Session: 123456789101112131415161718192021222324         Page 117118119120121122123124125126127128129130131132133134135136137138139140141142143144 of 592

Then we have the situation where we begin to see that it's not going to be easy. Originally we thought we fought out the issue -- remember there were debates in the press and on radio. I remember Bill Kuntsler was then working for WMCA, and did a half-hour interview show with us on the issues. CBS Radio was doing pros and cons on “Should hospital workers have unions?” Wall Street Journal was doing things. There were arguments. They invented first the story, this appears all over the place, the story that in Maimonides Hospital, which has the union contract, there was a situation where an aide or some kind of service worker was wheeling a patient to the operating room, and the delegate came over to him and said, “You're not supposed to do this,” and he left the patient there. I used to find that story every place. I remember I once went out of town to speak to hospital directors. I said, “I'll tell you what. I've seen that story here, too. I'm willing to offer one thousand dollars reward to anybody who can prove this story.” We got editorials. I found out that there had been a pamphlet written in Chicago by a Monsignor Daniel Cantwell, part of the back-of- the-yards -- you know, that church movement there, on the morality of hospitals and unions, and the ethics of it. I found that pamphlet. I was getting it all over. We put it into ads to get it around, to debate out “should a union be in a hospital.” You have this whole problem -- should there be a strike in a hospital? Will it destroy the hospital? Then you have this big thing. The thing with Van Arsdale, where Van Arsdale says, “Look, I'm going to be with this all the way up to a strike. The labor movement cannot support a strike in a hospital.” He says this privately to Davis.

Davis says, “I understand that, and that's fine.” So that what happens when the strike takes place, Van Arsdale is in the front, in the leadership of the strike because of a whole combination of circumstances that get him angry.

So we're building to that point, where we're now at a point where we have reached a majority in seven hospitals, where it's become clear now that those hospitals are Grand Central, doesn't exist, Brooklyn Jewish, Mt. Sinai, Beth Israel, Bronx Lebanon, Lenox Hill. But it becomes clear now that the hospital industry, we are now successful in organizing the hospitals into an industry. The Greater New York Hospital Association, which had been a nothing, now is coming into being as an important organization. And I get to know people who are assistant directors in hospitals, who are progressives, who late at night, every night I'm dealing with them on what's happening. In the hospital. They're giving me the minutes of the meetings of the Greater New York Hospital Association. So that we have our own things, and