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Public
Employee Press Union
mourns Harpers passing
DC 37 and Board of
Education Clerical Employees Local 1251 mourn the loss of Local President Carolyn
Harper, who died March 27 after a long illness. She was 66.
Carolyn
Harper was a dedicated union leader who always put the members first, said
Chris Wilgenkamp, assistant director of DC 37s White Collar Division. Local
president since 1999, she had also served as a vice president on the DC 37 Executive
Board, a trustee of the unions Health and Security Plan and treasurer of
the Walt Whitman Houses Tenant Patrol Association.
As a labor leader representing
all clerical-administrative employees of the Dept. of Education, Harper was on
the front lines in the unions fight for justice and jobs and against contracting
out at DOE.
My members feel like the city has knocked them down when
they are starting to stand on their own, she once said as members faced
possible layoffs. The Department of Education uses temps and consultants.
We cannot let them undermine the civil service process, so we have gone to court
to protect members jobs.
Harper came to New York City from
West Virginia and worked her way up through the ranks, starting as a provisional
Typist in 1968 and becoming a permanent civil servant a year later as a Clerical
Associate. She said she believed deeply in the public education system and
the members who make it work.
Carolyn Harper is survived by her two
children, Yvette Blackmon and William Harper Jr., four grandchildren who reside
in New Jersey, her sister, Lilly Wooley, and two brothers, Jackie and Amos Wooley.
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