John Eugene Zuccotti

Transcription

♪ [THEME MUSIC] ♪ MICHAEL STOLER: 51-52 million visitors coming to New York City. Where do they stay? They stay at the 100,000 hotel rooms in New York. Is a person responsible for helping these employees of the hotel workers? The person's name is Peter Ward, who's the President of the New York Hotel Trades Council and the Business Manager of Local 6 and I'm fortunate to have Peter Ward today. So Peter, tell me about your grandparents and then your parents. You said your grandparents weren't even immigrants, their generation. Tell me about them. PETER WARD: My grandfather on my father's side was a silversmith. In fact, he was known for designing the first silverware for the original Waldorf Astoria Hotel. That was his distinction, one of his professional distinctions. As I understand it, he died at a rather young age from industrial exposure to the chemicals that they used in producing fine silver so my father was raised by his mother and rather large extended family of siblings. He was the second youngest of 12 and grew up in Brooklyn, right near the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Aldelphi Street. MICHAEL STOLER: Now your father met his first wife because--where? PETER WARD: Well I don't know the story exactly but my father was married twice and so his first wife is not my mother. MICHAEL STOLER: But she passed on? PETER WARD: She did. My father was married almost 14 years to the day to his first wife and she died of kidney disease and he had two children with her. MICHAEL STOLER: Your olders? PETER WARD: My oldest sister, who is the oldest of the whole gang, and my brother, Gary. They're both in their 70s now. MICHAEL STOLER: Right. And then your father met your mother. PETER WARD: That's right. MICHAEL STOLER: How did he meet her? PETER WARD: He was introduced by a mutual friend. MICHAEL STOLER: Right. Now at this time your father was doing what? What was his business at that time? PETER WARD: He was a sales executive for a company called Inter Maritime Freight Forwarders and what they did basically was provide a service of clearing goods, imported goods through customs quickly. So they were brokers, they were customs brokers. MICHAEL STOLER: Now you said your older sister and older brother were living up in Geneva, New York, or something like that? PETER WARD: At the time of my dad's first wife passing, I guess he was young and starting to find his way in his career and so an aunt took them up to Geneva where she was living and they went to high school up there. MICHAEL STOLER: You were born and you told me it was -- now, you're a twin. PETER WARD: I am. MICHAEL STOLER: You were born when? PETER WARD: 1957. MICHAEL STOLER: And then a couple of months later your other brother was born, right? PETER WARD: No, my brother Kevin was born in January of 1957. MICHAEL STOLER: And then you? PETER WARD: Paul and I were born in December 1957. MICHAEL STOLER: Right. So you said to me it was the Irish triplets, as you would say. PETER WARD: That's right. MICHAEL STOLER: And the Irish triplets lived in the Marine Park section of Brooklyn, right? PETER WARD: That's right and we were in the same grade. MICHAEL STOLER: That's right, you were all the same grade. When you were growing up your dad was involved with the immigration, the freight forwarding business, and you had a variety of odd jobs. What did you do? PETER WARD: Oh god, anything to make a buck: paper route, worked in supermarkets, those kinds of things. MICHAEL STOLER: And you went to New York City public schools? PETER WARD: I did. MICHAEL STOLER: And then you graduate high school and you really have no idea what you want to do, right? PETER WARD: Yeah, that's true. MICHAEL STOLER: So how do you end up at the lowest level job for an union? How do you even end up at an union? PETER WARD: It's funny how life is. So a friend recommended me for a job and I got this job in the dues check-off department of the union. MICHAEL STOLER: Now wait, kids from Brooklyn, we never saw hotels. I was never -- were you ever at any of these hotels when you were growing up? PETER WARD: Not before I went to work for the union. MICHAEL STOLER: Right, I never was in a hotel. I lived in Brooklyn. It was a different case. You didn't know anything and you go to work for the union at the present headquarters, which you're still there on... PETER WARD: That's correct. MICHAEL STOLER: On 8th Avenue between 45th and 46th Street. And you get this job as a dues check-off. What's that? PETER WARD: Well, essentially verifying that members are paying dues. MICHAEL STOLER: So what happens next? PETER WARD: It's an interesting time for the union. My union at the time was the Hotel, Restaurant Employees Union. The hotel portion of that union was Local 6, which was part of the Hotel Trades Council, was this fairly large, stable union that existed and prospered since the 30s. There were other unions affiliated with the same international union in New York that represented people in kosher delis, people in bars, restaurants, catering halls, things like that. And those three unions were falling on hard times. And the international, our international union, asked the leader of our union to allow for a merger of those unions with the idea that he would take control of them and help to straighten them out, help straighten them out from a practical point-of-view but also straighten them out financially and get them on to some kind of a sound footing. So that happened shortly after I arrived at the union. MICHAEL STOLER: And what happens now? From dues check-off guy, what happens? PETER WARD: Well, it's a chaotic time, as I said, and the leader of the union was a rather charismatic guy by the name of Vito Pitta and because he's trying to figure out how to fix the thousands of problems that he's encountering and there's a decertification election for... MICHAEL STOLER: For my audience, what is a decertification mean? PETER WARD: The workers in a downstate medical center cafeteria decide that they want to get rid of the union. It was one of these unions that we had just merged with. We were probably merged a month or two and they decided they wanted to get rid of the union and they petitioned for an election to the National Labor Relations Board. So the boss asked me to tag along. MICHAEL STOLER: He wants the Irish mutt over there who's like 21, right? He wants you to tag along because you knew Brooklyn. PETER WARD: I know how to get to downstate by subway. MICHAEL STOLER: Okay, so you have to get the sub -- what happens? PETER WARD: I go down with a group of people that were working in this union that merged with us and I walk into my first industrial kitchen and it's an eye opener for me. It's an eye opener because I'm seeing how people actually work an industrial kitchen and it's not your mom's kitchen. This is an industrial environment and people are angry. They're angry at these guys that are representing them from the union. They're angry at the way they're treated. They're angry with their union contract. They don't want to talk about why they should stay with our union. So, over the course of a day or two, I fortunately made contact with a couple of folks. I didn't know a lot but I knew enough to say this guy Vito Pitta is a really good guy and he's just taken over the union and he wants to make changes and I think you ought to meet with him. MICHAEL STOLER: And you go to a diner? PETER WARD: So I get a couple of people to agree to this, I get him on the phone and he says set the meeting up and we go and meet at the Foursome Diner on Rockaway Boulevard in Brooklyn and he meets with a group of these folks. They're mostly women, there was a couple of guys, it was a group of about eight people and he was smart, he was charismatic, he was charming, and he knew how to deal with people. I sat there and watched him talk to these workers and listen to them. I think the most important thing that he did was he listened to them. You could see that he was genuinely upset and angry at the way that they were being treated and the fact that they weren't being represented properly and he made a commitment to them. He said you don't know me but if you trust me and you allow us to, not only will we represent you well but I will personally negotiate the next contract. So all those things happened. They trusted him. They voted the union back in. He negotiated the contract and the contract he negotiated back then was really a significant contract. It was a three-year contract. I remember the wage increases were $25 a week in each year of the contract. For employees that were working in hospital cafeterias back in the 70s that was a lot of money. MICHAEL STOLER: No question. PETER WARD: He improved their healthcare and got holidays and sick days, improved their vacation time. All in all it was a remarkable achievement and I got to be involved in it. So for me it was an eye-opening experience and it was the beginning of a career at the union. MICHAEL STOLER: So then what happened next? PETER WARD: I went back to dues check-off. MICHAEL STOLER: And then? And then you got involved with organizing, right? PETER WARD: I did. I did. So there was, the notion was let's not just fix this union but let's try to organize a little bit. MICHAEL STOLER: You said to me for about seven years, you were not really involved with Local 6, you were involved with these other unions. PETER WARD: Well yeah. It was a shorter period of time than that, though. It was a couple of years, a few years. So the next, big assignment that I worked on was another decertification. And so Tavern on the Green. I was represented by one of these restaurants and the workers there were extremely unhappy and it was very much a repeat of what had happened... MICHAEL STOLER: In downstate. PETER WARD: At downstate, except that it was a different workforce. You had this dining room of young, very good looking waiters and waitresses, many of whom were aspiring actors and actresses. MICHAEL STOLER: Always in that industry, right. PETER WARD: And you had this fine dining restaurant with a real executive chef that was producing fine food and all of the layers of employees that are necessary to make that happen. The one common thread seemed to be that they were all unhappy with the way they were treated at work and they were all very unhappy with the way they were being represented by the union. So again, we were able to talk to these workers and basically convince them that the union was turning a new page and that there was a new leader, that we were going to try to fix the problems that they had and we negotiated a contract in Tavern on the Green that, again, represented a seismic shift in the way that they were treated. It not only changed the structure of the contract in terms of wages and benefits, but it also encompassed new language that balanced the power dynamic so that management was actually compelled to treat workers more fairly. MICHAEL STOLER: Then later on what happened with The Rainbow Room? PETER WARD: Well, a couple of years into this whole thing, these unions became stable and another union was created called Local 100 and they demerged with our union on the theory that hotel workers were better represented in one union and restaurant and in plant feeding workers in another. So they took Tavern on the Green with them. They took all the restaurants and created this new union. And Rainbow Room closed for renovations and it was closed for I would guess a couple of years and it reopened under new management and they did not do business with the union. They told the union that they wanted nothing to do with them. So those workers came to us and we had an organizing drive that ended in a National Labor Relations election. MICHAEL STOLER: And the restaurant was closed for ten weeks, right? PETER WARD: Well, we were unable to negotiate a contract. The ownership was recalcitrant and we were unable to get to a deal so we had a ten week strike. MICHAEL STOLER: And subsequently you negotiated. PETER WARD: The contract dispute ended with a very, very good contract. It was a contract that at that point in time that I could say to you without equivocation was by far, not even by small margin, the best restaurant contract in the United States of America. MICHAEL STOLER: So what happens later? You go through the variety of jobs, become a business. What happens -- so it's 1998 now? 1998, which is 15 years ago, you were what 40 years of age at this time? PETER WARD: No, 49. I'm sorry, 39. MICHAEL STOLER: 39 and you become the President. PETER WARD: Yeah. MICHAEL STOLER: And the Business Manager of the union. Something that people don't realize that the union had done -- and this really happened back in 1948 when Donald Rubin's father had done it -- the union was one of the first unions to implement health insurance for their employees, correct? PETER WARD: Well I think we were one of the first unions to implement health insurance for workers at that strata of the economy. MICHAEL STOLER: At the level, right -- of the lower level busboys... PETER WARD: It was unheard of that people working in restaurants or hotels would have medical coverage back then. MICHAEL STOLER: One of the major accomplishments of you and the Hotel Trades Council and everything is the fact that health insurance that is provided by the union is approximately 40% lower than the cost of health insurance that people pay in the city of New York today. PETER WARD: My predecessor's predecessor -- there's only been three leaders of our union in its entire history. There was a guy by the name of Jay Rubin who was an immigrant from Poland. In fact, I'm the only leader of the union, that was born in the U.S. And he was a brilliant guy. And he got the New York State legislature to pass a law that allowed for medical facilities to be owned by entities other than doctors and in negotiations with the hotel industry got the industry to fund a medical center. So that medical center ultimately became several medical centers and the services began to expand as the union began to gain some power and influence over the industry. Originally I think the idea was that we would have medical center, because we had to give as much medical coverage to people as possible with a very limited amount of money. So the model was employed simply because there wasn't money available to deploy-- MICHAEL STOLER: To pay for premiums. PETER WARD: -- a different type of model. So that model expanded and improved and by the time I became the leader of the union, my predecessor had improved it further. We found a medical operation that employed close to 1000 people that most of us were unhappy with. We were unhappy with the facilities, we were unhappy with the quality of the treatment. We were unhappy with the general experience and most of our members were unhappy with it as well. MICHAEL STOLER: So over the years you built this showcase institution in Harlem in 2003. You bought a piece of land and one of the things that people don't know about the hotel employees, who gets insurance coverage? PETER WARD: Who? Well, let me just say that we went to the hotel industry and sat down with them in collaboration and said look, this is worth fixing. Costs are escalating, this is worth fixing. We can control costs and we can have a quality product if we work together. To their credit, they saw that and they invested in it. So during my tenure we've expanded, we've renovated, we've built new centers, we've brought a much stricter business atmosphere into them. We've hired quality chief executive officers and executives. We incentivized them a corporation would incentivize people and we try to run the facilities like a well-oiled business machine. MICHAEL STOLER: But what I was saying before is if a union member -- a housekeeper, a busboy, a waiter -- the member gets insurance coverage, their spouse or domestic partner gets coverage, their dependent children get coverage, retirees get coverage for life. PETER WARD: And the retiree's spouse. MICHAEL STOLER: And the retiree's... PETER WARD: So member, dependents, domestic partners, retirees, retiree's spouse for life. MICHAEL STOLER: Right. PETER WARD: And we provide all that coverage and it's the broadest possible coverage. There are no copays. The only copays are $5.00 for prescription drugs. MICHAEL STOLER: --$5.00 for prescription drugs. But it's dental, it's optical, it's everything, it's all-inclusive. PETER WARD: That's right, it's all-inclusive. And so we provide all of that coverage and, believe it or not, we provide it for around 40% cheaper than you could buy that coverage on the open market. The reason for that is we're self-insured because we employ or have contract relations with doctors and providers and there's no advertising budget, there's no corporate jets, there's no giant corporate bonuses. The money that we take in is spent on the employees' behalf, period. MICHAEL STOLER: And you're saving the hotel owners money because their premiums are lower than the premiums they would pay over there. You have been called probably one of the most influential labor leaders in the country. You're the head of your union, the national, John Wilhelm said that what you did a couple of years ago -- you negotiated a contract in 2012 that goes to 2019 for a living wage. Talk to me about that, because people aren't aware of what has happened and your philosophy of why this should be a living wage. When somebody's cleaning a room for $300, if they're doing two rooms, right? Wasn't that a little discussion? PETER WARD: Well look, first of all, I view my primary goal, my primary objective, my primary responsibility as the leader of the union is to provide long-term stability to the people I represent. So to the extent that I'm capable to marshal the resources, to negotiate a contract that represents economic fairness and to extend that for as many years as possible, the extent that I can do that, I've done my job. So I've now negotiated three industry-wide contracts since I've taken over as the leader. This last one is a seven year contract, you're correct. At the conclusion of this contract a dishwasher in a union hotel will be making $30 an hour and they will have holidays and sick days and personal days and vacation days and full medical and dental and optical and they'll have a dignified pension. And more importantly, or just as important, a contract that has language in it that clearly spells out what their obligations are and what their rights are and a mechanism to enforce those things if, God forbid, we should run into an employer that doesn't want to play by the rules. But I should say that the truth is we arrived at a seven year deal in large measure because the industry also saw value in it. They have stability. They have a medical plan that's way cheaper than the rest of the city. They're able to provide medical and at the same time provide long term contracts to their employees. Most unions that are involved in contract negotiations today are consumed by the issue of the cost of medical and so we were fortunate that that wasn't an overriding concern in our last negotiation. In fact, the industry agreed to pay for the creation of a new state-of-the-art facility in Brooklyn. So I'm happy to tell you that we just purchased a significant parcel of land on Fulton Street, five blocks from the Barclays Center, where we will now build a massive state-of-the-art medical facility for our population that lives in Brooklyn. MICHAEL STOLER: Now, also what you did was you've given, especially with that case with the housekeeper, you've implemented fewer employees, the panic switch or something like that. PETER WARD: Yeah. So some people may remember that there was this case where this French diplomat attacked a room attendant in the Sofitel and it became an international news story because he was such a notable figure. Out of that, a lot of tension was created around the fact that room attendants who go into rooms to clean up often run into guests that behave in the most inappropriate manner imaginable. It's just part of the job. People don't realize how often people experience this. So the industry, in this last contract, agreed and they'll be implementing this, this July to provide panic buttons. So it's an electronic device that's on the person's body where they can hit a button and alert security and the device will tell security where they are and just simply because it was activated that they're in trouble. And hopefully someone comes immediately to make sure that everything is okay. MICHAEL STOLER: When we got together I asked you about, you know, as you said, you know, Rubin, you're the third person. Both of them were immigrants. The first one was not really involved with unions, he was just an organizer himself. Vito was a waiter, a busboy over there, you never worked in a hotel. What's the next generation of union leaders for the hotel workers' union? PETER WARD: Well in our union, I'm very optimistic that the next generation of leaders in our union are going to be much better at this than I am. There's a really interesting mix of people that work at the union. There are rank and filers that have come out and work at the union and then there are a whole host of young folks that we've recruited mostly out of really good colleges that have an acute social conscience and want to do good work. So this group just mixes together so well and complements each other so well. So I have to tell you, I'm so pleased with the mix of people we have there and how functional they are. MICHAEL STOLER: When you talk about pleased, you should be pleased that you've been married to Debbie for how many years? PETER WARD: 30. MICHAEL STOLER: 30 years married to Debbie and you have two daughters. Tell me about your two daughters. PETER WARD: Well first I should say that I've been married for 30 years to Debbie and Debbie and I are very lucky. We still love each other and she's still my best friend and I don't know many guys that can say that after 30 years. Our first daughter's Tina. She's 28 and she works for a lobby firm. Our second daughter is Nicole and she's 25 and she's a nurse at Sloan-Kettering and she's presently going for her graduate degree at NYU. MICHAEL STOLER: So I'd like to say I'm happy to have one of -- probably the leading labor leader in the city of New York who has a feeling and a condition to help his employees and it's really great to have you here and thanks for being here today. PETER WARD: Thank you for having me, Michael. ♪ [Theme Music] ♪