Public Employee Press

North Shore Dems honor Roberts

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts was honored May 17 by the North Shore Democratic Club. She received the club’s Bob Parker Labor Leadership Award at the group’s annual dinner.

In its commemorative journal, the club cited Roberts’s “long proud history as a unionist” and Essence magazine’s description of her as “probably the most powerful Black person in American labor.”

The journal listed as key steps in that proud history her early organizing in Chicago, her leadership of DC 37’s drive to organize thousands of city hospital workers, her vital role in establishing DC 37’s array of benefits — including the largest union-based adult education program in the United States — and her service as the state Commissioner of Labor.

More recently, said the journal, she issued her famous White Papers on how the city could save money by replacing overpriced consultants with city employees, and she founded the union’s bustling Municipal Employees Housing Program.

Rajiv Gowda of Local 375 was a chairperson of the Annual Dinner Committee of the club, which is celebrating its 46th year of service.