Public Employee Press

Know your union leaders

Veronica Montgomery-Costa
President, District Council 37

A Harlem native and 30-year veteran of Dept. of Education Employees Local 372, Veronica Montgomery-Costa first began organizing workers in 1974 when she helped bring her SAPIS (Substance Abuse Prevention and Intervention Specialists) co-workers into the local.

She was also instrumental in organizing Local 372’s School Crossing Guards and Community Coordinators. Acknowledging her organizing skills, DC 37’s national union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, selected her to help organize public hospital workers in Fort Wayne, Ind. She served Local 372 as a grievance rep, chapter chair and Executive Board member from 1977 until 1982, when she became a DC 37 Rep, working with all job titles in the local.

Ms. Montgomery-Costa served her DC 37 co-workers as vice president of the Federation of Field Representatives, a staff union, from 1982 to 1986, when she became assistant director of the Schools Division and began negotiating with top management at the Dept. of Education. Since 1999 she has headed Local 372, which represents 26,000 public school employees, including School Aides, School Lunch Workers, Family Paraprofessionals, Community Coordinators and SAPIS, as well as School Crossing Guards in the Police Dept.

In recent years Local 372 has organized a very effective “Earned Income Tax Credit Campaign.” Ms. Montgomery-Costa arranged for the Internal Revenue Service to train volunteers to help eligible members receive their tax credits and get a bigger refund from the IRS. “It’s been very successful,” she said. “We’ve had members who have gotten back as much as $5,000, and one woman showed up at a meeting waving a check for $6,800.”

The local has also been in the vanguard against funding charter schools with money that should be used for the public school system. “And we’ve been successful in getting some private contracts ended,” she said.

Montgomery-Costa was elected as DC 37’s new president in 2002, re-elected in 2004, and re-elected recently without opposition. She also began her third term as president of Local 372 when she was re-elected unopposed for a third term in January.

Cliff Koppelman
Secretary, District Council 37

Cliff Koppelman grew up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and attended P.S. 91, P.S. 221and Erasmus Hall High School. In the U.S. Air Force, along with his duties as a member of Air Force Intelligence, he had the good fortune to travel, learn judo, and do some auto racing.

He went to work for the city in 1962 and began his career as a Court Reporter in 1969.

Koppelman is now starting his second term as secretary of DC 37. He became president of Court, County and Dept. of Probation Employees Local 1070 in 1996 after serving as chief steward, delegate, chapter chair and vice president.

Some highlights of his tenure as local president include the on-going fight to protect the health and safety of his members, “always a big issue;” a successful lobbying campaign to increase the number of Court Interpreters, who translate over 200 languages and dialects; the education and training program for Dept. of Probation employees, and the effort to equip all members to stay abreast of the constant changes in technology.

As he explained, “It’s been a fight to protect our jobs from the beginning. The battle remains the same — to stop management from replacing humans with electronic recording devices.”

In addition to his roles as Local 1070 president and DC 37 secretary, Koppelman has served as chair of the union’s Ethical Practices Committee for the past two years.

While his official union responsibilities absorb much of his time, Koppelman also nurtures an abiding love for history. He sees “walking history books” when he looks at his fellow members of the Executive Board and former officers and members who are now retired.

He values the connection between his passion for history and his work as secretary of the council: “The minutes have to reflect all of the activities and business of District Council 37 in such a way that, when someone reads them in years to come, they will understand what the union did.”

For over 40 years, Koppelman has shared his life with his wife, Natalie. He still resides in the borough of his birth.

Maf Misbah Uddin
Treasurer, District Council 37

DC 37 Treasurer Maf Misbah Uddin is the only local president from Bangladesh to lead a U.S. municipal union.

As president of Accountants, Statisticians and Actuaries Local 1407 since 2000, Uddin has championed professional development, pushing for more civil service exams and organizing courses to help members become permanent and move up the career ladder.

Uddin is now in his second term as DC 37 treasurer. As a professional number cruncher and lifelong trade unionist, he described his position as the “greatest job on earth.”

An Actuary, Uddin holds master’s degrees in mathematics, demography and actuarial science and has worked for the State and Local Retirement System and for the city’s five retirement systems.

As DC 37 treasurer, Uddin handles an operating budget of more than $36 million and investments of over $20 million. He has adopted stringent cost controls, promoted improvements in technology, pushed for better long-term capital planning and improved the union’s budget-making, bringing greater transparency and accountability to DC 37’s finances.

“We have brought the union from a deficit to a surplus,” Uddin said. “The council now enjoys its best financial stability in recent years.” Uddin is secretary-treasurer of the DC 37 Benefit Fund Trust, which also provides more than $280 million in yearly benefits.

Uddin brings a special immigrant’s ethos to the union. He enjoys helping DC 37 highlight the diversity of the membership and chairs the Asian Heritage Committee, which celebrates Asian contributions to U.S. culture and works to increase voter registration and political activities of Asian members.

Nationally, Uddin serves on the executive board of the AFL-CIO’s Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, which is pushing for more aggressive union organizing and political involvement of Asian unionists.

Uddin traces his political consciousness and sense of advocacy to his family and his days as a leader in the Bangladeshi student movement and the drive for independence for Bangladesh. His father was jailed together with Mahatma Gandhi during the non-violent movement against British colonial rule.