Gruff Voice for Workers Dies;

Key Figure at DC 37, Local 237
Gruff Voice for Workers Dies


Bert Rose, a veteran union organizer who helped build District Council 37 and Teamsters Local 237 into municipal powerhouses, died Feb. 20 at age 85.

1981 photo 'HE CAME STRAIGHT AT YOU': Bert Rose, who played key roles in the development of both District Council 37 and Teamsters Local 237, was described by one former colleague as 'a good trade-unionist and a very nice guy. There was no guile about him; he always came straight at you.' Six weeks earlier, he suffered a stroke in his Sheepshead Bay apartment that left him partially paralyzed, his stepson, Arthur Zamansky, said last week. After being treated at Coney Island Hospital, he was transferred to the Workmen's Circle Multi-Care Center in The Bronx at his request. During his stay there, he contracted pneumonia and was taken to Jacobi Hospital, where he passed away.

A Unique Style

Born in East Harlem, raised in The Bronx and a resident of Brooklyn for most of his adult life, Mr. Rose was among the last of the breed of New York union organizers raised during the Great Depression who combined socialist ideals with street toughness to form a unique brand of trade-unionism.

"Bert was one of a very few people who was a consummate professional at both the bargaining table and in the grievance procedures," said former Teamsters Local 237 President Barry Feinstein, who utilized Mr. Rose in both roles as his director of organizing from 1967 to the end of 1982.

"He also," Mr. Feinstein said, "had a wonderful gift of being able to speak in a way that rank-and-file members understood, and that gave them confidence that he and the union could get things done for them. That made him extremely valuable as an organizer and a union representative."

A Blue-Collar Hero

"He was one of the early builders of DC 37 and AFSCME," recalled Alan R. Viani, who was DC 37's chief negotiator for much of the period that Mr. Rose performed that role at Local 237. "The blue-collar types loved him."

A big part of the reason for that was the persona of what Mr. Viani called "a garrulous, archetypal Teamster [who] was a real softie inside who always tried to do the right thing. He was a good trade-unionist and a very nice guy. There was no guile about him; he always came straight at you."

BARRY FEINSTEIN: 'Spoke like members.' Some of the bluster was born of necessity, Mr. Rose acknowledged during a 1981 interview, saying, "You had to scream and holler for everything you wanted 25 years ago. I used to try to make up in volume what I lacked in rights."

It was a role he comfortably fit into. It might be said that he was bred for union work: his mother was an organizer for the old International Ladies' Garment Workers Union and his father was a Teamster activist. Bert began organizing for the ILGWU at age 15 while attending James Monroe High School, and later spent two years at St. John's University. He left in 1941 to enter the Air Force, where "mostly I was in trouble" over the next five years while seeing action during World War II.

A Wary Eye for Cops

When he returned from the war, he resumed organizing work on behalf of the Dress Joint Board of the ILGWU. Despite the gains made by organized labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, unions were still regarded suspiciously in some quarters of New York, Mr. Rose would later recall. Some cops got pleasure out of throwing organizers down subway stairs; as a deterrent against such treatment, he visibly carried a vial of what he hoped would be mistaken for a sinister liquid but was actually water.

As a teenager, he had been active in the Young People's Socialist League, bringing him into contact with a slightly older Yipsil named Jerry Wurf, who following the war made a name for himself as the head of DC 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. In 1951 Mr. Rose sought out his old comrade and was given a job as an organizer for AFSCME's state chapter, reporting to Mr. Wurf's brother, Al. In addition, he took on numerous DC 37 grievance and arbitration cases, where he put his yelling skills to good use.

Clashes With Moses

ALAN R. VIANI: 'An early builder of DC 37.' Mr. Rose frequently handled Parks Department cases, which brought him into contact with Robert Moses, the legendary Parks Commissioner who also found time to serve as City Construction Coordinator and Chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, the State Power Authority, and the State Parks Council. On one occasion Jerry Wurf, frustrated by the imperious Mr. Moses' refusal to give his members a pay raise, had parks workers bring a tiger cage to City Hall, with one staffer filling in for the tiger, to protest the way they were treated.

After Mr. Moses' initial fury at the publicity stunt subsided, Mr. Rose recalled, a deal was worked out and the Parks Commissioner called then-Mayor Robert F. Wagner to inform him of its terms. Mr. Wagner apparently objected, Mr. Rose said, because Mr. Moses' face grew stern and he shouted into the phone, "Whaddaya mean, you can't do it? I gave my word - now you make it good!"

Grew Under Wagner

In 1958, Mr. Wurf made Mr. Rose the director of DC 37's Blue-Collar Division. The union had continued to increase its membership size, and Mr. Wurf played a major role in convincing Mayor Wagner - whose father as a U.S. Senator had authored ground-breaking labor legislation during the 1930s - to grant city workers full collective-bargaining rights.

But when Mr. Wurf imported Victor Gotbaum from AFSCME's Chicago district council to succeed him in 1964 so that he could run the national union, Mr. Rose quickly decided he would not be comfortable toiling for Mr. Gotbaum. He worked for AFSCME in Long Island and then Syracuse, but the time away from his family wore on him, and so in mid-1966 he returned to the city to work for Service Employees International Union Local 144. By the end of the year, he had agreed to be Mr. Feinstein's top lieutenant at Local 237.

'Rocky Swiped Our Votes'

As public-employee strikes became increasingly common, then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller sought a deterrent with more impact than the existing Condon-Wadlin Act, which because it mandated the firing of all strikers was an impractical tool for management. A state panel produced an alternative series of penalties that included the loss of the dues-checkoff privileges that unions here had recently been granted, as well as heavy union fines and the deduction from workers' checks of two days' pay for each day on strike. Despite stiff labor opposition, Mr. Rockefeller pushed through the Legislature what became known as the Taylor Law, Mr. Rose later recalled, because "he got the votes we thought we had." The effectiveness of the new law in punishing strikes tilted the negotiating table against the unions by taking away their prime means of pressuring management, Mr. Rose argued. "I don't believe public employees will be able to bargain equally until they are given the right to strike like everybody else," he said in that 1981 interview.

Signed Up City Lawyers

Nonetheless, he persevered on behalf of his members and made some concrete gains. He won the right for Local 237 members to skip a step in the city disciplinary process and go directly to the Office of Collective Bargaining with their appeals if they faced suspensions of 30 days or more. He also persuaded city lawyers who were eligible for union representation to affiliate with Local 237 as the Civil Service Bar Association. The contest involved four other unions, and Mr. Rose spoke with fond recollection of how "people told me you'll never get attorneys to go Teamster."

He prevailed in that battle, said civil service attorney Stuart Salles, a longtime friend, because of "his sage wisdom. He was a great resource for learning and knowing the whole area of trade-unionism."

Which is not to say that Mr. Rose was academically inclined, although he taught labor courses at Rutgers. He had a fondness for rough characters, ranging from the old Seafarers' union boss Paul Hall - whom Mr. Rose described as the genuine article among trade-union leaders: Jimmy Hoffa without the mob associations - to some of the organized-crime figures who crossed his path, including Carlo Gambino, who lived down the block on Ocean Parkway.

Pragmatic Idealist

He looked at his job and life in general with practicality, but he continued to write-in the old socialist luminary Norman Thomas's name for President because of his dissatisfaction with the major-party candidates. He might have seemed like the prototypical reader of the Daily News or the Post, but he shunned both for what he considered phony populism that ended on their editorial pages; the Times was his newspaper of choice.

And for all his gregariousness, he seemed a bit lost after the death of his wife, Hazel, less than two years ago, a perfect companion whom he once cited as "giving me sympathy when I needed it and aggravation when I didn't."

Survived by his two children and four grandchildren, he was buried alongside his wife and their parents in Sharon Gardens in upstate Valhalla.

Paul Juergensen, the director of the Local 237 welfare fund, who came to the union a couple of years before Mr. Rose retired, said, "He'll be terribly missed by everyone. He was always a gentleman and treated everyone fairly."