Session: 123456789101112131415161718192021222324         Page 117118119120121122123124125126127128129130131132133134135136137138139140141142143144 of 592

talk about organizing hospital workers. Public Workers, they had very little success in hospitals. Elliott was born in Russia and came here at the age of fourteen, and went to school and became a pharmacist, and his first and major job was as a pharmacist at what is now Maimonides Hospital, then called Israel Zion Hospital in Boro Park, in Brooklyn. Elliott, shortly after he became a pharmacist, started to organize the workers in the hospital. From that moment on, Elliott spent his entire life working, organizing hospital workers, with some modest successes and lots of failures. But by the time in 1957, Elliott and Frankie and Al Katz have--the Public Workers no longer exist -- they have gone to work for the Teamsters. Barry Feinstein's father, Henry Feinstein, is the head of the Teamsters.

Which local is it?

It's Local 420. I think it's 420. I can't remember. They represent city hospital workers. Jerry Wurf is then with AFSCME in New York. The Public Worker organization is now AFSCME, Jerry Wurf is competing and wants to get those workers in the city hospitals, because there's a lot of unorganized workers. So Jerry Wurf goes to Jack Turcott of the Daily News, the labor reporter, and gives him a story to the effect that this local, it's 420, is riddled with communists, and the communists are Jack Bigel, Elliott Godoff, Frank Herbst, and Al Katz. And that's a big splash story.

So Jerry Wurf makes his big blow in the labor movement from red- baiting.

Yes. They're working for the Teamsters at that time and Jerry is with the Public Workers, with the AFSCME. So the Teamsters are riddled with communists. At that time the head of the Teamsters union is John DeLury, dead now. His son, Bernard DeLury, Assistant Secretary of Labor under Nixon, Eisenhower, and now who was mentioned for a while as a potential replacement for--got me a grant once for $15,000 on the history of hospital workers.

That story is big, and it becomes impossible, the pressure is very strong on DeLury to get rid of them. So he gets rid of them. It's like a friendly parting. He gives them severance pay, etc., and he gives Elliott the contract with Maimonides Hospital, which they have. They have a contract with Maimonides Hospital, 300 workers. It's a very lousy contract. [laughter] Elliott got it because Elliott's cousin was a member of the board there.

What do you mean, gives them the contract?