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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

So David White in his interviews after the strike, this marked the beginning of the break between David White and Turner. White became so incensed at what he had seen in the strike -- he had to go to the picket lines every day, most staff members stayed away, stayed in the hotel, and he found it difficult to talk to workers to explain what was happening. Particularly when every time he went to the hotel and saw the partying going on. He decided to tell Doris that he planned to retire after the strike was over, and he virtually disappeared toward the end of the strike. He disappeared. He said that he lost thirty pounds during the strike. He says his stomach went on the blink and he said it was the most horrifying experience he'd ever been through in his life, particularly the fact that he had to talk to workers to try to explain it to them. That marked the beginning of his defection from the union. After that he stayed away from the union and was anti-Turner - - but privately. Privately anti-Turner.

Q:

What was your role during the strike, if any?

Foner:

My role in the strike was trying to find out what was happening in the strike, and trying to correct the press descriptions. Ron Sullivan, who covered the strike for the Times, was the health reporter. He had never covered a strike, and he knew little about labor and cared probably less. Bill Serrin was on vacation, and so it was given to Sullivan. Sullivan then decided he would get his information from Telbert King, and from the union, Bob Carroll. So his stories on the strike were rather optimistic. The best reporting on the strike appeared in the Albany papers. The AP labor reporter, Margaret Gordy, now on the staff of Newsday, filed stories on the strike regularly, knew what was happening. But she had no outlet in New York, so her stories would inevitably end up in the Albany Times Union and papers upstate, where they would describe what was really happening and the strike. The managements were befuddled, they didn't know when this thing was going to end. As each settlement was reneged, they became angrier and angrier and towards the end, we were on the verge of a PATCO in New York.

But my role was largely to try to communicate to members what was really happening. We were getting a lot of inside stories from management people, and we knew people who worked inside the hospital, and we knew strikers, who were telling us what was happening. Union leaders were terribly upset about it.

At any rate, the presidents of the hospitals, the top people, scheduled a meeting one night. It was to be a last ditch attempt to reach a settlement with Turner, with a final offer -- that was the four and four





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