Rising from nurse\u2019s aide to leader of NYC\u2019s municipal workers, Lillian Roberts exemplified the promise of public employee unionism \u2014 upward mobility and a seat at the table for workers too often \u201con the menu\u201d when bigshots cut jobs, paychecks, and benefits.<\/p>\n
Roberts died last week at 98<\/a>, after a storied career organizing hospital workers, leading the state Labor Department, and heading the huge city employees union, District Council 37<\/a>.<\/p>\n Often the first Black woman in powerful positions, no one identified more closely with powerless low-wage workers. As the historian Jewel Bellush wrote, when Roberts organized municipal hospital workers in the 1960s, she understood \u201cthe personal plight\u2026of women working in settings that included hot, crowded kitchens, unpleasant laundries, and large dehumanized hospital wards.\u201d Through the union, these workers won wage increases as well as education, career ladder, health and safety, and leadership training programs.<\/p>\n These victories made history, as did the early leaders of public service, education, and healthcare unions: Victor Gotbaum of DC 37<\/a>, Albert Shanker of the United Federation of Teachers<\/a>, and Leon Davis of Local 1199<\/a> (private hospital workers). Gotbaum and Shanker saved the city during the 1975 fiscal crisis. The unions bought municipal bonds and agreed to layoffs and \u201cgive-backs\u201d in pay and benefits, averting the city\u2019s default and preserving collective bargaining.<\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t the legacy the founding generation wanted. My first speechwriting job was with Jerry Wurf \u2014 the national president of the public employee union AFSCME<\/a> and founder of DC 37. Together with Gotbaum and Roberts, Wurf was an ally of the socialist leader Michael Harrington.<\/p>\n As the historian Joshua Freeman wrote, a more diverse \u201csuccessor generation,\u201d including Roberts at DC 37 and Sandra Feldman at UFT, mostly recovered the gains that workers made in the 1960s. But public and private-sector unions have struggled to stay even in a globalized, financialized, deindustrialized, de-unionized, and gentrified New York.<\/p>\n What then of the rising generation of union activists? For today\u2019s firebrands, labor\u2019s past offers lessons. In New York\u2019s last era of mass unionization \u2014 the 1950s and \u201960s \u2014 thousands of city employees, public school teachers, and hospital workers organized. Often Black and\/or female \u2014 and with growing numbers of Latinos \u2014 these workers were excluded from federal labor legislation, along with farm workers and domestic employees.<\/p>\n Public service unions built alliances with the civil rights and women\u2019s movements, as well as liberal politicians. Two very different mayors, Robert F. Wagner Jr. (whose father wrote the National Labor Relations Act<\/a>) and John V. Lindsay (an ally of civil rights activists who offended the outer-borough middle class) promoted emerging unions.<\/p>\n Back then, public employees traded job security for subpar salaries. Today, real wages have stagnated. Private sector unions, such as garment workers, have dwindled. And public employees have been scapegoated for supposedly enjoying job security long gone in private industry.<\/p>\n Tomorrow\u2019s leaders would do well to organize private sector and precarious workers, as well as the growing sector of privately funded public service providers, while strengthening alliances with those who depend most on public services. As with Wagner and Lindsay, Zohran Mamdani may offer the push from a pro-labor mayor.<\/p>\n Public service unions\u2019 founders were streetfighters before they became statesmen and stateswomen. It\u2019s time to bring back that spirit before the labor movement becomes a museum piece.<\/p>\n Kusnet was chief speechwriter for former President Bill Clinton from 1992-1994. A former staffer for AFSCME, he is the author of \u201cLove the Work, Hate the Job<\/a>\u201d and \u201cSpeaking American<\/a>\u201d and co-author with the late AFL-CIO President John Sweeney of \u201cAmerica Needs a Raise<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rising from nurse\u2019s aide to leader of NYC\u2019s municipal workers, Lillian Roberts exemplified the promise of public employee…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,299,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-297271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-opinion","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}