b'Artie and I were two of the first in the union. He [Raguso] invited us down to the headquarters to meet Henry Feinstein.The union headquarters were on Nassau Street in Manhattan then. We went down there on a few occasions and sataround and discussed union things. Henry said with a strong organization we would be able to benefit once we got thepower. He was really like a father to us. . . . And he proved to be 100 percent. Artie and I were asked to become the firstshop stewards at Edenwald, which we did.And that was the beginning of our career with the Teamsters. To this day I have to say that\'s the finest thing that everhappened to us. Believe me, what a difference the Teamsters made in our lives.The Per Diem StruggleIn June 1951 we were all called to a big meeting at Queensbridge Houses, and the Housing Authority tried toconvince the different categories of workers to change their citywide titles to Housing titlesmaintenance men to Housingmaintenance men, porters to caretakers, firemen to Housing firemen, and so onwhich would have meant accepting anannual salary rather than hourly, or per diem pay, which was based on the hourly pay similar workers in private industrywere getting.There was a whole slew of lawyers sitting up front. I got up at the meeting and said, "You got a whole lot of lawyersup there - if they want us to change, you must be up to no good. I for one don\'t want to change our title." If we changedour titles, they would have more control over us. The maintenance men refused, but the firemen and everyone else did it.We went to the city comptroller every couple of years to fight for our increases. They tried to keep our pay down, but thelaw was on our side. Truly, the type of work we did called for more. The maintenance men didn\'t just change light bulbs,like some people thought. We did plumbing, electrical workyou name it.We also filed Labor Law complaints to get back pay we were owed. I got skunked out of quite a lot of money becausea number of us depended on someone on the job to file our forms, and he never did. We got a lawyer, we paid $5 each,to try to get it back. We also started signing our checks under protest, so I ended up losing only $800 instead of $1,500.This was all before 237 came. When we went into 237, they made sure we all filed Labor Law complaints, signed ourchecks under protest, and went to the meetings with the comptroller.Our salaries escalated, and everyone benefited in the endthe supers, the assistant supers, the managers.We wound up getting more money than the assistant super. I was up for promotion to assistant super, and I said, Whythe hell do I want to be an assistant super with all the problems when I\'m making more money as a maintenance man?So, for 15 years, I stayed away from it. When I took the test, though, I was one of the highsI\'m going to brag a little:I came out number 2 on the assistant super\'s test, and the only reason the other guy beat me out was he had 10 points I think he was a disabled veteran. I didn\'t have any.As the years went by and our salaries increased, we took everybody along with us. Their salaries were increasedbecause ours went up. And eventually, the supers, the assistants, the managers, they all joined the union. A lot of them,especially the managers, were reluctant to join in those early years. But then when they saw the benefits we were startingto get, and of course medical benefits came into the picture, they wanted to join.I think the maintenance men changed the whole picture. If it weren\'t for the maintenance men, who knows whatwould have happened?OrganizingI was a shop steward at Edenwald Houses. Artie Cordioviola and I signed up members there. Edenwald Houses had10 '