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November 26: Leon Davis

lawrencebush
November 26, 2011

Leon Davis, founder and long-time president of Local 1199, the drug and hospital workers union, was born in Russia on this date in 1906. Under his leadership for half a century, the union grew from a small confederation of drug store workers to more than 150,000 members in twenty states — mostly low-paid, highly exploited hospital workers, most of whom were forbidden by law to join a union. Davis led some bitter strikes to gain union recognition for them, and 1199 became America’s most progressive union. It was among the first to establish basic education and training programs for its members and to provide health care, housing assistance, and more. It vociferously opposed American involvement in the Vietnam War, campaigned against the nuclear arms race, developed links between workers and the arts, and organized its members to join the civil rights movement; Dr. Martin Luther King called 1199 his favorite union. For many years, Davis also held union executive compensation, including his own, down to a modest ratio with the lowest-paid union members; he was earning only $40,000 a year when he retired in 1982. West 43rd Street off Eighth Avenue is named in his honor. (Click here for a lengthy interview with Moe Foner, the cultural meyvn of 1199, about the union’s early days and growth.)

“[H]e led major walkouts in New York in 1959 and 1962 and in Charleston, S.C., in 1969, was twice jailed for defying antistrike injunctions, helped overturn Federal and state laws that exempted health care workers from collective bargaining, and was instrumental in raising the wages, working conditions, living standards and dignity of thousands he called America’s forgotten workers.” —Robert D. McFadden, New York Times