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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview U-0181, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Motivated by a desire to leave an emotionally abusive marriage, Gemma Ziegler, a native of Louisville, Kentucky, became a nurse in the mid-1970s, determined to achieve economic independence for her and her children. She found a position at St. Joseph's Hospital, working the night shift in order to balance work with her childrearing responsibilities. By 1979, Ziegler had begun to grow aware of discriminatory working conditions for nurses, who were required not only to work long hours, but also to work in fields outside of their experience. At that time, Ziegler began to work actively with We're Involved in Nursing (WIN)—a group founded by Louisville nurse Carol King, who intended to form a nurses' union. Ziegler describes how she began to work closely with King in order to recruit nurses to the causes, noting the enthusiastic response of Louisville nurses despite staunch opposition and threats from hospital administrators. In the early 1980s, however, the growing recession resulted in a loss of momentum in the efforts of WIN to garner support and it wasn't until the late 1980s that a renewed interest in organization re-emerged full force with the formation of the Nurses Professional Organization (NPO). Ziegler describes her role in the founding of NPO and explains that the fledgling organization decided to ally themselves with the Machinists Union, which offered to help them organize in order to hold an election for recognition of their union. At that time, Kay Tillow moved to Louisville as a representative of the Machinists; Ziegler worked closely with her leading up to the election, which fell short of ratification by eleven votes. Ziegler attributes the failed election to growing tensions between the NPO and the Machinists. Throughout the 1990s and into the early twenty-first century, Ziegler continued to work closely with the NPO in its struggle to earn recognition and better working conditions for nurses. In so doing, she focuses on their exhaustive efforts to document poor working conditions and discrimination against nurses, national media recognition of their efforts, and their failed effort to achieve a negotiating contract with North Healthcare (the city's primary healthcare employer). In addition, Ziegler discusses how issues related to gender created obstacles for the NPO, the impact of and causes of a nursing shortage, and the importance of advocating for disempowered groups.
During the mid-1970s, Gemma Ziegler became a nurse in Louisville, Kentucky, and joined the campaign to organize nurses. In this interview, she discusses her experiences as a nurse; her work as an organizer for We're Involved in Nursing (WIN); her role in the founding of the Nurses Professional Organization (NPO); and the NPO's various activities from the late 1980s into the early twenty-first century.
[START OF DISC 1, TRACK 1]
Today I am at the home of Gemma Ziegler in Louisville, Kentucky. My name is Sarah Thuesen and today is the twenty-second of June, 2006. I'm conducting this interview for the Southern Oral History Program. Thanks so much for sitting down to talk with me today.
Well, you're welcome.
I thought we'd first just talk a little bit about your background. I'm interested to hear a little bit more about how you came to nursing and where you grew up. You're from Louisville originally, right?
I'm from Louisville. I was born in Louisville and was raised maybe less than five miles from here.
Oh really?
I don't go very far.
Have you lived in Louisville your whole life?
Yes. I've never gone away from home.
And you were born in '46, was it?
Yes.
So you have a good perspective on the recent history of the city then?
Oh yeah, I sure do.
What did your parents do?
My father was a builder and my mother was a homemaker and she assisted him in his business. She worked like three days a week at his office. It was just me and my sister, and she lives about a mile from me right now.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, we're very close. And my mom has Alzheimer's.
My parents are divorced now and my mother has Alzheimer's and
my father has Parkinson's disease. But they're
both alive in their eighties.
I'm curious, when you were growing up here in Louisville, did you know any folks who were in unions?
My dad hated unions. It's interesting. My dad during World War II worked at Reynold's Metals and there was a union there and he was very supportive of the union. But then when he went into his own business, he hated the unions. Then I had an uncle who was an electrician who I think must have—. All I remember was there were some union problems and I think maybe he was a scab.
Your uncle was?
Yeah, my dad's sister's husband. I remember talk
about the unions and like "bad," then of course,
hearing about Jimmy Hoffa growing up. So I really had a negative, either
a non-opinion or a somewhat negative opinion. But then once I grew up
and I married, my first husband was in the Carpenters Union, which was a
very good union. So I had a positive
My first husband had a horrible temper and he wasn't physically abusive, but very verbally abusive. So at one point when my children were small, I went to see a counselor and it was a woman counselor. I had wanted him to go with me. He wouldn't go, so I went by myself and we didn't have a lot of money. I told her what was going on and she said, "You need to find a profession. Will he object to your going back to school?" Because I only had a high school education at that time and I think I was like about, oh twenty-four or twenty-six, something like that. She said, "You need to go back to school and get you a degree to raise these children, because he sounds like the type, he's not going to pay child support and you could have a lot of problems. You need to set some goals." So I did. That night I went home and thought about it and the next day, I called the community college here and went back to school. My husband had his own business, a very successful business, but the money didn't matter. It was peace of mind. He was a good person. He just had a lot of problems. Anyway, that's a whole other story.
So I was taking my core classes and sat next to a woman who was in a
nursing program. She said, "You should go into
nursing." She said, "It's a great
profession." I said, "Oh God, I
wouldn't—." I asked her what were the
classes. She said, "Chemistry." I went, "Oh
God, I would never pass chemistry." I made good grades in high
school. Grade school and high
Where did you do those courses?
Jefferson Community College and then I had an AD in Nursing. And of course having children, being around sick kids, you learn a lot just from having children. So nursing seemed very natural to me. Anyway, I had told my husband when I started school, and it took me like six years, six or eight years to get through a two-year program, because I lived out in Oldham County, which is right out of Jefferson County. It is like a suburb of Jefferson County. I actually lived in Peewee Valley and I had to commute between there to school. My son was like four. My daughter was in school. So I had to do daycare with him, pick her up from school. My husband would not help me at all. If he had to watch the children, he called it babysitting. So I was the one that had to arrange, so it took me quite awhile to get through school. The last two years, I carpooled with another nurse who lived out that way. It made it a little bit easier and we'd watch each other's children when we had classes that were different. Anyway, when I started school, I told him, I said, "If things haven't changed when I graduate, I'm leaving." And I did. Things didn't change.
What year would that have been?
That was 1975. I think I was twenty-nine. So then I started work and
initially, I was making like four dollars and seventy-five cents. Now I
just graduated from nursing school. They were putting me on the
eleven-to-seven shift. I was going to be charge nurse and they said they
were going to give me six weeks training on the floor. So after two
weeks, they put me to the night shift and the first night, I had a
supervisor with me and the second night I show up and no
one's with me. And I'm like,
So anyway, I did that, but I was making like four seventy-five an hour. I
thought, "This is great." I chose to work eleven to
seven, because my aunt—I could have gone three to
eleven—I had an aunt who was about sixty. I moved to an
apartment, let my husband have the house, because he ran a business out
of our home. I took the kids and my car and their beds and moved. My
aunt lived in the apartment right behind us. Our walls were connected
and I put in an intercom system. My daughter at the time was, I guess,
around twelve and my son was about seven. I would put them to bed and
then I'd knock her on her door and tell her,
"I'm leaving for work." She would turn on
the intercom and she would listen for them and then she'd go
over in the morning and get them up and get their breakfasts. Then
I'd get home after and then I'd sleep during the
day and be home for them in the afternoon. It was crazy. I hated that
shift. But
What hospital were you at during this period?
Initially, it was called St. Joseph's. That was what Norton Audubon was. It's gone through numerous changes. It was at Eastern Parkway, but now it has moved. It moved in 1980. So I was working there probably about two months when they gave us a quarter raise. Then I guess about maybe two, three more months, we got a dollar-an-hour raise. I said to one of the other coworkers, I said, "Do they give raises like this all the time?" I said, "I can't believe I'm making this much money," which it was nothing and it wasn't anything what nurses are worth, but I didn't know. I was just so tickled to be doing something that I loved and actually getting paid for it. She goes, "Oh no, there's a union trying to get in." She says, "They'll do anything to keep the union out." So that's the first time I heard union with nurses.
And this was about what year?
This was the first year I was out, '75.
Okay, this was still '75.
'75, '76. So I worked there and stayed on the eleven-to-seven shift. I worked there about a year and I met my husband. Then we got married in '79.
Did he work at that hospital?
He was president of the medical staff. No, he didn't become
president of the medical staff until after we were married. He became it
in '79 to '80. He was president during the move
from St. Joe's to Audubon. I've got a funny story
about that one. I quit the floor about six months before we got married
and then I worked just in the pool, in the recovery. Oh, I waited until
they moved to Audubon and as soon as they moved to Audubon, I started
working
My husband said, "You don't have to work." I was working because I loved doing it. So my husband was on the medical staff and he was going to all the meetings and stuff. And Humana bought St. Joe's. My husband had a run-in with Wendell Cherry, who was one of the owners of Humana, one of the founders of Humana. Humana, I don't know if you know, was founded in Louisville. Wendell Cherry and David Jones used to work for John Y. Brown at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Oh, okay.
They turned the hospital into kind of a Kentucky Fried Chicken. So
anyway, my husband was at meetings and he found out that the hospitals
were having a meeting, all the administrators, on how to fight the
union. There was a nursing movement going on. I had heard about it. Of
course, I told you when I started, they said a union movement. But with
getting
Do you know what union that would have been in '75?
It was WIN, We're Involved in Nursing. The leader of that and the founder of that was Carol King. Carol is now deceased. She died at fifty-four, wonderful, energetic, just bright smile, personality, plus she was married to an attorney. She worked at Our Lady of Peace and she started that movement. But she had decided that she had gone with the Kentucky Nursing Association. She had a BSN and that was her professional organization and that's where she led everybody. The union movement at that time with nurses was at Our Lady of Peace, St. Mary's, which is now Caritas, and there was another one. I was raised Catholic, Carol was raised Catholic, and we were just stunned later on when we talked about it by how these Catholic hospitals reacted to unions. They were vicious, absolutely vicious, firing nurses. But I don't know that much about that union except for several nurses lost jobs and it was in the courts for years. And by the time it got through, the nurses were long gone.
But Carol was in this nurses' movement. That first
nurses' movement was WIN. That was actually like about
'75. but then when she started this one, it was like in
'79 and she was just kind of pulling it together. She was
wanting to go with another union. She was just starting back over to
revive the union movement. So my husband told me that the administrators
were all having a meeting to fight the union, to work together on
busting this union. It made me so mad. So I called her and I said,
"I just want to let you know this is what's going
on." She invited me to a union meeting. In fact, I think it was
that evening at her house. And as luck had it, she lived only a half a
mile from me. I went to the meeting and met nurses that are still good
friends of mine and I haven't seen them for awhile, but Lee
Kaiser, Susie Martin, a very strong
But we were in her home and when I got ready to leave, she asked me if I would help her organize. I said, "Well, I have no idea what to do." She said, "I don't either," but she said, "We're just trying. We're just trying to do our best." So the first assignment I had—at that time, she had two little boys and one was my son's age, which was about nine, and her other one was, I think, about seven—we were going to go leaflet Baptist Hospital. I'd never done anything like this in my life. So I helped her do the leaflets and she called. She said, "Now what we have to do first," she said, "Because the first thing that'll happen is you stand out there leafleting and they're going to call the police on you and try to scare you and say you're on public property." She grew up in St. Matthews. She called the mayor of St. Matthews and found out where the property line, where public access was on, I can't think of the name of the road, where Baptist Hospital is. She found out how many feet from the center line. We took our measuring tape and we stood there.
Well, we were leafleting and talking to the nurses as they're
getting off their shift with our kids. Our kids are holding up signs.
We're talking to nurses as they're coming out and
they sent out the security to chase us away. This is where I learned my
guts from Carol, because I was such a chicken. I thought, "Oh
shit, let's get to the car." She goes, "No,
just stay right here." He said, "Ma'am,
you're going to have to leave." I'm like,
"Okay," and getting ready to pack up. She goes,
"We are on public property and you have no right to make us
leave. We have every right to be here." "Well
ma'am, the administrator—." She said,
"I don't care." And we looked, you could
see the administrators and all the people standing up at the window
looking out at this guy chasing us away and we wouldn't
leave. So anyway, we stayed until we
So anyway, I was working with Carol and we were organizing Our Lady of Peace, that's where she worked part-time, Baptist Hospital, and there was one other one. Maybe it was Audubon. It was Audubon. And we were doing really well, really well, and then all of a sudden, the recession came. Nurses, a lot of them, their spouses worked at Ford. International Harvester, a lot of spouses worked there and that closed, that shut down. Quite a few of our big plants shut down and people were afraid. They needed their money. It just kind of fizzled out. We were talking to unions to find out who to affiliate with. We wanted control, but we wanted to affiliate with a big union. Well, we met with the Teamsters and we were invited to AFSCME, to Philadelphia up to their convention. The funny thing is Kay and her husband were at the convention, but we never met them. So we went to the convention, but we end up going with Tom Woodward. What is that union? Isn't that awful? Kay will know. It was 1199, because they had a lot of hospitals. They had some hospitals in the South and they had organized hospitals before. We were going great guns and we were having house meetings. We'd call up nurses. Our meetings were full. Nurses wanted to organize. But then when this came, the recession came, was that '81?
Yeah.
It was just like it fizzled, totally fizzled. People were just terrified and the hospitals knew it. They were threatening people that they would lose their jobs.
Tom was a great guy and
And he was based here in Louisville?
No, they were out of Virginia maybe. Kay would know. Kay worked with Tom.
When she worked for 1199.
Yeah.
And your organization at that point, was that still WIN?
Yeah, that was still WIN. Carol and I used to get really frustrated
because so many nurses were afraid to come to meetings. We were going
really well and we had a lot of cards signed, but there were still some
that were just afraid and wouldn't stand up to management.
Carol said, "We just need to organize the patients. We just
need to get a patients union." So anyway, we just kind of
stepped back. Then about 1989—I forgot how I was even going
to start it. Did I get a call? I got a call.
I've seen her name in a couple of—
Yeah, she's a character.
Clippings about the origins of the group.
Soffia.
Do you remember her last name?
Atherton, but now it's—. She's lives here in Louisville. I have her phone number out there. She's remarried and I can't remember her new name.
Okay, yeah. She might be a good one for me to talk to.
She's a character. Oh, she was something. She was the IV nurse and she was our main soldier. She was all over the hospital. She had the union cards under her clipboard for her IVs. Oh, she had a ball. She got a lot of people to sign cards. So anyway, I call Carol and I said, "Carol, I got a call and they want us to help them organize." She said, "Well, are you up to it again?" I said, "Yeah, let's give it a try." One of the doctors at the hospital, can't think of his name either. I can see him. My husband knows him name and I can get him to think of it. Anyway—
That's okay.
He called the Courier-Journal and told them that we
were going to have a union meeting. What we said,
"We'll get—call maybe ten or fifteen of
the old nurses, and we'll meet at one of the hotels in one of
their little conference rooms and see what we can bat around and see
what direction we were going." So this doctor calls a reporter
and said he heard nurses were going to have a union meeting. Well, the
reporter, Joe Ward, called my home. He asked me about it and I told him
that the staffing was awful and that there were serious patient issues
and a lot of issues and that we were going to have this meeting. Well,
he writes it and puts it in the paper the day before our meeting.
We were going to have three meetings and we figured, seriously, maybe ten
persons at a meeting. The reason we ended up having three was because we
started getting calls that evening: "So-and-so's
coming and so-and-so's coming, but they can't make
it at this time," so we went ahead and set it up for, we ended
up having to open up to a huge room. We had like three hundred people
show up to the evening meeting. At the morning meeting, we had sixty
people. Nurses were angry. They were fed up. They wanted the Teamsters.
One nurse said, "I
I haven't seen the particular article you're referring to, no.
It shows me and Carol King sitting together. I don't think I have it. I don't think I saved any of that.
I'll see if I can track that down.
Okay, it's a Courier-Journal article, Joe
Ward. So anyway, the Machinists came and spoke, the Teamsters, 1199, the
KNA, and the KNA woman, I felt sorry for her. The nurses shouted her
down: "You all have never done anything for us.
You're on the side of management." Nurses, it was
like a wrestling match where people yell out things.
Could you describe for me just in general what the frustrations were? What were people angry about at that point?
Staffing, staffing, staffing, staffing. That was the main thing. No
respect, no respect for your life outside of the hospital, making you
stay overtime, calling you in on your day off, pulling. Pulling was a
big issue. You're working your unit and they pull you to
another unit you've never worked before. And they tell you if
you don't go, you get sent home and you'll be
written up. It was about the money, but it really wasn't
about the money. Nurses never said, "I want more
money," and I think that's partly the problem. They
didn't really respect themselves
So anyway, we had this huge nursing movement and we were not prepared. So we handed cards. We had planned on handing out cards. I think we ran out of cards. We just asked people to write down on a piece of paper which union they felt would best benefit. The Teamsters came out like ten cards over the Machinists. They were all pretty close. We also said, "Any nurse who wants to participate in pulling this together and helping us organize, meet at Carol's house tomorrow morning for breakfast." So we did that. I mean, we didn't know these other nurses from Adam. We had like fifteen nurses.
And they came from all different hospitals?
Yeah, all different hospitals, all different disciplines, all different degrees of nursing. We had LPNs and that's one of the things different that we did. We included the LPNs, because KNA would not allow them in. Even the RNs said, "You know, they work side by side, but they do the exact same thing," except hang blood and at that time, I think, do IV, push drugs.
And at that initial first big meeting, what was the—. Well, I should back up and say what was the general racial breakdown of the nursing staffs at most of the main hospitals in Louisville?
Very few black nurses.
At that time?
Mmm hmm, and probably more now, but very few. Shirley King, who is African-American and she was at Carol's house, I'm pretty sure she was there. Those days were just like one big blur. I hardly got any sleep. It's like somebody putting fast forward on. I mean, it just happened so fast. It was just like being stunned. Pat Hardy, who's name later on changed and then I think she changed it back, she was there and she had just come off an eleven-to-seven and came to Carol's meeting at her house. By that time, at the end of the meeting, some of us stayed and even though the Teamsters came out ahead, we were just afraid that most nurses would think, "Teamsters, oh gee, truck drivers." Machinists were right behind them, so we go, "Machinists." So we invited them to this meeting and we told them that we wanted to remain—oh I know, we were trying to come up with a name for our organization and Pat Hardy came up, "NPO," because when a patient's in the hospital, they can't have anything by mouth, so there are stickers all over the hospital on patients. It means "Nothing by mouth." And she says, "We're tired of their pushing their agendas down our throats," so we named it Nurses Professional Organization, NPO. She did that on hardly any sleep, came up with that acronym for us. And we figured it would keep our nursing organization and the movement on people's minds when they see it all day long. So anyway, the Machinists promised us that they would bring in professional organizers to help us, assist us in organizing. The local people here were wonderful.
The local Machinists?
Mmm hmm. Butch Hinton was incredible. He's now deceased. There
were a couple of them, though, that undermined us. But Butch Hinton, he
was the president. There was Ron Harsh. He had another local, so he
didn't do that much with us, but Butch Hinton was the one
that took over. Butch was a very powerful man in the Machinists Union.
He was very wise.
It's Warren Mart?
Uh huh. They sent another guy in who, I think, had an assignment in Hawaii and they pulled him off that to come to Louisville, Kentucky and I think he was not happy. They split me and Carol up and then they called in Kay. She was the best thing that happened with that whole Machinists thing. I knew immediately she knew what she was doing and she related really well with all the nurses. People couldn't believe she wasn't a nurse, because she's had that experience. Kay will remember his name, but they put this other guy who was supposed to be in Hawaii, they put him with Carol King and another person to organize Our Lady of Peace. They put me with Kay to organize Audubon. And they put this other, I can't think of his name, he has gray hair, Kay will know, to organize Suburban.
It wasn't long. Kay and I were so busy. We just worked,
seriously, from morning to night. My husband hardly ever saw me.
I'll tell you how bad it was. My mom had cataract surgery and
I had to pick her up from the eye doctor and take her home. She had
asked me to drop her by the grocery store and I said,
"Sure." And I was anxious to get back, because we had
all this stuff going on. My son called me in the meantime and said,
"Mom, I need the car this afternoon." So I told my
mom, I said, "You wait here. I'm going to pick up
Beau." Well, I got home and started talking to Beau and I said,
"You know, I've got a meeting tonight. Why
don't you just drop me off at the office and you take the car
and then Kay can bring me home tonight?," totally forgetting my
mother. I left her at the store. So I come home from work late
And this was the first election campaign?
This was the first election. We were going great guns. We had committees in each unit. We had team leaders, co-team leaders. They were strong. They were taking on management. There are so many stories I could tell you how they took management on in meetings and stood up. Soffia took a cartoon around. It showed a man in a hospital bed with bandages on him and his leg up. One of the nurses had drawn it and put, "Poor Bill Heburn." He was an administrator. "The nurses beat up on him so bad in the meeting, he had to be hospitalized." And stuff like that. Seriously, I mean, we were just winning like crazy.
So right before, I guess, I don't remember the dates again;
Kay probably will. Kay likes to get, I think, around seventy percent
cards signed, seventy-five percent cards signed. We were like at
sixty-five, sixty-six, and I guarantee you she'll remember
the exact number. I don't remember that anymore. Warren comes
and tells us—oh wait a minute. Back up, back up, back up.
About six weeks before this, Carol King jumps ship. She had a run-in
with the other organizer. I think he was having sex with one of the
people on her committee and she was married and it was getting around
the hospital. And she said, "It's just getting a bad
reputation." It was in a ballfield somewhere where they had
just had a union meeting. I mean, she was just like, "This is
just going to destroy our reputation." It was something like
that. I know it had to do with sex and one of the people on her
committee. And I think she had it in
From the very beginning, I could see the men who had Our Lady of Peace and Suburban, they hated Kay. In our meetings at the union, I could see that. They never did it to me. I had a run-in with Warren Mart one time. I'll tell you about that. But other than that, they never did it to me, but they always did Kay, because she was on the payroll. I was a volunteer. Any of her ideas, they would put it down. Anybody with half a brain could see her ideas were much better than theirs. And Kay and I haven't always seen eye to eye, but she knows what she's doing. You have to recognize that.
So anyway, Warren comes to us when we're at about sixty-five percent and says, "Our Lady of Peace and Suburban are ready to go to an election." Kay said, "No, they can't be." He said, "Yes. They said they've got seventy-five percent of the cards." She said, "Warren, they do not." He said, "Well, that's what they told me." Do you know how unions do the charts?
Sort of.
You put the unit, like ICU, you list all the nurses, the shifts they
work, and then as you get their cards signed, you yellow them out. When
you get all yellow, you can look at the chart. Well, Kay had been
noticing, she's very astute, that their charts were getting
yellowed awfully quickly. She knew they hadn't been doing
that well. And we had been getting tons of press through all of this.
They were calling us and anytime there was a nursing story, they would
call us. The TV stations would be there. It was just all the time. Every
week, it was like we were on television all the time. We were handing
things out and doing demonstrations. Let me think. So one night after he
told us that, he said, "You've got to be ready to go
with Audubon." She said, "Warren, we only have
sixty-five percent." He says, "In two weeks, you
Why do you think he was trying to—
I don't think he knew. I think they were buddies. They had come up through the ranks together. They covered each other's back. Kay was an outsider they brought in and he wouldn't question them. I don't think he wanted to see it fail. And I think it's because she was a woman. I hate to say it. One other thing happened. I was at home one morning getting ready for work and they were all staying at the Holiday Inn. Kay and all the other Machinists from out of town were staying at the Holiday Inn in hotel rooms. She called me. She used to ride into work everyday with Warren. Well, they picked up the newspaper and a newspaper reporter had called me because there was a nursing decision by the Kentucky Board of Nursing about a nursing issue. He had called me and asked me my opinion on it, so I told him what my opinion was on it. I've never had any problem with the press, never misquoted me, always had a good relationship with them. If I tell them something to investigate, they always did really well. So anyway, Kay said they were down getting coffee and Warren sees where I talked to the newspaper. He lit into Kay, "She talked to the newspaper without going through me? That better not ever happen. You tell her she's not allowed to talk to the newspaper. That better not ever happen again. All PR goes through me."
So I'm home. I got out of the shower and my hair is wet. Kay
calls me crying. He has threatened her job if she lets it happen again.
I said, "Kay, calm down. What's going on?"
So she told me. I couldn't get dressed fast enough to get to
the NPO. I went flying into his office:
Kay had no choice and then she had to try to, because she'd been telling the nurses all along, "We don't go until seventy-five percent." So she had to present it to the leadership of the nurses, like thirty or forty nurses, why we were going at sixty-five percent and try not to knock the union down. Because Kay is not one, this is why you're probably not going to hear this story or the other one I'm going to tell you, because she doesn't like to knock the union in front of anybody. But I think the unions need to hear this so they know what they need to do to straighten it up, because that's why they're losing. It's the back-biting and the one-upmanship and all the other stuff they do.
So here's the worst part. Kay had no say in talking to the
NLRB people. They wouldn't let her do any of that and
it's our campaign. So we're lucky they let us go
and Kay had promised the nurses all along, "This is your
election. When we got to the NLRB, we all go up there together to file
for the election. Anybody who wants to go, we go, we do this. We are
together on all of this." So Warren goes,
"You're crazy. I'm not taking all those
people." She says, "Warren, I've told them
they can go." He didn't want to take anybody. And
she wanted us all to go into the meetings with the NLRB. Well, they go
in there. We sit in an outside room
Kay went in and Warren was agreeing to throw in respiratory therapy, physical therapy, x-ray technicians. It was like, Kay knows the number again, probably a hundred and twenty more people. And we didn't have them. We haven't been organizing them. We're only doing nurses. He agrees to this stipulation. They had a break. I'm in the bathroom. Kay comes in sobbing. She goes, "Gemma, all our hard work's gone down the drain." I said, "Kay, we'll organize them. We'll just blitz and we'll organize them." And we just worked around the clock, but you can't get that many people and the election was set for two weeks. Oh, and the reason we went, because we knew that Our Lady of Peace and Suburban were going to lose. We couldn't let them go to election before us. So I mean, it was just hell. It was hell. Here we put months of our lives and our energy and these nurses are depending on us, and here it's being all screwed up by people who are going to pack their bags and leave when it's over. Oh, my God. It was awful. It was just awful. And we had to kind of protect the nurses. We didn't want them to panic and freak out. It was just a horrible situation.
Why did they add in these other groups of workers?
The management wanted it and Kay told him, "We don't have them." He goes, "Well, it's not that big a group." She says, "Warren, I only have," I think it was sixty-five percent. Like I told you, she'll know the exact number and she'll probably be able to tell you everybody who signed a card. And he said, "Well, this way we'll get the stipulated meeting." He would not listen to her. So we went to the election and lost eleven.
Eleven votes?
Eleven votes.
Wow.
Eleven votes. It wasn't the hospital that did it to us. I mean, they did their dirty anti-union stuff. But it was the union that brought us down on that one. We would have won. Of course, Suburban lost hugely as well as Our Lady of Peace. They just barely, I think they got like thirty-three percent or something like that. Again, Kay will know. It was horrible and we were devastated. It was amazing. When the nurses came in, they were crying because they had lost. They were coming in going, "We're going to go again. We're going to go again."
Were you prepared to go again at that point?
Yeah, if they wanted to, I was going to. And you know, I didn't choose to be a union person or to be an organizer. In my list of things I wanted to grow up to be, it wasn't even anywhere in there. It wasn't even anywhere on the horizon. But I found I loved it. I loved energizing other people to see the possibilities of what they could do. I loved letting people know what their rights were. I loved hearing about, when we heard that Bill Heburn was going to have meetings to meet with the nurses, Kay and I got on the phone and we organized all the nurses to have our strong voices at each and every one of his meetings. And I mean, they just pummeled that guy; they really did. The things they asked him, he couldn't answer. They made him look like a fool. And it just did my soul good to see these nurses, who were so afraid to speak before, to go in and do that. It was just exciting. I wasn't there, but just hearing them come back and seeing their faces, it was just thrilling.
He was the CEO of Audubon?
He was the CEO. Shortly after that, he was gone.
Oh really?
He was gone.
Do you know where he went?
Kay does, I'm sure.
During this time, you probably already said this and I just missed it, but were you pretty much working on this full-time? Were you doing any nursing during this time?
No, wasn't doing nursing. I always tell people one of the reasons I never went back into the hospital after working what little bit, I tell nurses, I go, "I have not worked many years in the hospital. If you're looking toward me as a nurse, I am a nurse and it's in my soul and I believe in us." And I did work at Fraizer Rehab for about a year or so. But I was in an abusive situation once in my life and to me, it's no difference the way they treat nurses in the hospital. It's an abusive situation. You have no control over your life. And the lack of respect and the way they talk to you and treat you like a child, I won't put myself in that position. Yes, I was working full-time there. We were probably working ten, twelve hours a day. We were working weekends. Even when I came home, I'd have stacks of paper I'd be working on and going through, and making phone calls and catching nurses that were getting up and going to work.
And this was all on a volunteer basis?
All volunteer, never got paid a dime, didn't want it. It
wasn't about money. So then we stayed with the Machinists for
awhile and I can't remember what happened, what the straw
was. Oh, they threatened they were going to fire Kay. It was right after
the election. They were going to fire Kay. They were going to blame the
downfall of the election on Kay. So Kay, right before she left, a group
of the leaders, when the Machinists went home that night, we came back
and we took our computer disc and the stuff that was our nursing stuff,
books and things that we kept there to help nurses, because we had to
file grievances during this, because they were trying to fire nurses.
They said they did something wrong and we were doing grievances
Where was the NPO headquarters at this time?
It was in a really nice building on Poplar Level Road about a half a mile from Audubon Hospital. This was about a half a block from there. We didn't want to move very far and it was an upstairs apartment, no air conditioning. One of the nurses donated an air conditioner. I had a home computer, I brought that, we used that. It wasn't much of a computer.
That's my cat. He's deaf and that's why he meows so loud. It was a pretty sorry little place, but it was ours and nobody was going to tell us what to do. Butch, who I hated to do it to Butch, he had nothing to do with all this other stuff, but he called me and he wanted to have a meeting. So he and like five other Machinists came up, I said we'll meet at our place, and he wanted us to come back. We wanted Kay back, because Kay had left town.
So that's why you'd gotten a separate place, just sort of in protest of them firing her?
Yeah, firing her and we weren't going to be pushed around
anymore. At this point, I told the nurses what went on, what really
happened about the NLRB. Some of them, like maybe five of them, close,
they knew what happened. I said we'll meet up here. So they
came and we had about twenty of our nurses. They wanted us to come back
and I didn't say it, the
Yeah.
Sally Bingham?
Yes.
We contacted Sally Bingham and asked her for a grant to bring Kay back.
Well, what we asked her for, Kay, and she probably is still going to do
it, Kay was thinking about doing a book on the election. So she gave
Kay, I think it was like eleven thousand dollars, maybe seven thousand
dollars. It was enough to bring Kay, because see Kay had a husband. She
couldn't stay down here and we didn't expect her
to pay for her own airfare back and forth. We were trying to find a way,
so Sally Bingham gave us the grant. But another union person we knew
knew Sally and Sally knew that it was really to bring her in, but
hopefully someday she would write a book about this. So Sally Bingham
gave her the grant. Kay came back and we worked out of this little
office. We started collecting dues. It wasn't very much, but
we
Maybe I'll ask Kay.
You know, maybe she was the one that was with the Machinists. Ask Kay. I can't remember. Isn't that awful? They gave us the resources to start another campaign. They were extremely generous with us and they put me on the payroll; I didn't ask to be. I think Kay must have asked them. We had a secretary. We had three office staff.
Had you moved to a new—
We moved to the Medical Arts Building and we were going great guns.
Did AFSCME have a pretty big presence in Louisville at that time? No?
That was the problem was the other local. They resented us. We were getting all the publicity. Ron Reliford, do you know Ron Reliford?
Uh uh.
He's an African-American man, nice man, but he is a backstabber.
What is he affiliated with?
AFSCME, the local here.
What's the other local?
They're like, they have the zoo workers, they have city
workers. I'm going to go ahead and tell you what Ron did to
us while we're on the thing. The international was really
No.
Okay, well maybe I should go back and I'll tell you about that later. Let me go back to where we were. So we start organizing again and we're doing great and the hospital hires union-busters to come in, threaten people's jobs. It was Joanne Sandusky, who you talked to her, you know her story, what they did to her. Little frail Joanne, a lactation specialist, they escort her out. Oh, she was devastated. She was devastated. Ann Hurst, you know, they went after her. They went after our president.
Was that Patty Clark?
Patty Clark. Quite a few other people, nurses that they went after and really scared people. And you know, I've forgotten a lot of it. Kay will fill you in on the all the—. And I'm sure Kay has the—do you have the Supreme Court ruling on the case?
The text of it?
Mmm hmm.
No. Oh, well I have, I'm not sure what you're referring to.
Oh, it's the sixth circuit court. It was the sixth circuit court.
Okay.
It wasn't the Supreme Court. It was the sixth circuit.
Then I think I do. The one that involved, well, they put a bunch of cases together, including Ann Hurst's and I believe—. Is this the one you're referring to?
Yeah. And the fact that they say that they have to have another election and they have to make those people whole.
Yes.
Yes.
Well after that, the hospital refused to have another election and they were not wanting to negotiate anything on these other nurses, dragging their feet on everything. And Norton was wanting some bond money from the city. Are you familiar with this story?
Yes, well John Cumbler filled me in on the basic details, but you could tell me a little more.
They wanted bond money to do whatever with it. I don't know
what they wanted to do with it. I can't remember now. But
they were going to the city for millions of dollars. Kay was the one who
saw it in the paper that they were going for bond money and she said,
"We
Do you know why he would have done that?
I think he hated us because we got—I think he was just jealous. It's a terrible thing. We had heard he said, and his girlfriend—
Reliford's girlfriend?
Reliford's girlfriend, who was in AFSCME, she was so hateful
to us. She hated us. I was in a regular Louisville Central Labor Council
meeting and she told me, I can't remember. She came up to me
and said, what dis she say to me? It was really nasty. I
can't remember now. She was just vicious and she was on
AFSCME payroll, too. Every union president, every union organizer,
whenever we had a demonstration, at one time or another, they always
showed up. He never showed up unless it was right before it was ready to
close. He'd say, "Oh, I was running late. I
couldn't be here," but generally, he
didn't show up at all. He had no presence, no support. A
couple of his members, his men that were in that org—, and
one woman, they were very supportive, but he as a leader was not there
for us and we knew it. We knew in our hearts that's what
happened, but we didn't have any proof of it until, I think
he since has retired, and
Just to clarify what that city council—had the city and county merged at that point?
No.
Okay, so it was a city council vote, right?
Yeah. What were they called? They weren't called city council. I can't remember what they were called.
The commissioners?
Commissioners.
Okay. You were wanting—
Them to hold off the money until they agreed to negotiate—
An election or to hold an election?
No, to negotiate contracts with us. We said, "Forget the election. They violated the rights. We can never have an election there again. We want a contract and if they want that money from the city, then they should negotiate with the nurses." We needed one more vote, one more vote, and we had the other votes, excerpt for Irv Maze. He said he would and he turned on us.
Do you remember comments that were made by any of the city commissioners at the time about why they wanted to support Norton and give them the money they were requesting?
First, Irv Maze told us that we couldn't stop it, it was a
done deal. He told us that to our face. So we go out and do research and
it wasn't a done deal. It had to pass all the commission. But
I think he was trying to get us out of his office and we'd go
home with our tail
It's easy to forget details like that. Was the general feeling that among the folks who wanted to support Norton, or the general argument, that everything needed to be done to support them since they're providing so many jobs in the city?
No, Irv Maze, he never said anything like that to us. Our mayor, who's supposed to be the union mayor, at one time we went to see him about another issue. A group of nurses went, me and Kay, and he told us that we need to distance ourselves from the union. We would get more support if we distanced ourselves from the union. Our mayor told us that.
Wow.
He said, "You need to get someone like Kathy Mershon to represent you." At that time, Kathy Mershon was a top dog in Humana. She was like the top nurse. She was the vice president of nursing at Humana. It was like here we are, union people, and he's telling us we need to distance ourselves from the union, that, "You're not going to get public sympathy," is what he told us. This is the mayor who gets tons of money. I'll tell you another one, Steve Henry. Steve Henry, oh, he'd come to our meetings. He was running for office and wanted our support. Let's see. He ran for lieutenant governor. He's physician and he's an orthopedic physician down at University. The nurses came and told us that he told them not to sign union cards, that the union wasn't a good thing to have in the hospital. So they came and told us.
So Kay and I are at a meeting at the Greater Louisville Central Labor Council and Steve Henry's speaking to the union members. I wanted to raise my hand and confront him then, but out of respect for the other union people and I think Kay was afraid I was going to do it, I waited until he left. And I followed him out of the meeting and Kay was, we went out of the meeting. I got him by the front doors away from the meeting and I said to him, "I heard you say—." "Oh, I never said that." I said, "Well, we have some very strong union nurses who are honest, hard-working women who said you told them that." "I never said that. Oh, I never said that." I said, "You'll never get a vote from me again. How do you have the audacity to come here, try to get a union vote, and then talking out both sides of your mouth?" Well, I had no use for him. He got all red in the face and left. I didn't realize there was no much politics in unions and all of that.
You know, if there wasn't the fighting amongst each other,
we'd be successful. Just like Ron Reliford, it would have
brought his local, those people, with the numbers it would have made
everything better. He wanted to hold onto that power. I think he thought
our union would be much bigger than his and we would overpower his.
It's a power thing. I'm not concerned about power.
I've never been concerned about power except empowering
nurses to be able to deliver the care. So that's the other
reason why I believe Norton would have—. They needed the
money for the project. I can't remember what the project was,
but it was already ready to go. They were just waiting on the money. If
Ron Reliford hadn't done that, we may have a contract. So
those are the two incidents where our own union—. You know,
with the hospitals we know our enemy. They're easy to fight
if you know the enemy, but it's hard to fight them when you
don't know. It was very disheartening for me. I kind of gave
up after that. I thought,
What year was that city commissioners' vote?
It wasn't that long ago, maybe like 2000. Again, Kay will
know. I'm going to be Joanne Sandusky.
I think where we left off, you were talking about how frustrating it was when the city commissioners didn't vote the way you'd hoped. Quite recently, there have been some signs of renewed progress, Jane Gentry's big settlement, the discussions of cooperation with the California Nurses. Do you think things are starting to turn in a new direction?
You know, Jane's recent victory was really from before, because all the work was done previously. I mean, we worked on that for years. Oh my God, our hearts and soul was in that case. It takes that long to get through all the different hoops you have to jump through to get a victory. But it was a wonderful victory. And I guess you know, they tried to take her license and we won that. They denied her unemployment. We appealed, we won that. The California Nurses Association, I want to be hopeful. I just don't know if it's—. I know Kay wants me to be more involved, but I gave so much of myself and it was just so disheartening. Kay just never gives up. But I want it to be successful. I really, really do. It's needed. Oh my God, a union's needed in the hospital so much. The California Nurses, that would be a dream to have an organization here like there. I don't know if I could do anything to help. We've got to get the leadership inside. So many of our people are gone. So many of the nurses when we started in what is that, '89—
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They should be doing, you know? She was like upset with them because they weren't, but I just don't know. I don't know if the—. It's still bad in the hospital, the understaffing.
So you're saying that the conditions haven't changed that much?
Oh no, the conditions haven't changed. Besides the working
conditions, it's the respect. The nurses just
don't get any respect. Have you heard the New
York Times did an article about Columbia? Did you know about
this?
No.
They came down and we worked with two of them. They've won
Pulitzer Prizes, these two writers. They came down. I can't
think of their names. One of them now covers the opera and the music up
at the New York Times. I can't think of
these names. Kay will remember. They came down and they were doing a
story. That's when Columbia owned the hospital. It was right
after Primetime. You heard about us being on Primetime?
Yeah.
That was kind of fun. We were telling them that there was a new thing at
the hospital. They were trying to, I think it was an anti-union thing,
it started out as the hospital was doing this anti-union thing to build
nurses up. What they were doing was if a nurse, an aide, a patient told
the manager that another nurse was doing a good job, the manager would
take a basket of pretzels and crackers, and I think that's
all that was in there. You know, those little snacks you get on the
airplane? They come in the little things, peanuts. She would bring that
to the nurse and she would give the nurse one of these snacks.
I'm serious. I'm dead serious. We heard about it
and we went, "Oh, my God. We can't believe. That is
so degrading." New York Times were down and we spent a lot of time
with them and we also had some of our nurses testify on Capitol Hill,
have you heard about that? In Congress.
No.
Okay, there's just so many stories to tell. That's a whole 'nother thing about the trucks. So the reporters were gone for probably a month or two and they did their story. It was a big expose on Columbia. One of the reporters called us down and they said, "We got to tell you that we told the guys in our newsroom about the crackers story and they couldn't believe it," he said, "Until we showed them the papers." He said, "Now anytime somebody does a good article, they keep crackers in their drawer and they throw it across the newsroom at each other."
That may still be going on at the New York Times.
Yeah, maybe at the New York Times. There was a thing,
Joint Commission is a joke. I don't know if you've
heard. Do you know who Joint Commission is?
Uh uh.
Joint Commission, it used to be JCH and now it's JCAH, Joint
Commission on Accreditations of Hospitals. They are a joke themselves.
They are a private organization that reviews hospitals for the
government and they're supposed to do surprise visits, just
come into the hospital and inspect everything. We found out the hospital
knows a year in advance that
Wow.
So Kay and I get our cameras and we stake the place out. We got pictures
of the trucks and of them loading them up. I got a friend to go with me
into the hospital and I showed him the hall where they were loading
stuff up and he got video cameras to go in of them loading it up. Then
three days later, we followed them. Kay and I followed the trucks across
town off Westport Road where they parked them. Then Vince, my
husband—that's another
story—who's a doctor at the hospital, he follows
me. He and I go out and sit the morning Joint Commission is supposed to
leave and we sit out there and watch them. It was his day off. We
watched the trucks. Sure enough, they start pulling out to go back to
the hospital and start unloading. So we got it all on camera. We had a
little newsletter and we put this in the newsletter about Joint
Commission. Kay has a copy of the newsletter. So we get a call from
Congressman Dingle's office. They somehow heard about this
and wanted the nurses to testify.
About what year would that have been going on?
I'm thinking '93. Then something else we found out, when Joint Commission comes, the legal notice is in the paper. It notifies they're coming and anybody in the community can go to the meeting. So we went and we told this, I'm guessing maybe five, six years ago, all this stuff that the hospital was doing that wasn't right. They still got a clean—. I mean, we told them that the nurses were doing respiratory therapy with only ninety minutes of training and they were given the answers to the test. We told them that; nothing was done. I was going to tell you something else. We went to Congress. We worked extensively with his administrative aides on the testimony and putting it all together. It was also about the understaffing in the hospitals and that sort of stuff. And we've written numerous legislation on staffing, trying to get it passed here. It's impossible.
You hear so much about the nursing shortage in America and an outsider to this story might think that that would give you tremendous leverage in this situation. Why do you think that hasn't helped more?
One, there's not a nursing shortage. I don't care
what anybody says. It's a shortage of nurses willing to put
up with the conditions. There are nurses. They're leaving
right and left. They'll go into other areas. Other things
have opened up for them. They retire. They sell real estate.
Soffia's daughter's a nurse. She builds houses
now. There's lots of nurses, but they're not going
to put up with those conditions. The leverage, they don't
care. They just don't care. They don't care what
we do. They'll come up with something. They don't
look at the big picture. They live from day to day and
they'll just make whoever's there stay and work
longer.
One way they were trying to get around it, Norton brought in nurses from the Philippines, trying to bring workers in that they could, I guess, dominate or have something over. They put them up in a hotel and they paid for their apartment: "We brought you in here and now you're slaves to us forever." They get around it. They get around it by going to the Board of Nursing and trying to get other professionals in the hospital to do some of the work that the nurses normally do and eliminate some of the process that way. And the housekeeping, I mean we had the most wonderful housekeeper who would stand up to management. She would speak to the press. We've had to get her job back a couple of times, but she's still there, Wilma.
Wilma.
A wonderful person.
What's her last name?
McCombs.
Yes, I saw a reference to her in a newspaper article.
She's wonderful. She went to the paper about, they fired all their housekeepers. This was downtown in Audubon. I don't know about Suburban. They brought in contract labor. About that time after they did it, Kay and I were out at the Ramada Inn for something, an event or something. I can't remember why we were out there. And we see these workers standing in front of the Ramada with shirts on that say, "Norton Hospital." So we hop out of the car and ask them. They were brought up from Atlanta or Tennessee and they were putting them up here. We didn't wonder if they were some of the prisoners that you hear about. You know, they hire prisoners in other states to do work. We never could prove it, but that was our gut feeling from talking to these guys. They wouldn't say what they did down there, but it was like, "We don't know. We don't know. We're from Tennessee." So then when Wilma went to the press about that they didn't have enough disinfectant in the hospital to disinfect, not enough toilet paper. Toilet paper was kept under lock and key. The staff couldn't get the toilet paper unless they had the key. It was a big article in the paper about her and she spoke out. And within thirty days, they hired back all their old housekeepers.
So I mean, that's the power, that's the power of
the people. Even though we don't have a formalized union,
when you work with people and you have people brave enough to risk and
some of them have lost their jobs, but like I said, we've
gotten almost every single one of them back. One nurse we
didn't get back, but I think she went over the line to where
we couldn't help her. It wasn't really, it
wasn't about the union. It was about something else. So it
was hard for us to defend her after she said the stuff that she said at
the hospital. It was really hard for us to defend her. We used to tell
nurses, "Keep everything the hospital gives you, every memo,
everything. Take it home, file it. You find a box and stick it in
there." And that's what Kay taught us. She taught us
from the very beginning save everything. Don't throw anything
away.
Oh, I see.
One question I wanted to just ask you. You've already touched on it a good bit, but I wanted to ask it more directly, is for you to talk a little bit more about how you think gender has affected this fight. How do you think this fight might have played out differently if nursing were a male-dominated profession? Or do you think it would have played out differently?
This is just my opinion. I think that if it were a male-dominated profession, nurses wouldn't be treated the way they are. But in the fight that we have ensued, it's the female nurses that are the strongest leaders. The male nurses have been helpful, but they haven't been our strongest leaders. We've had some good ones, but not like the women. But I think if it was originally an all-male profession, it wouldn't have gotten to the point that it had. And I don't see it changing much. I really don't think we'll ever have—. Maybe I'll be wrong, but it's just—. And the men who do get in it, they just go right on up the ladder to management or nurse anesthetist or nurse practitioner, physician's assistant. They just move on. Very few males on the floors, more than before, but—
Not a lot.
Not a lot. But our strongest leaders have been the women and surprisingly, a lot of older women who've just had it up to here. When I say older, at the time when we were in the fight, they were in their fifties, some in their sixties, feisty, feisty. Well, I can't say. We had some young ones that were pretty feisty too, but usually young ones, a lot of the young ones had little ones at home. A lot of them were single moms and if they lost their job—. And right now, the way the situation is Norton almost has a monopoly here. I think it's like eight out of ten hospitals are owned or operated by Norton. So if you get blacklisted, where are you going to work?
You're out of luck.
You're out of luck. We've had a nurse have a real hard time, so that's a real problem. But I've got to tell you, I have so much admiration for the nurses that worked inside. Everybody would go, "Oh Gemma, you did such good—." I didn't do anything. I was at the office. I have a secure home. I don't have to work. I'm not the one that put my life and my career and everything on the line. It's the ones in the hospital who were taking care of patients and organizing in between, on their lunch breaks, before work, they would go in early and leaflet. Kay and I would go and leaflet also. We'd have to be off the property, but we would go and support them in leafleting. But they could get right inside the property and they pushed it to the limit. They knew their rights and if nothing else, I think we enlightened a lot of people about their rights and about standing up and don't take anything from anybody. Question authority. I never did get put in jail, though. I was always waiting for that. I've never been in jail. I kept telling Kay, Kay's been to jail several times for various causes, but I've never been to jail, not even close.
Well, never say never.
That's right. There's always this war that I'm willing to go to jail over.
One other question that you have already touched on too, but I wanted to go back to. You were in kind of a unique position in this situation since your husband's a doctor and also has connections in the medical community. To what extent did you find that other doctors were supportive of your cause? Did your husband ever receive any criticism from his colleagues?
Let's see, several things. I'll tell you certain things that happened. When we first started, I started when Vince was president of the medical staff, I leafleted the hospital about the union. And they said, one of the other doctors told my husband that the administrator said, "That woman out front looks like Vince's wife that's leafleting." He goes, "It is." He goes, "What's she doing out there?" So it was pretty funny having me out there. Vince has been totally supportive. Some of the doctors have told him not to warm my car up, say, "I wouldn't start her car for her in the morning," insinuating that it might be blown up. Vince circulated a letter for us from doctors in support of us and he got tons of signatures. He got other doctors to speak on our behalf—not on our behalf, excuse me. Nobody speaks on our behalf—to speak in support of us at some of our big rallies. He got one wimpy doctor who signed the letter and then came back and asked for it to be taken off. He had been talked to by administration.
Oh really?
Mmm hmm, I think maybe threatened. Dr. DeVries, did you know that he lost his office at Audubon Hospital for being on Primetime?
His name came up in one of my prior discussions. I didn't get the full story on that.
Dr. DeVries is the one that did the Jarvik heart. He was like a little God down here at Audubon Hospital. He was just like, "Dr. Devries." He was like the ultimate. He was very sympathetic to our cause, very supportive, talked to the nurses in the emergency room saying they need the union. A lot of the nurses were close to him. When we were doing this story with Primetime, they asked us on the price sheet that we got, thirty-one pages of what Humana paid for an item and what they charged the patient. Have you heard this story?
No.
Someone brought it to our office. They couldn't get us a list of the people on their unit, but they found this and brought it to us, probably proprietary information but heck, we didn't know any better. So we gave it to somebody with Common Cause. Anyway, it ended up in Washington and it ended up in Primetime's hands. So they asked if they could come down and meet with us and is this true. I said yeah. So they asked if we knew a patient that was going in the hospital that we could verify. For example, IV bottle solution—Kay still has it. You can see for yourself—was like sixty-three cents a liter. They charged the patient seventy some dollars. A foam pillow, it's a triangle about this big. You put it between a patient's legs after hip surgery, five dollars and sixty-five cents. They charged the patient three hundred and sixty-five dollars. And we knew that the patients didn't take them home, so they'd sterilize them and use them again. They had a needle that they used and I think it was outrageous. It was like a hundred dollars they charged for this needle that was used one time in a surgery. It was like twenty-five cents.
So anyway, that's where Dr. DeVries comes in. Primetime came
down and they said, "Do you know anyone that's going
to have surgery that we can look at their bill afterward and see if this
is in fact what's going on?" I said, "My
mom was outpatient for cataracts." So they
I didn't think so.
Wow.
So can you think how they intimidated the nurses? If they're throwing out a top surgeon, I mean he made national headlines, world headlines, is that a little intimidating? They didn't bother the state representative, because they probably wanted to get something passed or not passed in Frankfort, figured he owed them one. But that was quite a story. That was quite a story. And DeVries is a nice man and he's an excellent surgeon.
Do you know where he went?
I think he went to Jewish and I think now he's in some small
town. But he didn't regret it. It's the right
thing to do. They never harangued Vince or messed with him at all. He
was loved. Vince, besides being respected, he was loved by everybody
because he's a very gentle, kind, soft-spoken person. And he
had been there, he did his internship there at St. Joe's and
he had been there for, I think when he retired, he quit doing hospital
about ten years ago and he's been in practice fifty-some
years. There was another story I was going to tell you that
Well, maybe sometime I can come back and hear more stories.
I'll have to write them down. We can wait for dinner. We're not in any hurry, are we?
It will be ready in about seven minutes.
Can we keep it warm for a few more minutes? Yes, you can.
I saw about thirty-three patients today.
I told you you'd see about thirty-seven. That's fine. Do you have any others?
Well, I suppose by way of wrapping up, if the NPO—I know right now you are pretty pessimistic—but if they were able to win an election, if for example the association with the California Nurses really gains ground and helps them out, what would having the right to organize and bargain mean to you? What would that victory mean to you?
Oh, it would just be incredible. I would see it as an extension of the
groundwork that we laid, Carole King laid, and Kay and all the other
nurses that have worked so hard and didn't get the victory. I
think it would be their victory too. It would be their victory. I
wouldn't say I'm pessimistic. I'm not
hopeless either. I want to believe it's going to happen. I
guess I don't want to get my hopes up, but I hope they can do
it. But I would see it as a victory not just for the ones that are
there, but for the ones who have fought.
Who was that?
Ginger Blankenbaker. She was one of the quiet leaders. Some of our leaders are outrageous. I mean, you know they would just say anything to anybody. She was a quiet leader. She organized. She did her job. She believed. She was strong. She had three little boys and she died of glioblastoma. And Kay had cancer. Did you know that?
Yeah.
Ovarian cancer. All through the hearings, she wore a hat or a scarf. She was totally bald, getting chemo and put those hearings together. She's so incredibly strong. And we've had a few other ones die, but I think the victory is for them.
Do you talk with your kids about your work?
They know. My son was at home. My daughter had gone and married. She knew about what I did. But I just helped her with a grievance. She works for the Post Office. My son was very interested, very interested in what I was doing and supportive. My daughter was supportive, but I mean she was starting her life with her children and everything. They knew what I did. And Beau knew it because it he was still at home and he couldn't not know what was going on, because I had papers everywhere and NPO everywhere and meetings, meeting here and meeting there. He was very supportive. He's very socially active. He's a very politically interested, environmentally-conscious type person. My daughter I would say probably is to some degree, but she's so busy with kids right now and working. Then Vince has five children. I think one daughter, Peggy, she knew what I did. The other ones knew somewhat, but I really don't talk about it a lot at home.
What would you most like your kids to remember about your work?
I think that we tried and we took on a huge conglomerate, numerous ones,
and didn't back down. We fought the giants and
didn't give up. Even though we still don't have a
My son had dyslexia and he always had problems at school. Before I got involved with this, I did volunteer tutoring at his school for children with learning disabilities. In fact, one of the girls I tutored in the fifth grade, I tutored all through high school, college, and nursing school. She's now a nurse at Baptist East. Because she's a horrible speller, I typed up all of her papers and stuff. But as a parent, you go into these meetings and a lot of times, you're intimidated. You have all these professionals around and these young folks. And I've just talked to a woman in jury duty about this yesterday. I said, "What I have found out, you take to a meeting—I don't care what meeting it is. If you're going in a meeting and you feel like you're surrounded, take someone. Tell them dress real nice, carry a briefcase and a yellow notepad, and just introduce them by their name. You don't have to make up a name. And it makes everybody think they're a lawyer." And it's the truth.
There was a young black guy I met. He was a junior. I heard that he was
mentally retarded. He was in a mentally retarded class, a class for
educable mentally retarded. So I had an opportunity to meet him and I
was talking to him mom and he comes in. There wasn't anything
mentally retarded, I mean, he was brilliant. He has the most wonderful
vocabulary. They never taught him algebra, never taught him any type of
math other than addition, not even multiplication and division.
He's a junior in high school in this class. So anyway, they
were
All it took was one advocate.
Yeah, and I think it's because one, he was black and poor and he did have learning disabilities. His spelling's not great, but it's gotten a whole lot better. But they expected nothing of him. You've got to go in with knowledge. And I told his mom, I said, "You've got to find out what your rights are, what his rights are, what the laws are." That's what I told this girl. I pulled up last night about ten or twelve pages off the internet about the federal law on education and the rights of parents and children. She thinks her son has autism and the school will not test him. I told her, I said, "You've got to know your rights." I told her, "Take some person." I said, "It can be your mother. Dress her up and put a briefcase on her." I said, "For some reason, a briefcase and a legal notepad, they think, ‘Oh my God, who is this? It's somebody important."’ It could be anybody. We took one of the union guys from the Machinists one time with us. It works every time.
Did it with Vince's daughter. It's so funny, she rented an apartment and she's so neat. She put a damage deposit down of four hundred dollars. When she got ready to leave, he wouldn't give it to her. He said she damaged the apartment and she said, "Where?" It was like the paint had dirt on it or something. Well, in Kentucky, you have to paint the apartment. Every time somebody leaves, you have to paint the apartment anyway. So I told her, I said, "Set up a meeting with him and I'll go with you." Again, I dress up, heels. I don't like to wear heels, but I put them on, just little tiny heels, and a briefcase, and went. Within ten minutes, he was writing her a check for her four hundred and fifty dollar deposit, whatever it was. "Oh, I didn't mean you couldn't have it back. I was just saying we need to go through the apartment," and making all these excuses. But it works every time, every time. You don't have to pretend to be somebody else. Just introduce their name. Just don't say what your profession is.
That's an important lesson in civil rights. I want to let you get to your dinner.
Is there any other question, because we're not in a hurry?
Was there anything you'd wanted to bring up that I haven't asked you?
Like I said, there was something awhile ago. I hope my hand being up here hasn't caused a problem.
I doubt it.
Something I was going to tell you. There's so much. There's just so much, so many wonderful stories. How many hours have you set aside for Kay?
I'm realizing not enough. I'm just talking to her tomorrow morning, but maybe the next time I'm in Louisville, I can schedule another time.
Oh, my gosh. Like where I forget names and dates, she remembers them just
like that. She's incredible. She has dedicated her life to
the union movement and to civil rights and
Kay knows I'm always there if she needs something to work on a case. We're working with some woman down in Florida on a thing with the state government. She called me. I was friends with her when we were little. And supposedly, there's something about the Medicare or how the reimbursement is done in the school system here. A contract was given to someone who was not the lowest bidder and they put a bid in after it was closed and they still got it. Something rotten going on. So I did a letter to the attorney general asking for an investigation. But I still do stuff like that from home and help people with grievances and stuff like that. Kay's one incredible woman. Of all of the people I've met in the union movement, none of them hold a candle to her brilliance, to her enthusiasm, and to her dedication. Dewey Parker comes close. I think he's with the AFL-CIO now. But she's pretty incredible.
Is he a local?
Yeah, Dewey Parker. He's worked a lot with us. Have you talked to Sy Slavin?
Uh uh.
He might be a good one. He was a professor at U of L and he just thinks
NPO hung the moon. He just enjoyed every—. I bought stock in
Humana so I could go to the shareholders' meeting and he went
with us. I've been twice. It was at the time, I
don't know if you remember, it was the Humana Gold, where
they were ripping seniors off in Florida is what they were doing,
talking them out of their Medicare into this Humana Gold. Sun Sentinel down there did a big expose on it and we talked
to them a lot. They called us a lot. We gave them information that we
had. So after that was exposed, this was before the Primetime thing, I
went to the stockholders' meeting and David Jones asked if
any stockholders had any questions. I said, "What's
being done about your all's ripping off seniors in
Florida?"
That probably wasn't the question they were looking for.
He stammered. He stammered. He goes, "Well, now, um, um. I have
a mother that's elderly," and he just went off on
this thing. He was just flabbergasted. Sy got the biggest kick out of
that. I think that was the highlight of his life. He thought that was so
funny. Then two years later, I went to the stockholders'
meeting. It was right after the airing of Primetime. So I'm
getting in the elevator. I'm in the elevator and
I'm with a friend who went with me, because you
can't get into the meeting unless you own stock and I only
had like five or ten shares, but it gets you in the meeting. The doors
open up going up to the meeting room and in walks David Jones. He sees
me and it was too late to back up. He goes, "Um, um. Hi, Gemma.
How's your mother?" Because my mother was the one
that was on Primetime.
Sy, he and John Cumbler both were from U of L and he's been so
supportive. He would come to meetings. Sy, he's probably in
his eighties now. He went to Washington with us. We went to Washington
to the maybe 1990 Solidarity. Oh my God, it was so hot. It was so hot.
We
Well, I appreciate so much your sharing all these memories.
Well, you're welcome. I hope it's not just like a big jumble, because there's so much more. I know I left tons of stuff out.
No, this has been very helpful.
In seventeen years, it's hard to put seventeen years in how many hours.
Sure, right.
Just two and a half hours.
Well, thank you again.
You're welcome. But Kay will be great.
END OF INTERVIEW