 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These words from the Declaration of Independence are familiar to many of us, and yet it took 143 years for women to get the right to vote and 189 years for black people to get the right to vote. And still today, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are still only words for many people. Here in Boston, life expectancy varies by 30 years, depending on where you live. In Roxbury, with many poor and black people, life expectancy is 59 years. In the back bay, wealthy and mostly white life expectancy is 91 years. It's tough to have liberty when you are in prison. The United States incarcerates 716 people for every 100,000 people. Our rate of incarceration is more than five times higher than most countries in the world. Millions of people in our country don't have health care, a decent job, good education, a home they can afford, and that makes it pretty hard to pursue happiness. So on this show, you are going to meet people who are making it possible to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, people today who are making the words of the Declaration of Independence come true. Welcome. Thank you. Today, we're very honored to have Celia Wislow, recently retired top elected official of the largest health care workers union in the state of Massachusetts in New England. Welcome, Celia. Hi. Hi. We'd like to learn a little bit about your background, where you're from, and how you got the values you had to work as a leader in the union. Can you tell us something about that? Sure. Well, I wasn't raised to be a union leader. I was a young girl with two scientists for families. I grew up in LA, and when I was away at school, my first year, my father sort of lost it and cut all the kids off. And so I didn't become an engineer. I started working as a clerical worker, and within a year ended up at Boston City Hospital, which had a union. And I think I got a lot of my values from my father. You scientists, you tell the truth, you try to find out what's at the bottom of anything. You experiment, you try things, and you push back, because he was a little Polish tough guy, and I think I learned some of that from him. I was bored at city hospital. It was a wonderful place to work, but I had been going to school and all this, so I started looking around. We had a union there, though no one could really saw it, because it wasn't really visible. We would get raises every so often, and a woman named Therese Murray, who later became the Senate president, was working for nine to five and organized a bunch of the older ladies and young girls to we were girls back then. And this was what year, Celia? This is 1973 or four. And we would meet over at the Jesuit Hall across the street, and she teach us about some of our rights and stuff, and so we started to go to union meetings. And it was not really appreciated by Tom Kennedy and Matt McGrath. They kept moving them around, and they were little Irish gangsters, I would say. So I learned my tenacity from my father and my mother, and I learned about the union just by stumbling into it, and being organized by somebody who organized me to be an organizer, and that was the beginning. So what was the union, you mentioned there were these Irish gangsters, what was going on with the union back in those days in the early 70s? Well, it actually started in the late 60s, AFSCME started organizing parts of the city of Boston under Kevin White, then Tom Kennedy had this little local of cable splices and stuff from the police department started organizing. So Kevin White, being the strategic thinker he was, decided to give everyone the right to join a union, but he split them up among different unions so that he could keep them from, you know, taking them on directly. And so he gave Kennedy the clerical and technical workers, which was, I was a clerk at City Hospital, and he gave them what we call a no-show jobs. And if someone goes back through the archives of the Herald or the Globe, there's this one article where Kevin White says, you know, that was the best investment, those are no-show jobs because they got exposed. I ever made, he kept a whole lot of people really quiet in the city of Boston. So he did it intentionally, he bribed them. So you started going to union meetings, Teresa Murray encouraged you to do that, and what was happening then when you went? Well, firstly it was small, like there was like seven people in the room and they weren't expecting people to be there, but it started growing over time and we found other people in the city, in the union who wanted to start coming. And I think my favorite scene was when one of the people, I think it was from UMass, was reading a financial statement, you know, to the president, Kennedy, and all of a sudden these big guys, that's all I remember, I was a little girl, these were big guys walking towards all of us, and we were mostly women. And we were all in the rows and two of my co-workers, Emily and Joni, said, all right, dear, pick up your chair, this is going to get messy. And they both picked up their chairs, these are older ladies, put them over their shoulders, and I'm like, Joni whips out this flashlight that's this long, she said, I carry it just for times like this. And then Adele Berry, who is one of the people who I originally got to know, had to be 70, 65, starts walking towards them by herself and goes, go ahead, hit me, I look really good on the news, do it, I'm begging you to do it. And the guys put their hands up and walk back, because they didn't know what to do. So that was sort of what it was like until the local got trusted. Right, so where did you get the guts and the other folks to do that, you think? I mean, that doesn't sound like something little girls would normally do. Honestly, no. I think they taught me more than, I mean, I grew up, my father taught me to hit, box, and fight. As a young lady, so if you ever got in trouble, just clock the sucker, you know, he taught me some really good moves. But I never thought of using it, it wasn't like, and then when I had to, you know, I looked at them, they told me what to do, I followed directions. That's great. So what happened after that? I know you became interested in changing the union. So it was more democratic. It got trusted. We eventually, maybe you can explain what that means. I'm sure everybody knows what that means. You came in and threw out Kennedy and Matt McGrath. Well, how did that happen? That doesn't just happen automatically. We were doing all this stuff and we were making it more public and started hitting into the newspapers. And they are trying to organize, SEI was trying to organize state workers. So here's SEI being, you know, shown as corrupt, just as they're trying to expand into state workers as organizing. So they took them out. They took away, they took the union away from busted into the office, you know, got them arrested. Really? The parent union did this? So those guys got arrested? Yep. They were arrested because he went down to the bank to try to clear out all the cash and the bank had heard it on the news and they arrested him on the spot. Wow. So what happened after that? Can you tell us? After the trusteeship was over, there was about two or three years where the trustee actually ran and won. But he wasn't from the local. And I don't want to go into a long story about that, but there were some problems with the dues and dues vote and stuff. And a bunch of us decided to run. And the first time it was three women, Nancy Mills, Betty Jean Andrews and myself. And we ran, we won. We didn't, I'm not sure how we expected to win. I mean, we worked really hard, but we did it all based on having spent a number of years organizing against Kennedy and then, you know, meeting out the members along the way. And we won. We were the first all women's slate in Massachusetts. And what was that like running? Tell us a little bit about that campaign, if you want to call it that. Well, it was a campaign for, you know, a better union. I'm not sure how developed our vision was. We wanted to organize. We wanted to grow. We wanted to get rid of any corruption that was in the local. And we wanted to bring rank and file members up. Nancy was a staff person, but the rest of us were rank and file. And we won. And then it began a period of six years where we really started changing the union. We actually had organizers for the first time. We did more social justice things. We went to the Martin Luther King events in New York, in D.C. We got people more involved in social justice issues. And that was about six years under Nancy. And that was I was president, but she was in fact in charge because she was the executive director. And then the structures changed so that the top offices had to be not staff, but rank and file. So we made a decision to do that. And how did that happen from staff to rank and file people like you who came up starting as a clerk, as you said, at City Hospital? I think for people like me, we kept feeling like staff would manipulate us and operate us and tell us what to do. And they were sort of the power behind the scenes. And at a certain point after enough years, you get frustrated and angry with that. So I think that's where it came from. In the end, when I left, we've now gone back to staff can run under 1199. And it's not my model, but I can see the rationale for it because many workers come out of the workplace, go on staff, learn what they need to know, and then run for office. And I still think it was the right decision back in 285. It sort of stopped the influence of outside forces on the local. But it had its limits too. And how did that change happen from staff to having to be? We had to change the bylaws. So we had a convention. We organized around it. We had bylaws proposals. It was sort of a fight because the staff wasn't particularly happy with that. And we organized members into a rank-and-file caucus to get them passed and they passed. Right. So could you explain a little bit to people who don't know much about unions, what benefits the unions provide to the workers? And you mentioned also you got the union involved in social justice issues. Can you explain a little bit about what you mean by that and the benefits? So most unions are used to, you know, when you go back 20, 30 years, we're about negotiating good pay benefits, health insurance, you know, workplace issues only, sort of economic workplace issues. And we were from a younger generation and we had, like I had been involved in the anti-war when I was younger. And so we had, I came in there with a bigger vision of what was going on in the world. And our local was, you know, 70% women, lots of people of color, at least down at City Hospital. And those are economic, real social issues for people. Just the union had made a decision. They don't do that. And we decided that. In fact, that was the role of a union. And I think it was happening in a lot of the country. A lot of SEIU locals, but other locals, were getting more involved outside of the workplace alone and out in the community. And that was what made it exciting, you know. And how did that process work? How did you get, you know, a clerk at City Hospital or someone who's working there to be involved in larger things? Well, for example, I was there during the busing crisis. And I was award secretary, but we were all friends. So when they was going to be, there was going to be a people from Columbia Projects were going to go down to the beach in South Boston and go use the beach. And there was a really tense whole bunch of us decided to go down and be supportive. Idiots that we were, we're in our bathing suits, you know, with flip flops on, which you don't want to be in a little bus stop with a bathing suit and flip flops, because you can't run. But we started getting more involved in those issues. And I think there was an influence of progressive people who had come to work at the hospital, sort of, you know, we would get our favorite, are you a group running through handing out leaflets or May Day flags and we'd sit in the cafeteria going, there goes one again. But it was a sort of city hospital. I'll say that more than city hall, but city hospital was sort of, you know, every nationality, every language, every social issue, immigration, anything you wanted was part of the day to day conversation. And so it wasn't that hard to get people to expand. I think the racial tensions took years to overcome in terms of after busing, winning support for affirmative action, getting people to support immigration rights. It was fascinating. On my board, we thought it would be an easy sell because we've been doing so many progressive things on the board. Well, the African American leaders blocked with the white Irish leaders about how those people are taking our jobs. And the whole conversation blew up. So I stopped it and I went back the next month and I brought all sorts of leaders of ours who are immigrants. And I just had them sit at the front of the panel and tell their story of how they got there and what the immigration story was. And by the end of it, the board changed its mind and took about supporting immigration rights. But it was because they listened to the stories of their friends and they had never heard them, never asked. And suddenly, oh, this is real. This is my friend who had to go through this. These are people they knew and worked with, but they never really took the time to hear their stories. We do a lot of education in 1199 and we have an education whole sector of the union. And they did a book every couple years where they would take people who are not English speaking or very limiting speaking and have them write their stories, do it on a computer, write their immigration stories. And then they would read it out to a big, you know, a couple hundred people meeting of members. And every single time, the whole place would fall apart. Everyone would be crying. And I think it's been that kind of education and exposure to different ways of looking at a problem that has allowed people to be much more open to changing the world. Yeah. I mean, and what are the benefits, both on a practical and educational level, does the union provide? I know it provides some, you know, workforce training and other things like that. But I wonder if you can provide that information. A lot of people don't know really what the union does for its own members. Well, we do a lot of training, get money from employers, people can go to college, they can get basic reading, writing skills, computer skills. We provide social events for people. We provide caucuses. So we have a Latino caucus or African American caucus so people can get together and share their culture. And I think I was at, I'm a Unitarian, whatever that means, given the world if people don't know. But we talk a lot about how, you know, what's powerful in changing the world is our community and our commitment to each other. And when I was listening to it the other day, I went, that's exactly what a union does. It creates a community of people who learn to have each other's back, you know, through struggle or through just getting to know each other. And it gives people a sense of being a part of a bigger world, not just themselves individually, facing their problems. And can you say a little more about how it does that? I mean, you mentioned the different caucuses and the education things. Well, we have tons of conventions and conferences where we actually get people together to discuss issues of the day. We bring in politicians who are interviewed by our rank and file members, not just by staff or elected officials. We let them ask the questions of the politicians, which, you know, when you're sitting there and you're a personal care attendant and you get to ask a question of Charlie Baker or somebody else, you know, you suddenly have a different image of yourself. You know, you just ask the governor a question and he had to answer you. So I think now the way we do it is we let rank and file leaders learn to lead. We train them to lead. You know, we train them in the history of the labor movement. We train them in how to run a meeting or speak up. And that's, I think, the lasting imprint is there's a whole lot of people out there who learn from SEIU and 1199 how to be leaders out in their world in their community, even if they're no longer in the union. Right. And you mentioned questioning politicians. You talk a little bit about the work the union does to elect or oppose politicians. I know you do a fair amount of work, not just endorsing, but also putting people on the street. We will get a whole cadre of political activists from the local. We'll train them, we'll put them inside campaigns and especially the weekend before or a couple of weeks before that we'd have staff and members. So we do it together, go out and work in the campaign. So knock on doors, take new telephone calling, do all the sort of nuts and bolts kind of work of an election. And, you know, we show up in our purple and everyone knows, oh, here comes SEIU, here comes 1199. The purple people are here. And so it becomes this little collective of people who dig into the political world. And then in turn, we have expectations then that we'll be listened to afterwards. Right. And can you talk a little bit about how the union endorses people, whether that's, you know, how that's done? The recent past has been we have a meeting of rank and file leaders like stewards, we call them delegates now in 1199. They meet and interview the candidates. They get it down to one or two they like, they send the endorse their recommendation to, there's a small executive board in Massachusetts. The executive board then reviews it. And they can't pick somebody else. They can only decide whether or not to go with the selection of the members. And if they pick that, if they agree with the selection, then we commit money and time and work. And so it's really sort of much more from the bottom up than when I was at the beginning. Right. And so what advice would you have for young people who are interested either in social justice and specifically in working in a union? You know, I understand things have changed since the 1970s at City Hospital when you started out there. But I was wondering from your viewpoint and having been a leader in the union so long, what do you think would be helpful for people to know? I would say two things. It would be good even if you're a college educated, young liberal, left-wing whatever. Get a job in the industry you're working in. Get a job there so you know what the work is. If you don't know what the work is, then you're using your mind but not necessarily your heart about what needs to change. The second thing I'd say is I notice women have a really hard time. Not a hard time in the work, but they have a hard time understanding that unions are about power and being elected is about power and women have a really hard time grasping that and feeling like they have it. Guys, it's easy for guys. They just think they inherited it. But I found an analogy for my father. He gave me about lasers. A laser is really just one light bulb or a strong light bulb that's shown through, it takes all the waves that are going everywhere. So think about all your members there all over the place that going up and down, left, right. And it shines all those lights through a ruby which makes everyone go up and down in the same direction in the same wavelength and that can burn a hole through that wall. That light bulb through a ruby can burn a hole through a wall. And that's what I think women in particular, but any labor leaver, you are not the power. You are the laser that can focus the power to get stuff down. But if you think you're at, you're in trouble already, but if you think your role is to focus it and aim it in a direction that will make a change in the world, then you can hold on to it much longer. Nor I understand that. And particularly for women, how would you suggest they try to exercise their power within a union? I know you described some of the things you did early on, but. You really have to push your limits of what you think. You have to move around, try different things. I mean you might not want to be a negotiator, but you might need to learn negotiations. You have higher office. I never had a path that I was following that. I will just be honest about that. I just was bullheaded enough that if someone said you can't go there, I went there. So I would tell women to be a little more bullheaded and try. There's nothing wrong with failing. You've got to try it though. If you don't try, you will always be the one behind the desk. You need to be willing to stand up, not just for yourself, but for the people around you. If you're standing up for yourself, you're probably not going to be that comfortable. But if you stand up for people around you and remember that's what you're doing, then you might be tough enough to do it. Well, you've done that for a long time. And I wonder what's kept you doing this. You mentioned your dad was a scientist. You had gone to college. Some people may say, oh, I'll do this for a little while and then go back to school and become a scientist. You came from an educated family. What kept you in this work, which often can be frustrating working with people who aren't scientists, aren't maybe so well educated in the formal sense? No, I found it so. It was like once I got thrown out of school, I was suddenly like, oh, this is so much more fun. To me, it was like, oh, I'm not just in my head anymore. This is really interesting. And I just made myself learn. I didn't go to back to school for 20 years. I finally did. But I would read things. I would try to learn about the healthcare industry, not just negotiation. I educated myself as I went along. And when I got bored with something which I can do, I would go find something else to get in trouble with and learn about that. So I think at the point I ran out of things to get my hands into or try new. That's when I started thinking about retiring. It sort of took me 40 years to get through all the places I could get my hands into. You mentioned earlier one piece of advice you give to younger people who perhaps are thinking about this is to work in a place like Boston Medical Center, which is now what they call City Hospital. How long do you think someone who's perhaps educated and interested in social justice needs to work in a place like that to sort of get it, what it's like to actually be the people they're going to represent perhaps in the future? I had never thought of it like that. I mean, I'd say at least a year, if you think you need to realize you can't live on this kind of money very well. You need to realize you're just going to hate a supervisor and then what are you going to do about it? Are you going to bite your tongue? Or are you going to, you need to figure out how to be friends with people who are not like the kids you knew in college. And you need to actually, and I would take a year at least. I mean, I'd probably say if you asked me five years, but that's just making stuff up. I think you really have to understand the lives people live to represent them or to learn how to represent them. And you can do it otherwise. I just think you'll have a better anchor and a better ability to survive the long haul because you'll have understood what they went through. You did. You didn't plan it, but you're dead. Well, mine was accidental. This one was more to my part. And do you have any sort of final thoughts for young people coming up in social justice and the workers' rights and the union movement of what's going to be most helpful for them to think about now and in the future? I believe that people active in the union movement are going to be so critical for the future. Our economy is so split. People are suffering so much. And I see around me, including my son, they're making $13, $14 an hour after having some college. People, the country cannot continue like that. And we need young people. We need people who are committed to go into the trenches, to go into the unions, to work alongside the unions on social justice in the community because we have to turn this around. And with Trump in place, if we don't turn it around, if we don't turn it around soon, it's only going to get worse. We need every one of those young freedom fighters to step forward and fill the breach because, oh, people like me have retired, but we need other people to step in and step up. Thanks. Well, you certainly laid the foundation for them to do that. And when we talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and we say it's pretty hard to pursue happiness when you're making $13 an hour and trying to live or get a place to live in Boston, get an apartment on $13 an hour. With 20 people that afford one or two better in place. So I think a lot of people don't understand often what unions do. So I really appreciate your taking the time to come in here and explain not only your own history, but the place of unions in our country. And I just really appreciate the work that you do. And the legacy that you have is certainly being passed on to other people today. Well, thank you for the time. So thank you. It's really an honor to have you here, Celia. Oh, it's an honor to be here. Thanks so much. Okay.