When I got out of the army after World War II I went to school on the GI Bill and married my childhood sweetheart. Then I got news that every man wants to hear: I was going to be a father. So I had to get steady employment. Everywhere I went, it was, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
Then I ran into an old army buddy and he told me the Housing Authority was hiring. I said, What the heck, I have nothing to lose.
I came into this union not wanting to. I had been fired from my last job for joining a union.
To collect unemployment, you had to look for a job. So they sent me for an interview with the Housing Authority for a job in accounting. I started work with the Housing Authority on July 11, 1941 as a cashier. It was called NCR operator at the time.
John Hartter, who lived to the age of 92, was a founding member of Local 237, which was chartered in 1952. He retired from his job as water use inspector for the New York City Water Department in 1975 after 27 years on the job. After he retired, he pursued his long-neglected talent in art and developed a new talent for gardening.
Pauline Dyer-Woodson, a dietician at Cumberland Hospital, played a major role in the union’s organizing drives. She was appointed to the board in 1967.
Today, Local 237 members take it for granted that women serve on their executive board, but that wasn’t always so.
In 1951, Woodrow “Woody” Asai, holding a degree in floral culture and ornamental horticulture from the Cornell College of Agriculture in Ithaca, New York, was hired as a gardener by the New York City Housing Authority in 1951. That was a year before Teamsters Local 237 was chartered.
Thirty years later, in 1981, he retired from his job as supervising housing groundsman.
Shaw retired from NYCHA in 1980.
I began working 01-03-1966 at the East River Houses as a Teller. I transferred from the New York City Corrections Department. My tenure there was 02-05-62 to 12-31-65. I do not remember if I was in a union while employed by the NYCCD and I do not remember which housing project I was in or the year I joined the union.
I joined the Housing Authority in the 1970s. I lived in a housing project and the manager referred me to a job in the JOP program. I had switchboard and typing experience, but my first assignment was to clean and organize the hall supply closet. I guess they thought "once a housewife always a housewife."
(Today my first thought would be to call the union.)
Jeffers joined Local 237 in the late 1950s and retired in 1991.
I went to work at City Home in 1951 as a dietary aide. I went into the army in 1952, and when I returned to my dietary aide job in 1954, the City Home patients had been moved to Coler Hospital. I became a cook in the 1960s.
Sam Hall retired as a cook on December 30, 1990, after 33 years of employment at Coler Hospital, on Roosevelt Island. After retirement, he participated regularly in Retiree Division programs. He stepped down as chairperson of the Retiree Division’s Activities Committee and recording secretary of the Sunshine Club for health reasons but remained active with the committees.
Thomas Santiago (top) and Leon Siegel (bottom) whose careers spanned from the 1960s to the 1980s, share their experiences as Local 237 members working at the Housing Authority.
Daniel Siciliano went to work for the city as an assistant bridge operator in 1966 at the Willis Avenue Bridge in the Bronx. At the time, the workers had a different union. After hearing about contract gains Local 237 was winning for its members, Siciliano and some of the other bridge workers decided they wanted to be represented by the Teamsters.
Julian Friedman, went to work as a laborer for the New York City Housing Authority in 1949. In 1951 he passed the maintenance man test and was hired at Bellevue Hospital, where he remained until he retired in 1984, serving a brief stint as shop steward.
Mike Shaw is a retired maintenance worker from Bellevue Hospital. Following are excerpts from a 1999 interview focusing on his experiences as a shop steward and grievance rep from the late 1970s to 1995, the year he retired.
Anthony Gannatti, who describes himself as a “solid rank and file member,” was at the Borden Avenue Bridge on that historic day in June 1971 when 25 of the city’s 29 drawbridges were left in an open position, shutting down the entire city.
Today, Gannatti and his wife live in Satellite Beach, Florida.
Following is an excerpt from Local 237's Retiree Division's Oral History Project interview with Local 237 retiree Anthony Annattone. Annattone went to work for the New York City Housing Authority at Classon Point Houses in the Bronx as a maintenance man in1951 and retired as a superintendent 32 years later, in 1983. He was one of the local's earliest shop stewards. Speaking of Local 237, Annattone said, "Sally Rags [Salvatore Raguso, an early organizer] and Mr. Feinstein [Henry, founding president] were good people. They started it, they really put their life into it. They did a job for all these people. People who have retired and who have been involved with the union should kiss the ground these people walked on."
Rocco Micari fought to get into Local 237. Micari began his career at the NYC Housing Authority as a provisional junior accountant in 1954 and rose to housing assistant, assistant manager, manager, and, finally, assistant chief of staff development, the title he held when he retired in 1984. He was chairperson of the Managers Chapter and a member of the negotiating team for four contracts.
Follow Local 237 on Facebook 
Follow Gregory Floyd on Twitter
