Session: 123456789101112131415161718192021222324         Page 145146147148149150151152153154155156157158159160161162163164165166167168169170171172173174175176177 of 592

determined to break the union. They thought that they had the union ripped apart by the settlement outside the hospitals, etc. Also to return to work, the hospitals began to stagger the return to work so that workers did not get back to work for more than six weeks. They had to be examined, “We can only examine so many at a time.” It was a deliberate attempt to make the workers feel that they had lost everything. Van Arsdale put up money from Local 3 to keep paying some modest amount of money to all workers until they were all back to work. You know why Van Arsdale's a hero to the workers and to the union? We could not have sustained that.

So it was in that setting that the strike ended, and in that setting, after that, we decided -- of course, we had never collected any dues from the workers -- we decided that we would now have to put organizers on to service these workers and to maintain a union and to set dues of $3.50 with fifty cents to be put into a death benefit fund, and it had to be collected by the stewards and the organizers and turned in to the union. We operated that way for a few years, and we were able to operate by continuing guerilla war tactics against the hospitals on this statement of policy to prove that the statement of policy was not possible, that you couldn't live with it, that it didn't function. When they would have a hearing once a year, a public hearing, we packed it with hospital workers and we made it out to be the fraud that it was. So that we were showing that we could live. That was the point. The point was that we proved that we could live in that climate, in that situation.

That the union would survive.

That the union could survive, and the union survived. Incidentally, one other thing I can tell you is that as a result of our action in New York, I got a call one day from a guy in Chicago whose name was Victor Gotbaum. He said he was working for American Federation of State, County, and Municipal, and they were trying with Lillian Roberts, who was working in the hospital, they wanted to know how we did it because they were planning to strike. They ran a completely flopped strike.

You mentioned that the last time around Montefiore. Wasn't that about Montefiore?

No, I think it was the '59 strike. I've left out a lot of stuff here.

The other things that are important here, obviously Leon Fink and Greenberg, they have all of this stuff and more and are evaluating it, but they are not doing it in the kind of history they do. But also there