b'the union. There were four of us. The way we tried to sell him on it was, if they let the white collars in, wed all be asolid group of people, which would give us more power in negotiations. Henry looked at me and he said, Okay, sign thepeople up. You bring in the cards, and well let you in. Hey, lets see what happens. And thats all we needed.One thing about this union: We will not get involved in management prerogatives. But we will deal with those areasfor the workers, meaning, a manager has a decision to make on giving the job out, what the schedule is. The union neverinterfered in that. We felt that the prerogative had to stay with management, because if the union has too many things inthere, then theyre running it, and we didnt want to run the job . If it affected a member in a way that was detrimental tohim, then we would take it up.If you looked at our contract, youd see that there were no management prerogatives in there, none whatsoever. We left that out. We stayed out of that business.It was also related to the fact that the union represents both the blue-collar and the white-collar titles [management].We had to concern ourselves about that, because when I was a manager, I was still also a Teamster. When I was a localhearing officer, the person coming in was a Teamster, the representative of that person was a Teamster, and I knew everysingle one of them. Loyalty is so important. They say you cant be loyal to two people, that you have to pick and choose. Its not true. I was very loyal to the Housing Authority and to all my administrators. They sent me out, I did exactly what they told meto. I was very loyal to my union. The union stops at a certain point on the job, and from that point on, it becomes the jobthat people tell you they want done. You can separate them.Can you do it in negotiations? No. At negotiations, Im a Teamster. But Im a housing employee. Im there to get whatI can. Of course, you face the consequences when you go back.I think the two strikes were the best thing for the union. The first strike was in the 60s. We wanted more money. I was working at Marlboro Houses in Brooklyn as a housing assistant. When we started picketing, I was there very earlyand the blue-collar guys were surprised that I was there. Peter Reni also worked there. .A call came down, I dont know if it was Eddie [Cervo, later vice-president] or Barry [Feinstein, the locals third president, who served for 25 years], saying, Rocco, get your ass down to Central Office. And I did.Some people who were union members were going to cross the picket line, they were going to sneak into the building. 250 had two entrances, one on Park Place and one on Broadway. The blue-collars who were picketing downthere didnt know the people at 250 like I knew them. These were people in the white-collar titles. As soon as they sawme, they all went into a diner; they didnt go in. I said to them, You go in and Ill bring you up on charges in the union. I knew I would get in trouble, and I did.Sometimes you have to take a stand and know youre going to get in trouble, and theres nothing the union can do.One of the high officials in the Housing Authority, when he saw me there, he said, This is uncalled for. Youve been at thenegotiations; you know whats going on. And my answer to him was, You know how much money youre gonna give.Youve got the greatest workers in the world, bar none. Youre just playing with us. He looked at me and said, Do youwant to win all the ball games? So, we got into a little discussion. Shortly after that I was moved out on a special assignment. Thats how they did it. I did rent delinquency inBrownsville. If I wasnt involved with the union, they would have left me at Marlboro, because I came from that community.One thing about this union: As family-oriented people, we were very concerned about the guy on the bottom.33 '