Public Employee Press

4th in a series on labor history

SSEU Local 371
Bringing DC 37’s past into the present

By JANE LaTOUR

Like a rich buffet spread out before an appreciative audience, the history of Social Service Employees Union Local 371 was on display April 25. The celebration of the opening of the union’s archives at New York University featured exhibits, slide shows and people — like walking history books — who made labor history by building a union.

Silver-haired celebrants had small epiphanies as the large wall projections showed their younger selves in all their militant vigor. “That’s me,” said one courtly gentleman, as he shared his story. Stories were the order of the evening, along with the fabled history that evoked an era of picket lines, lockouts, the Wagner and Lindsay administrations and the Vietnam War.

Linda Schleicher, Local 371’s director of communications, was the mistress of ceremonies for the evening. “We saved a lot of these records from the garbage can,” she said, calling attention to the importance of preserving the records to share the history of the union and the labor movement with young members, “so that they can take up the torch.”

A usable past
Michael Nash, the director of the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at NYU’s Bobst Library, noted that the archives set up shop in 1977 and that the records of SSEU Local 371 were among its first collections. It took some time — and money — to reach the point where the collection has been completely processed by archivist Kevyne Baar and is now open for researchers. Baar is also conducting oral history interviews with the early movers and shakers — the leaders and rank-and-filers who struggled together to build a mighty union. Nash noted that the local was one of the earliest white-collar unions, one that always had women in leadership and exemplified civil rights unionism.

Each of the local’s living past presidents stepped up to the microphone to share historical vignettes. Al Viani, president of Local 371 during the strike of 1965, spoke about the tensions between the SSEU and Local 371 before they merged in 1969. “A lot of unionists preceded those strikers of ’65 and worked hard in DC 37 to bring about collective bargaining rights for public sector workers,” he said. “We walked in where angels feared to tread . . . and we got lucky.”

Public sector pioneers
Judy Mage, president during the 1967 strike, spoke about thelessons of that period. “The big lesson is: Never give up!” she said. Charles Ensley, on the cusp of his retirement after 26 years at the local’s helm, looked back to the event in his youth that led him to the labor movement.

“During the summer, I worked at Unity House, the camp for the Ladies’ Garment Workers Union,” he recalled. “We understood what the labor movement was, and against formidable odds, we built a union and won a strike that made history.”