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in the way they're structured. I would say that if you could take many of the things that came from us -- most of the things that came from us are very positive -- and add some other things based upon the weaknesses, you would have a more perfect situation. Perfect you'll never have. I don't see that happening now, because -- I'm not speaking about 1199 -- I think that the society itself has had such a negative impact on people's minds as what to expect from organizations and why people are in organizations -- the general attitude towards unions on the part of union members -- [that] it would be a very tiny minority of workers who come in to a union feeling that they are in it for some kind of ulterior things. I don't mean political things, but to get the best for the worker and to do it in the best possible manner. Things have changed too much for that to take place.

What changes in society in particular do you think had that effect?

I think the, “What's in it for me?” materialistic approach to all questions. The cynicism towards leadership generally. Watergate, everything that came with that. “You can't trust anybody. They talk big but they're very [untrustworthy].” We used to hear it all the time from people saying, “Oh boy. You know they get these small increases. I bet they got something behind this. There must be something they got way beyond this. They can't be doing it just for that.”

Generally speaking, we were able to get a majority of members to bust their chops and to go out and really put themselves on the line for it -- a large section of the membership. A certain percentage has no interest at all. But comparatively speaking we had a very high degree of participation, very high degree of participation. And a high degree of participation in terms of willingness to sacrifice. We were able to do things I think I referred to. We'd have demonstrations on weekends, weekend after weekend, where people would come out on Saturday and Sunday, and all you could hope to get from it was when you were helping some poor hospital workers trying to get a union. You might end up in jail, and you might be arrested. Yet when there was a community issue they acted as a community. People when they work together and act together have a certain solidarity that develops from it, in contrast from the small group approach. Small groups are good in discussions, but not in action. So that we were capable of doing that over a great great number of years.

We then began to pass it on to the national union. We find in the national union variations of it. That's a whole discussion that is rather complicated. At first we could say that the places where we sent 1199