b"to be friends to kids.You had some who really did their job and some who overstepped their jobs. It was not smooth sailing. It was a very rough.You had to deal with the people you were supervising, the students, the administrators, the teachers, the parents and visitors.And I lost about twenty five pounds. [laughs] There were days when you didn't have lunch.You spoke about going to monthly meetings for the supervisors and for union meetings. Did you go to otherunion sponsored rallies and events? Yes, we went to many union sponsored events.Do you have any recollections of negotiations or benefits fought for or received during your earlier years withthe union?Yeah, oh yeah. The union fought for uniforms. We would buy our uniform or we would get one set and pay for theother one. The police department had a rule about what kind of shoes you wore. You had to wear shoes bought from theuniform store and that was that. The union fought for a lot of things. We could not wear earrings, but that was for safetyreasons. Also, hair was an issue. When people had dreads [dreadlocks] and /or other styles, you had to follow the rule thatyour hair had to be under your cap because you wore a police department uniform. There would be one or two peoplewho would have extremely long dreads and the union fought for then. The union was very helpful when some ladies didnot wear pants. There was a union rep, Fanny Love [sp?], who did not wear pants. The union had to deal with the policedepartment to make it an exception. There is a law on the book, but she got an exception to wear a skirt because she wasin a school. She was a union rep. Half of her salary was paid by the city and the other half by the union. Some women, because of their religion, could not wear pants. The union fought for those exceptions. But you had to document it.Can you tell us what a typical day or week on the job looked like for you? On a typical day I would arrive at work early. Usually I had a school that opened at 7 o'clock. I would arrive at 6:30AMand I think until 8:00PM. You got night differential, once the union fought for it. After a while, we got night differential ifyou work after a certain hour, or if you work at nighttime. If you had twelve people you had twelve radios and the princi-pal, assistant principal, and a couple of other people had radios. You had to see that the radios were safe and charged.Prior to leaving work or the last person who left would see that the radios were put into the charger. I would go to work,put on my uniform, probably have coffee, take the radios out. You would check and see if the person was at their assignedlocation and have them sign out a radio. If they were not there, you would have to call the Borough office and see if youcould get another person for the day. You had to call in attendance. If there was payroll, you had to make sure that you didthe timesheets. Then, you would have to also make sure that each SSO had X amount of time to cash their checks.Was that a union mandate?Yes. Sometimes you had two schools that were close to each other. You had to juggle the people, the time off andthen you had to make sure that they got back in time. People would come back with wild storiesso you really had to be atraffic director.156 "