Public Employee Press

Pat Caldwell, jailed 1965 strike leader

Former Local 371 Vice President and DC 37 Schools Division Assistant Director Pat Caldwell died April 11 after a lifetime of service as a fearless strike leader, a dedicated union organizer and an effective community activist. She was 79.

Born in the Great Depression, she made feeding those in need an important focus of her life. "She had experienced racial prejudice and developed a passion for justice," said former Social Service Employees Union President Judy Mage.

Caldwell graduated from the Hunter High School for gifted girls and became a city Clerk to support her sick mother. Local 371 co-workers elected her shop steward in 1960 and vice president in 1964.

"She was a great speaker who really stirred people," said Mage.

When SSEU and Local 371 struck the city Welfare Dept. for a month in 1965, "Pat led the clerical workers in supporting the strike, even though without bargaining rights they couldn't win raises," said former Local 371 President Alan Viani. "Her leadership was crucial in winning the strike."

Jailed for leading strike

An anti-labor judge trying in vain to break the strike jailed its leaders. "I knew she was in jail to help people and I was very proud of her, but I missed my mom," said her then-9-year-old daughter, Michelle Caldwell-Tenill.

In jail together for eight days, Caldwell and Mage talked strategy till dawn and built a lasting friendship. After the strike victory, "Pat was instrumental in organizing clerical workers to win bargaining rights," said Viani.

She became a DC 37 rep in 1967. "Going to bat for people who needed help wasn't just her job, it was her life," Mage said.

In the Schools Division, she pressed to expand food services, bringing in federal funds, helping hungry kids and expanding Local 372. When the city balked at implementing the free breakfast program, Caldwell worked with nutrition advocates and community groups and got members to inform parents of the program.

Model school breakfast program

"Soon her District 1 became a model, serving breakfast to 6,000 students," said Kathy Goldman of the Community Food Resource Center. "When Pat gave the workers certificates of appreciation, some cried. Nobody in the school system had ever thought to thank them before. Pat made a big difference for the kids, the workers and the union."

After she retired in 1987, Caldwell ran senior programs at the Harriet Tubman School in Harlem, where union members earned extra pay cooking meals for hundreds of seniors, and on the Lower East Side, where she involved Black, Latino and Asian seniors in innovative multi-generational programs with public school students. "She recognized the potential in at-risk kids who had been doing poorly, and she got them to contribute," said Mage.

Caldwell's survivors include her daughter, granddaughter Alexandra and Godson Jeremy Mage, a songwriter and composer who sang of both the union militant and the nurturing soul in Pat Caldwell with the following words:

A voice that will bring you to the barricades, Arms that always make me feel safe.

— Bill Schleicher