b'Why was it so hard?Because you had a couple of thousand housing assistants competing for a limited number of assistant manager jobs.You had maybe a thousand or more housing assistants competing for 200 jobs and then the managers were another, like700. So, you had to get through the bottleneck. I became a manager and again, kept in touch with Rick Schmitz, who wasalso a manager at this point. He was also involved with the union. I think he was one of the chapter chairman or he wasone of the officers for the chapter in the union. Between him, Kramer, myself, going to meetings, eventually we decidedto run for office, chapter office. My friend Mike Kramer ran for the chapter chairman of the managers chapter and I wassecretary treasurer and that lasted a number of years. We got really involved with the union, more than I think they did inthe past and we were very active. We had a chapter newspaper. I pretty much put it out, we had social events, a Christmasparty. We invited Housing Authority higher ups, we invited union personnel. Mike eventually went on to become an administrator and my friend Jack took over the chapter. I ran against Jack the next time around to become the chairmanand I won.I was elected two or three times. There was an issue at one point where we were not paid overtime. Managers had to come out at night for all differ-ent types of occasions: political meetings, tenant meetings, police meetings.They wouldn\'t pay you overtime becausethey didn\'t have to at the time. Something happened in California with some firemen. Some fire captains sued, and a rulingcame out saying they should be considered for overtime. Based on that, we started pursuing overtime for the managers. It was a fight. Housing didn\'t want to go for it. We had to get tough with the union to push it as much as they could.Did the union not want to push it?No, I didn\'t think so. They allowed me to push it as hard as I could, but I didn\'t think they were a hundred percent behind me. I had asked the General Manager of the Housing Authority about overtime and he told me that\'s not some-thing he could grant. He said he could grant it only during negotiations. At negotiations, he just sat there and said: No, I\'m not going for it, and that was it. It got me very angry and I said: You know, you told me we could work it outhere. He said: "Well, it\'s not going to be done." At that point, I made a threat to turn down a contract, because we weren\'tgetting the overtime. It was a bold thing to do, because the contract involves everybody, caretakers and everybody. I wasjust one small piece of it and so how was I going to turn that contract down? But I did.You had the authority to do that? Well, you have to vote on a contract. It was a bad contract to begin with. The numbers were not impressive. So, I organized my group of managers. I hooked up with the superintendents who were kind of an equal at the Projects. Together, we put on a campaign with flyers and everything and encouraged everybody to vote no. In those days, it was awalk-in vote at the union hall. The largest number of people that ever voted on a contract before that was 1500. 3700people showed up here. The streets were jammed with Housing trucks and cars and everyone was coming in with my flyers in hand, and they turned the contract down. It was defeated by 3500 to 700. It was the only contract that was everturned down. It was a real slam.I found out later on I made people nervous, so they called me in. Who called you in?The president of the union, Carl Haynes, called me in and sat me down with the secretary treasurer of the union. 93 '