Public Employee Press

Union mourns Local 371's Charles Ensley

Charles Stephen Ensley, the recently retired longtime president of Social Service Employees Union Local 371, died June 18 after a lifetime of struggle for civil rights, union strength and democracy and civil service principles.

As president from 1982 to 2008, he brought unity and power to the formerly fractious local of social service workers and built it from 9,000 members to a mighty union of 17,000 with a high level of rank-and-file participation, but he failed twice in his quest to lead District Council 37.

"Charles Ensley's presence will continue to be felt in civil service law, social service policy and the labor movement," said Local 371 President Faye Moore.

Ensley grew up in Birmingham, Ala., where a Ku Klux Klan bomb killed three Sunday school girls and Sheriff "Bull" Connor used police attack dogs and high-pressure hoses against children and other civil rights demonstrators in 1963.

As a youngster, Ensley had a brave example of union leadership and the fight against racial discrimination in his father, who led black workers at the Birmingham News in a 10-year struggle for equal pay.

He became a civil rights activist at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where the late Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader Kwame Ture (then Stokeley Carmichael) was a classmate.

Ensley graduated college in 1962, married in 1964 and moved from the South to Brooklyn, where he began his city career as a child welfare Caseworker in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He became a local grievance rep in 1976 and he won the presidency in 1982 with 70 percent of the vote.

Ensley was a man of conscience, even when it was politically difficult. A mark of his integrity and deep commitment to the civil service system and one of his proudest moments in union leadership was his 1993 clash with Mayor David N. Dinkins and Human Resources Commissioner Barbara Saybol. She refused to promote members who had passed a civil service exam for the highly paid Supervisor 3 position, claiming the list was "too male and too white."

Although the local was widely believed to have a majority of minority and female members, he led them in militant demonstrations supporting the "merit and fitness" principles of civil service and filed a lawsuit that forced the city to promote workers from the list.

He provided strong leadership in labor's campaign against the racist system in South Africa. He backed the boycott that Local 371 members began against serving canned food from the apartheid regime in city facilities and worked with DC 37 to mount the political pressure that ultimately enacted city bans on purchases and pension fund investments that would support the South African government.

Ensley stood up for his beliefs. Based on his worksite discussions with members of various locals, he thought a majority of them opposed the 1996 contract that included a two-year pay freeze. When the union announced that members had ratified the pact, he suspected a crooked count and filed a complaint. A few years later, several officials were convicted of vote fraud.

"They stole the members' right to decide on their economic conditions," he said. While he was a realist in politics and bargaining, that democratic right was sacred to Charles Ensley.

His wife, Annette Ensley, his sister, Barbara Jean Ensley, two nephews and many cousins survive Ensley. Although he lived much of his life in public, he was also intensely private, and at his request there has been no funeral or memorial service.

— Bill Schleicher