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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

Foner:

I'm involved in the discussions in a peripheral way. I get much more involved in Montefiore. When the Montefiore campaign begins to start organizing and getting workers in, I become involved in it, because we need to have some kind of literature. I can show you leaflets that we put out at that time that Stanley designed. It's something like this, it's a four-page leaflet of this size, very slick paper, two colors, with a “Charity Begins at Home,” -- you know, like these weaving things -- “The shocking story of the Montefiore Hospital workers.” What it is, it's a comparison of the wages being paid to workers in Montefiore Hospital by category with wages being paid to the same kind of workers working for the city of New York, workers on welfare. They're beginning to develop a program.

Anyway, I'm running ahead of the story.

So in Montefiore, Elliott and Teddy begin to get responses, but Montefiore is a unit of like 1,000 workers. So, you know, you get responses, and Elliott begins to build in each department. Every time we have a meeting of the committee at the union headquarters in New York, coming out from Montefiore, it pours. One day, I remember, Davis and I went to Washington for some reason, I don't know why. When we came back, it rained, but it stopped, and there were twenty workers there. This is a committee. Boy, we really felt that something was really going to happen. Little by little, Elliott, knowing what the issues are, knowing how to reach workers and how to build them department by department, and how to organize, and with loads of patience, was beginning to develop things and beginning to make headway there. The story of the organization of Montefiore is really a very, very dramatic and powerful story. I don't know if I should tell it to you here.

Q:

I don't see why not.

Foner:

Okay. Well --

Q:

Do you see any reason why we should --

Foner:

No, but I mean it's a long story, that's all.

Q:

Well, we've gone through about an hour.

Foner:

Okay. No, I'll get through Montefiore. Let's go through Montefiore tonight. See, you had blacks, you had Hispanics, we were organizing white collar, and we were organizing lab and X-ray and office workers. At that time there was no idea what a union--

[end tape]





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