Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Moe FonerMoe Foner
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Session:         Page of 592

Foner:

There's a background to it. When Doris Turner replaced Leon Davis, Davis at that time was pressing her to organize home-care workers, but Davis had already stepped down, awaiting the finality and the success of the merger discussions, which, if they went through, would mean that Davis would be the head of the hospital division of service, SEIU.

Q:

Of the service as far as international?

Foner:

Yes, to be replaced by Henry Nicholas after a couple of years. That did not go through, so he, Davis, was in limbo without a position, retired, and Doris was the president of 1199. So, under those circumstances, one of the things, in that period there was still this feud between Doris Turner and the anti-Turner people, the Save Our Union people. Davis suggested the organization of home-care workers, and Doris or Telbert King never did anything about it.

Q:

Telbert King was --

Foner:

Was her chief aide. When the Unity in Progress to Save Our Union campaign was successful, one of the first things that they undertook was to organize home-care workers and set the ground in motion, and it was then the Unity in Progress, is what they were called. They were elected at that.

Q:

So this was in 1986?

Foner:

This was 1987. It's '86, but in '87 they began the home-care campaign. Now, home-care workers -- let me explain why and how we got involved and how it works. The city and the state fund home care, and their funds are used, and they encouraged non-profit agencies to set themselves up to administer home care, to hire workers, set standards, set payments, set wages, and do everything controlling the home-care workers. There were different agencies. Some agencies were organized by 1707 before we came in, part of District Council 37.

Q:

Of AFSCME.

Foner:

Of AFSCME. When we came in, most of it was unorganized, so we began to organize.

Q:

How big a sector was this, and what types of workers were these demographically?

Foner:

There must have been like twenty or thirty thousand home- care workers. Most of them were the same as hospital workers in the sense they were mostly female, mostly women, mostly African-





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help