Angela Oiszewskl, a New York City tiiesetter at the women’s panel;

IBI Local 237, at the New York public employees panel. Right: Clyde Summers

women in the fire services, but acknowledged significant changes and the debt owed to the pioneers in the NYFD for their mentoring, their coaching during the arduous training, and their constant support (Brenda Berkman, the first woman on the NYFD spoke in the conference’s opening plenary). Em Small, Local 1101, CWA, also touched on the satisfactions of learning new skills, but detailed the daunting hostility faced by women on the job.

Discussion followed about strategies for dealing with the ongoing hostility directed against women, who, after all these years, remain isolated and harassed in nontraditional jobs.

New York public employees

Two leaders of New York public employee unions, who joined the conference discussions, had won office after successful insurgent campaigns in their unions. Roger Benson, president of the 50,000 member statewide Public Employees Federation had been prominent in the rebellion, back in the 80’s, that ousted a corrupt officialdom. Larry Hanley was elected president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 726 in 1987, the bus drivers union in Staten Island, after a six-year battle for democracy in which he faced off physical attacks, vandalism of his car, and repeated internal union charges. Now, as leaders of unions they helped rebuild, they both described what they faced in negotiating with government agencies.

Nancy Romer spoke for the New Caucus, at the time an opposition group in the 10,000-member Professional Staff Congress, the union of teaching faculty in the City University of New York. Two weeks later, her group won at least 14 of the 20 elected positions, including all the top officers. The new administration is now responsible for negotiating a contract to replace one which expires on July 31.

These were unionists who won their internal union battles, old and new. Others spoke of their continuing efforts inside public employee unions: Gary Goff told of the campaign to restructure AFSCME District Council 37 after its massive corruption and vote-stealing scandals; Chris Sullivan reported on the opposition movement in Teamsters Local 237, the union of New York City housing employees. Naomi Allen, a member of the executive board of Transport Workers Local 100, described how her New Directions opposition movement had pressured the union leadership to take a militant stance in recent contract negotiations.

Clyde Summers and those union democracy attorneys

At the Saturday evening dinner in honor of Clyde Summers, young(er) lawyers and law professors who admired him confessed that they dreamed “I want to be like Clyde.” Michael Goldberg summed it up best when he said that in the area of union democracy, one person and one only leads all the rest: Clyde Summers. The speakers recounted his career, almost 60 years, as the foremost spokesman in theory, in principle, in practice for democracy in unions, the man who helped shape the LMRDA Bill of Rights, the mentor and advisor to students, lawyers, and unionists. Lois Gray, who recruited Clyde back in the late forties to teach labor law to unionists, told how clothing workers expressed their gratitude: they outfitted him in a resplendent custom tailored suit.

Summers paid tribute to all those attorneys—too few!— who have worked so hard with so little practical reward. He, himself, was a tenured law professor, he said, always guaranteed a generous salary; but he knew that all those young colleagues in the cause were struggling to pay their rent while they represented all those poor and poor-paying clients.

[Copies of the dinner journal are still available upon request. Please include a donation.]

The dinner and a separate meeting for lawyers on Sunday became a kind of assemblage for what is sometimes overoptimistically called the “the union democracy bar.” A few who couldn’t make the trip were missing, but most were there: Paul Levy, Arthur Fox, Leon Rosenblatt, Alan Hyde, Louie Nikola
continued on page 7

June 2000

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Union Democracy Review