members. The union is District 1199, National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees.

Many of these union members represent a new audience for the arts and humanities in this country. They are workers who, because of their educational, economic, racial and ethnic backgrounds, have previously had severely limited access and exposure to these areas of our cultural life.

District 1199’s project, aptly titled Bread and Roses, delivers the arts and humanities to workers in hospitals and nursing homes, where they are employed, at union headquarters (the Martin Luther King, Jr. Labor Center on West 43rd Street in New York City), and in their homes (1199 Plaza, the union-sponsored 1600 family housing development in East Harlem).

The project will cost about $1.3 million over its two-year period. About $550,000 is expected to be contributed in grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, New York State Council on the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. District 1199 will provide $350,000 in matching grants and services. Other funding has come from several private foundations, including: The Ford Foundation, the United Hospital Fund, United Church Board for Homeland Ministries, the Prudential Foundation, Boehm Enterprises, Carol and W. H. Ferry, Fund for Tomorrow, Inc., the J. J. Kaplan Fund, Inc., the Louise L. Ottinger Charitable Trust, the New York Times Foundation, the Shubert Foundation, Inc., the John Golden Fund, Inc., the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, the Lila Acheson Wallace Fund, and the North Shore Unitarian Veatch Program. Other funding is being sought from similar private foundations.

So that all monies may be channeled directly into the various Bread and Roses programs, the project is administered by the smallest possible staff. Staff members include this writer, as project director; Mordecai Bauman, administrator; Nonnie Perry, coordinator, and Abigail Booth Gerdts, who is developing special projects for Gallery 1199, the only permanent art gallery at any labor union headquarters in the United States.

The staff is assisted by a group of distinguished performing artists and scholars who helped shape the original proposal. The staff also works with rank-and-file Bread and Roses committees, numbering 450. These committees were organized during the planning period and continue to meet regularly. Among them are an overall committee and special Hispanic, Retiree, and 1199 Plaza committees.

Bread and Roses began in January 1979 and will extend through 1980. It seeks to bring to members and their families a cultural diversity that will encourage them to reach beyond their daily tasks toward a fuller involvement in the arts and humanities.

The union has some 70,000 members in the New York metropolitan area, and about 30,000 in seventeen other states. More than 70 percent of the members are black and Hispanic, and almost 85 percent are women.

Artists and entertainers who have performed for Bread and Roses thus far emphasize the emotional experience they feel in bringing their art directly to the people. The fact that many in the audiences had never before witnessed a concert or a photography exhibition underscores the implications Bread and Roses holds for the future of the arts in the U.S. And despite the fact that many are being introduced to such events for the first time, Bread and Roses makes no move to “water down” the cultural content to make the programs more palatable. There is no pandering to so-called popular taste and, perhaps not surprisingly, the enthusiastic response by workers to Bread and Roses events is as high as the quality of those events.

Even with the concentration of members in the New York area, Bread and Roses has taken on national—even international—ramifications. The federal and state endowments regard the project as a prototype, one that might serve as a model for other U.S. unions. And a group of Swedish labor union members recently visited 1199 headquarters to determine if Bread and Roses is applicable to their country.

Cultural diversity is the goal of the Bread and Roses program. Included in the project are drama, music, poetry, art and photography exhibits; a celebration of the union’s twentieth anniversary at New York’s Lincoln Center, an original topical musical revue, a Labor Day Street Fair, conferences, seminars, films, and recordings.

Bread and Roses has also created a ripple effect, one that may affect hospital labor relations and health-care costs. Among the various project conferences is a series on the responsibility of hospital workers for patient care, which is sponsored by a grant from the United Hospital Fund.

Historically, the attempt to bring culture into the daily lives of union workers is not a new concept. Herbert G. Gutman, a historian and member of the Bread and Roses advisory board, has suggested that the deep cultural cohesiveness among workers helped the labor movement succeed during the long, difficult strikes of the late 1800s, a time when there were no strike benefits and most of our society was hostile to unions.

A Business Week article in January dealing with the Bread and Roses project noted that poetry readings, song festivals, and dramatic performances were an important part of community life for Welsh coal miners, German cigar makers, New England shoe workers, and Baltimore bricklayers. “But that tradition has long since died out—and for a variety of reasons,” said the Business Week writer.

That Bread and Roses has succeeded in involving its audiences in reviving that cultural cohesiveness among workers is illustrated by their enthusiastic response. A sellout crowd of 2,800, for example, attended a Bread and Roses anniversary concert by Harry Belafonte on Sunday evening, 18 March 1879 at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center. It is estimated that more than half of the audience had never before been to Lincoln Center.

A major Bread and Roses program is Theater-in-the-Hospitals, for which a variety of music and drama groups perform free for workers, hospital staffs, and some patients during lunch hours. The first such group to perform was the Howard Roberts Chorale, and the reaction of its in-hospitals audiences proves the point.

A lab technician attending a performance at one hospital described District 1199 as “a little United Nations,” and added: “This kind of fine performance brings us together to learn about each other’s cultures and enrich ourselves during working hours.”

A patient at another hospital called the Theater-in-Hospitals program “a wonderful idea.” He said: “I’ve been bored silly staring at the four walls and watching T.V. This livened up the day. It was relaxing and I liked the togetherness.” And a nurse’s aide said the lunchtime performances “give us a good incentive to go back to work full of spirit.”

That, in essence, is what Bread and Roses is all about.

District 1199 is proud of its record as a militant organizer and its alliance in social causes with liberal and civil rights organizations. This involvement has helped us enlist the aid of many professionals in planning Bread and Roses, such as Ossie Davis, the actor-director-writer; actress Ruby Dee; and Harry Belafonte.

Belafonte, for example, would accept no fee for his Bread and Roses concert, which marked his first New York appearance in eighteen years. “1199 means a great deal to me,” he told the cheering crowd. “I come here with passion and sentiment. On every issue worth fighting for, your union has been there. I have to be involved with 1199 as long as there is an 1199.”

Ossie Davis, allied with 1199 through two decades, serves as master of ceremonies for most Bread and Roses entertainment events. He is also playing an important role in one of the project’s most ambitious programs, “Take Care,” the oral history musical revue.

Raw material for the revue, which will have original songs, lyrics, and sketches, has been developed at workshop sessions by union members and retirees under the guidance of author and teacher Lewis Cole.

Davis, together with Eve Merriam and Micki Grant, all members of the Bread and Roses advisory board, are writing the revue based on materials obtained at the workshops. Davis will then direct a professional cast which will present the revue in 1980 at hospitals and nursing homes as part of the Theater-in-Hospitals program.

The Roberts Chorale performed before some 15,000 enthusiastic workers and patients in thirty-five hospitals and nursing homes in New York, on Long Island, and in New Jersey. The group also performed at 1199 headquarters for retired members and at the Brooklyn Museum for 1199 retirees and other groups.

The Labor Theater was next on the Theater-in-Hospitals tour with a production of “I Just Wanted Someone to Know,” a 40-minute play with music about the role of women in the American labor movement. After visiting five hospitals and nursing homes in New York, the play traveled to Philadelphia and other Pennsylvania cities under the Bread and Roses banner before resuming its New York tour.

The other labor unions may launch similar programs is illustrated by the fact that three other unions have sponsored The Labor Theater production in seven other cities during the group’s Pennsylvania travels.

On 27 April 1979 Odetta, the noted folk-singer, launched Theater 1199, a series of Friday evening Bread and Roses entertainments at union headquarters for members and guests. Following an Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee performance 18 May, this season’s schedule concluded 15 June with an evening with humorist Sam Levenson.

Other Theater 1199 entertainers this year and in 1980 will include Judy Collins, the Billy Taylor Trio, Professor Irwin Corey, Pete Seeger, Elizabeth Swados and Friends, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson, Arlo Guthrie, and others.

Another Bread and Roses series, presented in Spanish primarily for the benefit of Hispanic members, is staged on Sunday afternoons at union headquarters. Featuring well-known Hispanic entertainers, the series began in April with Mongo Santamaria and his band, followed in May by the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, directed by Miriam Colon.

Bread and Roses programs at the union’s Gallery 1199 opened in January with an exhibition of paintings by children from seventy-eight countries, arranged by the U.S. Committee for UNICEF to salute the International Year of the Child. Classes from seventy-nine elementary and private schools visited the exhibit, where an integrated program of story-telling, film, and active participation was conducted by a UNICEF-trained instructor.

The visits by school children were organized with the cooperation of the New York City Board of Education and the United Federation of Teachers, together with the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union.

These same groups also arranged for high school and college classes and union groups to visit the second exhibition, entitled “Rise Gonna Rise: Portraits of Southern Textile Workers” by noted photographer Earl Dotter. Rank-and-file workers from J.P. Stevens plants, who were subjects of Dotter’s photographs, came up from the South to discuss their work experiences. Pointing out the Bread and Roses ripple effect, the Dotter photographs have also widened their impact past 1199. Forty pages of his photos are included in a book published by Doubleday/Anchor, also entitled Rise Gonna Rise, with text by Mimi Conway. The United Church Board for Homeland Ministries is publishing a portfolio of the photographs for commercial distribution.

Beginning in October 1979, “The Working American” will occupy Gallery 1199. This is an exhibition of original paintings by American artists depicting the lives of American workers from 1850 to 1950, and will include works borrowed from the Metropolitan, Whitney, and Hirshhorn museums.

“The Working American” will also carry Bread and Roses beyond union confines. The exhibition is scheduled to visit a number of major museums in the U.S. under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution’s Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).

Other Gallery 1199 exhibits for Bread and Roses will include a photo-essay of hospital workers by Georgeen Comerford and a series of paintings by Ralph Fasanella entitled “Bread and Roses: Lawrence 1912,” in which the artist has rendered scenes of the workplace and the strike.

Also taking Bread and Roses nationwide is “The Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” a series of four dialogues (two each year) dealing with Dr. King’s contributions as they relate to current issues. The series is sponsored jointly by District 1199, the King Center for Social Change, and Columbia University.

The initial dialogue on Sunday, 1 April 1979 featured UN Ambassador Andrew J. Young, interviewed by Bill Moyers on “Dr. King: A Personal Memoir.” The program was videotaped for presentation the following evening on Bill Moyers Journal, televised by more than 200 member stations on the Public Broadcasting Service across the country.

The exploration of Dr. King’s philosophy as part of Bread and Roses is considered especially fitting. Dr. King appeared often before 1199 audiences and constantly referred to 1199 as “my favorite union.”

Guest speakers in future King dialogues will include Coretta Scott King, Mayor Coleman Young of Detroit, and Douglas Fraser, President of the United Automobile Workers. They will be interviewed by Eleanor Holmes Norton, Chairperson of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission; Roger Wilkins, urban affairs specialist for the New York Times; and author Studs Terkel.

A series of Bread and Roses conferences and seminars to investigate the ethical aspects of hospital work will directly involve rank-and-file members of 1199. A unionwide all-day conference scheduled for later this year and entitled “Patient Care: the Hospital Worker’s Responsibility,” will probe ethical, moral, and practical questions as they affect workers and patients. This is to be followed by a series of fifty mini-conferences at as many selected hospitals and nursing homes.

The conferences are being planned by a task force of 1199 members and hospital representatives, assisted by staffs of the United Hospital Fund, the Hastings Center Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, and by the Baruch School of Hospital Administration.

A series of five lecture-discussions exploring “Health Care in the U.S. - What’s Ahead?,” is taking place at union headquarters this year sponsored by 1199’s Professional and Health Care Committees. The first, attended by 125 members, heard Professor Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton University discuss the economics of health care. A second session, dealing with women in health care, was held in May.

Scheduled for 1980 is a two-day conference involving 1199 members, officers of other unions, and prominent figures in the arts and humanities. They will talk about “Labor and the Arts and Humanities.”

One of the more ambitious Bread and Roses events, which will involve the entire community, is a Labor Day Street Fair, the first ever organized by a labor union. It’s scheduled for Labor Day this year, and will take place on New York’s West 42nd Street between Ninth and Eleventh Avenues.

Sharing sponsorship with 1199 will be Manhattan Plaza, located one block west of the Union, and the New York City Central Labor Council. Most of the 1800 tenants of Manhattan Plaza are members of the performing arts guilds.

The street fair will feature the casts of Broadway shows, the Big Apple Circus, the Bread and Puppet Theater, jazz bands, and folk singers. Workers will offer live demonstrations of their skills, using actual machines and tools.

Much of Bread and Roses will be preserved for union and other archives. Videotapes, for example, are being prepared on the following subjects:

• An overview of the entire Bread and Roses project, with special emphasis on the involvement, participation, and reaction of members.

• The patient care conference, from the planning and preparation stages to the union-wide all-day conference and the fifty mini-conferences.

• The Labor Day 1979 Street Fair.

• The 1199 Retirees. Besides oral history interviews, this tape will describe how retirees participate in an atmosphere where they may continue friendships developed during their working days, and discover how the learning process continues after retirement.

A documentary film is being produced, depicting how hospital workers of diverse skills, races, and backgrounds, work together to achieve common goals. The film, incorporating many Bread and Roses activities and programs, is being produced and directed by John Schultz.

Two LP recordings will help preserve Bread and Roses for the archives. One, based on the program of dramatic readings by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, will include poems about hospital workers by 1199’s Marshall Dubin. A recording will be produced next year based on selections from literature, poetry, speeches, and oral history interviews describing the efforts of American workers to win “Bread and Roses.” A cast of Broadway actors and actresses will participate.

Essays by artists and scholars about the arts and humanities as they relate to working people are appearing monthly in 1199 News. The essays will be reprinted as a Bread and Roses history under the title, A Primer for Labor in the Arts and Humanities.

A theme Bread and Roses poster, designed by artist Paul Davis, was featured earlier this year in most New York City subway stations and in New York City public schools. Artist Milton Glaser is designing the Labor Day Street Fair poster.

Bread and Roses challenges the idea that culture must be elitist, alien to working people, and it does so not only with the support of governmental agencies but also with help from private organizations, including corporations. This project has established a pattern that leads the way for other labor unions to bring both bread and roses to their memberships.

It also opens up new horizons for artists by giving them the opportunity to practice their art in the area and among the people where it is most needed, and most appreciated. As one performer commented, quoting the lyricist Ira Gershwin, “Who could ask for anything more?”

Grants Magazine, 2 (June 1979): 121-28.

31. BREAD AND ROSES UNION BRINGS CULTURAL EVENTS TO MEMBERS

By Kay Bartlett

Content removed at rightsholder’s request.

Mansfield Ohio News-Journal, April 12, 1981.

32. IMAGES OF LABOR (GALLERY 1199)

By Cynthia Nadelman

When the executive secretary of District 1199 of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees and a former art director of The New York Times op-ed page (the person who assigns the illustrations) get together to match 32 artists with that many labor-related phrases and quotations, the results are bound to be engrossing. This is what Moe Foner, also the director of District 1199’s Bread and Roses cultural program, and Pamela Vassil have done. Given some strong and eloquent phrases, which are seen alongside the art, the artists have opted to be thoughtful and resourceful rather than shrill. The notion of working around a phrase has become a challenging exercise, directing the work and instilling a certain humility. We are once again able to accept work with a subject, a theme or a program—and we are, not incidentally, also looking at 19th-century Realism, with its depictions of working classes and working conditions, without the acute embarrassment that this would have caused during the era of high modernism. While the 19th-century movement was something short of an active crusade, one might feel that anything produced now would have to be historical and definitely post-crusade. Sponsored by a union filled with women and minorities, though, the themes presented here are not passe and could currently use retelling.

While most of the work is two-dimensional, the sculptures stand out. Robert Arneson’s ceramic mask of Samuel Gompers, first president of the American Federation of Labor, is a knockout, more serious than his customary work; Ed McGowin’s mound of coal with a pickax at the top has as its “inscape” (an interior view through various openings) a shoe and a cone marked with the maps of states to accompany labor agitator Mother Jones’ remark: “My address is like my shoes; it travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong”; and Bill King shows a funny sculpture of Abraham Lincoln.

What would images of labor be without a strike? Sue Coe has scrawled the word across the bottom of a painting in which workers have just shut off their machines and stand with arms folded. This accompanies an Arkon, Ohio, sit-down striker’s 1936 description of how it felt to shut down the machines in a rubber-tire plant. A statement by Eleanor Roosevelt expressing the need for women to find fulfillment is illustrated by Jacqueline Chwast in a paper cutout showing a weary black woman in silhouette dreaming of a liberated self who reaches for the stars. A handsome collage by Anita Siegel shows a black man’s head brimming with ideas and the trappings of civilization in the machine age: this illustrates Socialist leader Eugene Debs’ statement, “Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.” Audrey Flack shows a striking black and white pseudo-photo realist painting of abolitionist and suffragette Sojourner Truth.

The one disappointing work is that of Ralph Fasanella, only because the smallish painting here does not live up to this folk artist’s earlier exhaustive and triumphant versions of factory life, especially the Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile workers’ strike of 1912. Works by, among others, Jack Beal, May Stevens, Mimi Gross, Barbara Nessim, Robert Grossman, Benny Andrews and Alice Neel also bear mentioning.

After closing in New York on June 5, the exhibition will be on view from July 16 to August 20 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, under whose auspices it will travel for two more years to museums across the country. All of the images are presented in color in the book Images of Labor (Pilgrim Press, $29.95, cloth; $16.95, paper), with a preface by Joan Mondale, an introduction by author Irving Howe and background material on the quotations that are used.

For those who question the mutual significance of unions and artists, it is timely to consider the recent arrival in this country of a Polish poet. After trying unsuccessfully for three years to get to Harvard, where he had been invited to teach, Stanislaw Baranczak, finally here, was quoted in The New York Times as saying, “Only after Solidarity [the Polish independent labor union] was created was it possible for people like me to obtain passports.” Unions do affect the overall quality of life and, as 1199 has been demonstrating, they don’t live by bread alone.

Art News, 80 (June 1981).

33. STRONG ‘IMAGES OF LABOR’

By Benjamin Forgey

“You can always measure the level of democracy in any country by the freedom its workers have to organize unions of their own choosing,” writes Irving Howe in the catalog for the exhibition “Images of Labor,” which opens today at the National Museum of American History.

An obvious parallel measurement is freedom of expression, which includes not only political advocacy but also the freedom of artists to treat subjects of their own choosing, and in styles and techniques they deem appropriate. The ugly history of totalitarian regimes in our century can be written in the violence done to creative, as well as economic and other freedoms.

Ironically, except for this fundamental parallel, perhaps even because of it, the history of the American labor movement and the history of American art have in large measure gone their separate directions. There was a time, in the 1930s, when the causes of economic justice and artistic expression did dovetail; but in the long run, the alliance foundered upon the built-in stresses between political advocacy and artistic individualism.

The decline of what was called social realism was part of the larger, complex story of the decline of figurative art, generally, in the minds of many of the best and most original artists in the land. But the labor movement played its part, too, either failing to give the issue much thought or demanding an art that conformed to stringent and explicit social goals.

The intrinsic worthiness of the goals is not the point. There is no more effective way to diminish or to kill creativity than to require it to adhere to a set of non-artistic standards, whatever they are. Again, the examples of Nazism and Soviet Communism write large the lessons that, in America, were written small.

The bedrock of artistic achievement is the freedom of the individual to choose. Artists can be as blindly conformist as any other social group, but left for long enough to their own devices, they will find new and wonderful ways to express ideas, including those of social justice and solidarity.

This is why the “Images of Labor” exhibition is refreshing. In a very healthy way, it reflects an important transformation in the visual arts that has taken place in the past 20 years or so, a period in which we have seen artists gradually cast away the self-set blinders that decreed the predominance of a given style—abstract expressionism, say, or color field painting.

The fact is that artists today, especially when given a helpful nudge, have no difficulty in responding to the call for an imagery that richly, if sometimes ironically, expresses important social ideas. The nudge, in this case, was supplied by the Bread and Roses cultural project of District 1199, National Union of Hospital and Health Care employees, which commissioned works from 32 contemporary artists.

Wisely, the union established only one important condition: The images were to relate in some way to a specific quotation culled from the troubled and triumphant history of labor unions. Admittedly, in a few cases, the result is a somewhat bizarre friction between the verbal and visual messages, as when Ralph Fasanella paints a tribute to the cacophony of urban life alongside Phillip Murray’s dire description: “Disease, sickness and poverty were rampant, and death stalked in the wake of every worker’s family. . . .” Still, on its own, Fasanella’s painting is a celebration of working-class life—the flip side, in a way, of Murray’s impassioned sympathy.

Most of the artists chose either to illustrate the quotation, more or less directly, or to invoke its spirit in an imaginative and stylistically freer way. A number of the social-protest illustrations are brilliant: Wedward Sorel’s haunting, corrosive pen-and-ink drawing to go with a railroad mogul’s cruel epigram, “They don’t suffer; they can’t even speak English,” as well as works by Mimi Gross, Jack Beal, Milton Glaser and Benny Andrews. Gross’ work is especially inventive, a tableau whose hominess heightens the terror of Walter Reuther’s question, “What good is another $100 pension if the world goes up in atomic smoke?”

Ed McGowin’s free-standing “inscape,” a coal-black pyramid containing a tableau based upon the life of the itinerant labor activist Mother Jones—“My address is wherever there is a fight against oppression”—is the most forcefully original of the commissioned works (although, unfortunately, it will not go on view until some minor damage is repaired). Also outstanding are Miriam Wosk’s wall construction and Anton van Dalen’s hip and scary painting of a skeletal figure (based upon John L. Lewis’ zinger, “The open shop is a harlot with a wig and artificial limbs, and her bones rattle”).

Four of the artists chose simply to record the race of the person who supplied the words, and in each case produced a tremendously persuasive, if stylistically divergent, reading of a personality: Alice Neel’s expressively blue portrait of Frances Perkins, Audrey Flack’s photo-based painting of Sojourner Truth, May Stevens’ lyrical and tough painting of Lucy E. Parsons and most mightily of all, Robert Arneson’s ceramic version of Samuel Gompers, clearly one of the more important portrait busts created in our time.

Due to the enlightenment of its organizers and the talent of the artists they chose, the exhibition does indeed help us to recognize, as Howe puts it, “the centrality of the American working class . . . in our cultural arrangements and our cultural experience.” Supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the exhibition is on a two-year tour organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. Its appearance in Washington through Aug. 21 will be accompanied by concerts and film programs.

Washington Star, July 17, 1981.

34. “TAKE CARE, TAKE CARE”

A New Musical Revue About Hospital Workers Music, Lyrics and Sketches by Lewis Cole, Ossie Davis, Micki Grant Barbara Garson, Alan Menken and Michael Posnick

CAST

(In Alphabetical Order)

David Berman (yellow shirt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ambulance Driver, Doctor, Lecturer

Ann Duquesnay (purple shirt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nurse’s Aide from Barbados, Delegate, Housekeeper

Jack Landron (blue shirt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pot Washer, Spanish Patient, Soap Opera Doctor

Barbara Niles (green shirt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lab-technician from Kansas, Patient, Social Worker

Corliss Taylor-Dunn (orange shirt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nurse, Burnout Nurse

With Billy McDaniel, Carline Ray and Ralph Dorsey

The performance will consist of a selection from the following numbers

Opening: Take Care, Take Care Song by Alan Menken; Dialogue by Lewis Cole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Company

Back Home Monologue: Pot Washer by Lewis Cole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jack

Soap Opera (skit) by Barbara Garson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Company (song) by Alan Menken and Barbara Garson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Corliss and Ann

Back Home Monologue: Lab-technician by Lewis Cole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barbara

Save the Race by Ossie Davis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ann and Company

Back Home Monologue: Ambulance Driver by Lewis Cole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David

Medical Abbreviations by Alan Menken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Company

Back Home Monologue: Nurse’s Aide by Lewis Cole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ann

Back Home by Micki Grant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Corliss and Company

Reaganitis by Barbara Garson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Company

Hello! Florence Nightingale (Linda’s Song) Music by Alan Menken; Lyrics by Lewis Cole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barbara and Corliss

Burnout by Micki Grant; Dialogue by Lewis Cole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Company

Hands by Michael Posnick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Company

PRODUCTION STAFF

Arranger and Orchestrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Howard Roberts

Conductor/Pianist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William Foster McDaniel

Stage Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Howe

Assistant Stage Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter Brosius

Publicist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew Alperin

Although Ossie Davis, Micki Grant, Lewis Cole, Alan Menken, Barbara Garson and Michael Posnick are given credit for the lyrics and sketches, the indispensable creators of “Take Care, Take Care” are a group of 17 hospital workers including housekeepers, social workers, technicians, nurses, maintenance and dietary workers. These workers, members of District 1199, participated in a series of oral history workshops talking and writing about their lives. Their discussions and writings are the foundation of “Take Care, Take Care.”

District 1199 Archives.

35. UNITED WE LAUGH

By Barbara Garson

Fifty dietitians, lab technicians, nurses aides and orderlies met weekly last year to make notes on their lives; the results were turned over to professional writers who created a popping musical revue for the hospital workers’ union, District 1199. Take Care, now touring hospitals at lunch hours, is a series of skits and spiffy songs in soul, calypso, salsa, and plain white musical-comedy American (to match the union’s membership). The response from unprepared hospital workers reminded me of myself, accidentally encountering the Mime Troupe in a San Francisco park—“My God! Real actors saying our words, right in the middle of the street!”

The revue includes some numbers you’d expect in any union show (if there were any other union shows). For instance, “Young People Today,” a sarcastic song about the good old days before the union. It also includes things you’d never expect. At one quiet moment the black piano player becomes a hospital porter. He explains why he always seeks night shifts and overtime. “No, not for the money like everyone guesses,” but because “I can’t sleep.” He had been a paramedic in Nam. He thought he’d grown “cold to it all.” But suddenly, 10 years later, he can’t close his eyes, at least not at night, not in the dark. So he spends those hours checking monitors, soothing patients, finding pillows. “I got a mind for little things.”

Women’s consciousness is expressed by talking together about getting out in the morning, not having the energy to smile at the kids’ surprise rainbow cake, and finding no sympathy from women supervisors. “They get promoted and then it’s like we’re talking a different language.” Feminist understanding here is far more subtle than you’d expect from most unions and far more substantial than you’d get from most feminists.

The skits and musical numbers are held together by five “characters,” representative hospital workers embellished or streamlined from the original 50 workshop participants: Mildred, fiftyish West Indian dietitian; Gloria, black admitting clerk; Eileen, pretty Irish RN, twenties; Mac, Midwest lab technician; Rosita, Hispanic occupational therapist. Though the union and the writers are committed to the individuality of these workers, the five characterizations waver from skit to skit and their best speeches often get lost in the staging, which is uniformly fast-paced and concentrates on gimmicks rather than what’s happening between people.

Only by listening hard the second time around (at each hospital the show is performed for both lunch hour shifts) did I glean that Gloria, 40, divorced and a union delegate, is supposed to be a no-nonsense character who makes the hospital run by standing up the bosses, while bouncy Rosita cajoles the doctors into doing their jobs. Implied in both their techniques, of course, is the idea that it’s the union members who make the hospital function—when it does. Mac, the white lab technician is teased, as a ladies’ man though he actually longs to be accepted in the girls’ lives. These and other potentially interesting qualities are suggested fleetingly and with little consistency from scene to scene.

Some “individual” traits might be considered out and out racist slurs if we saw them on television, like Rosita’s superstitious gambling—“Play your birthday, play your address, play your pension plan.” And Mildred, the round, maternal, West Indian cafeteria worker, is really not too different from Beulah: She has the strength to feed the whole world, absorb its sorrow into her bulk, and still sing a rousing chorus of “Lookin’ Good.”

Clearly no one at 1199 was offended. Maybe the characters are stereotypes, but this isn’t television. As people in the audience told me, “It’s the union.” “It’s us.” “That makes it different.” Personally I accept this double standard. “Us” does make it different. Writing for insiders, for people you really like, allows you to work through, above, around, and under the stereotypes until you come up with truer truths. Writing for people you like also inspires a healthy desire to entertain. That’s the most obvious feature of Take Care.

Another product of writing for “us” is in-jokes. Critics generally consider in-jokes, at least the ones they don’t get, to be unintelligent, illegitimate, cheap laughs. (The kind of cheap laughs Aristophanes went for with a Spartan walk-on). But good theatre is always written for a particular audience. People from groups that normally produce writers are used to finding their private jokes and insights in plays. Others almost never do. What a wave of shock, surprise, and finally wild joy sweeps over the 1199 audience when one of their own special words is heard on the stage for the first time! Whether you get it or not, who can deny the howls when anyone says, “Take it to the delegate”?

1199 cultural officials deserve extraordinary credit. Take Care contains not one single call to “build the union.” Someone up there understood that laughing together automatically builds the union.

The Village Voice, February 18, 1980.

36. UNION MUSICAL TO PREMIERE AT BORO HOSPITAL

By Mark Liff

Content removed at rightsholder’s request.

Daily News (N.Y.), March 1, 1982.

37. HOSPITAL REVUE HITS ‘HOME’ FOR EMPLOYEES

By Mark Finston

Content removed at rightsholder’s request.

The Sunday Star-Ledger, March 28, 1982.

38. A REVUE THAT’S GOOD MEDICINE

By Lucinda Fleeson

Not in the gauze-filtered world of TV’s “General Hospital” would the starring roles be given to hospital housekeepers who moan about the drudgery of their jobs or the inconsiderateness of doctors.

But in the musical revue, Take Care, Take Care, produced by the national hospital workers’ union, it is those anonymous dietary aides and orderlies who are on center stage, talking about the hard realities of hospital work, and mixing it with a spectacular combination of humor, rock music, blues singing and dancing.

The revue, which is making an 11-week national tour, is part of the union’s highly praised Bread and Roses cultural project, and was created to bring culture and the arts directly to union members. “This is for the people who can’t afford $50 to see a Broadway show. This is their history,” said Corliss Taylor-Dunn, one of the five professional actors and actresses in the cast.

Although usually the revue is staged during lunch hours at hospitals and nursing homes around the county, on Tuesday night it was performed for more than 150 delegates and shop stewards of District 1199C, Hospital and Nursing Home Employees Union, in Philadelphia headquarters at 1319 Locust St. The show was so enthusiastically received that it was interrupted with clapping and laughs of recognition as the play captured the joys and sometimes the boredom of health-care work.

The dialogue is culled from taped autobiographical workshop sessions with members of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees. Characters range from the pot scrubber who really wants to be a poet to the lab technician who fled from Kansas to seek a career in the Big City and the Vietnam veteran who thrills to his job as an ambulance driver. But the skits also include biting commentary on racial prejudice and on the pathos of workers who try to deliver care to an endless stream of patients while hospital budgets are shrinking.

A Ronald Reagan figure appears in a coal-black rubber wig seeking emergency room care because his hand is stuck in a jellybean jar. The President sheepishly explains, “The black ones are always at the bottom,” to which a nurse’s aide snaps, “Don’t you know it, sugar.”

With a nearly nonexistent set, and costumes that consist mostly of hospital whites, the five-member cast and three musicians have taken hard-core reality and made something of it that is not only entertaining, but also has a strain of astute commentary on the politics of working-class America.

Moe Foner, executive producer of the show (and also executive secretary of the national union), says the revue—which premiered two years ago in a shorter version—is the first musical produced by a labor union since the famed Pins and Needles by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union hit Broadway in the 1930s.

Using the technique that spawned A Chorus Line, the authors held workshops in New York with 17 health and hospital workers, who talked about their frustrations, aspirations and the daily hassles of modern health-care work. The result was a rich oral history that formed the lyrics and dialogue of the songs and skits. “There’s not a word in it that didn’t come out of the mouths of the workers themselves,” said Foner.

It is those 17 workers—aides, dieticians, clerks, nurses and other workers—who are identified as the “indispensable creators” of the revue, although the official credit for lyrics and sketches goes to some of the union’s more famous friends in the theater—Ossie Davis, Micki Grant, Alan Menken, Barbara Garson and Lewis Cole. Micki Grant, for instance, is author of Your Arms Too Short to Box With God.

Interspersed with the autobiographies and rousing union solidarity songs, there are other sketches, such as “Soap Opera,” in which hospital aides and nurses fantasize about working at General Hospital, where the doctors thank the housekeepers for doing a good job and deliver flowers to the nurses.

In the song “Florence Nightingale,” the nurses beseech their inspiration, “Did your back ever ache?” Actress Ann Duquesnay, as a nurse’s aide, reminisces about being a child bride in Barbados. About her job, she says, “They used to call us maids, but we got them to drop the ‘M’.”

The five actors—all Actor’s Equity, naturally—say they find the experience of playing to union members to be uplifting. Taylor-Dunn, formerly of Bubbling Brown Sugar, gives a particularly strong performance in one skit as a nurse suffering from “burnout,” and says she based the character on her mother, a non-union nurse in Cleveland. “My mother died of burnout, so I can relate,” she said just before Tuesday’s show.

And the audience certainly relates. Emma Thomas, a dietary worker of the Philadelphia Geriatric Center, said, “I liked the part about the pot washer,” referring to the worker who moaned, “I’m not going to be a pot washer all my life; I’m a man of sophistication.”

Her co-worker, a housekeeper, seconded the appraisal. “It put it like it is, You take what you get until the right job comes along.”

The show’s one problem, Foner acknowledges, is that the audiences are primarily restricted to hospital patients, workers and union members. But that problem may be resolved, he says. Although he cautions that “nothing is definite,” the union is discussing the possibility of opening Off-Broadway.

That’s one possibility that Philadelphia should hope comes true, because, unfortunately, Tuesday night’s performance was the city’s one and only appearance of Take Care, Take Care.

Philadelphia Inquirer, April 15, 1982.