Session: 123456789101112131415161718192021222324         Page 542543544545546547548549550551552553554555556557558559560561562563564565566567568 of 592

question of political action, he's become involved with everybody at the highest level. To get Dennis' support is a very -- Hillary Clinton needed it. Al Gore needed it. He had an event at the union several months go where [Bill] Clinton came. It was a dinner, but before the dinner, Clinton sat in a room with all the CEOs answering questions, and here was something that Dennis had arranged.

Now, in describing him, you talked about his intelligence, his growth, his charm, but what about his world view and his commitment to the members, the end to which all these talents are directed?

I think Dennis has a total commitment to the members. I think that that's a given, his commitment and his desire to involve members. How to do it is a problem. A union grows so big, there's all kinds of problems. How do you keep all those people together? And the whole question of developing a democratic forum is difficult. For example, some of our chapters are bigger than unions.

Bigger than local unions [cross-talk]

Bigger than local unions. We've got to find a way --

How many members, three or four thousand members?

Three or four thousand members. We're focusing more upstate with a different kind of membership in the sense we're no longer dealing with African-American --

Let's stick with that first point that you made for a moment.

Yes.

1199 has 200,000 members, four times what it was twenty, twenty-five years ago. What does that mean in terms of the ability of members to participate when the structure remains the same, the structure does not allow for the same kind of autonomy in chapters that local unions might have in an international union? Is that a problem? What has the union done to face that?

The union faces a problem. They try to resolve it, and let me tell you some of the obstacles that it faces. 1199 had such a heavy commitment to political action so that it spends much of its resources on political action. As a result, for years there's been a hiring freeze and a freeze on salaries, and you can't get people hired with this big growth that's going on, and that's a problem.