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PERKINSON
CSEA INTERVIEW
of
GARY PERKINSON
September 22, 2008
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PERKINSON
THE INTERVIEWER: This is Monday,
the 22nd of September 2008. we're in Washington,
D.C. and we're with Gary Perkinson who had a very
interesting career with CSEA.
Gary, why don't you tell us a little
bit about your background and how it was that you
came to work for CSEA.
MR. PERKINSON: Well, Steve, I was a
veteran of the Korean Conflict and came back and
went to Siena and left -- when I graduated from
Siena in '59 I took a job with the Troy Record
newspapers as a reporter, and then later I was
hired by the Associated Press in the Albany
Bureau. And as I told you earlier, my wife kept
having babies and I couldn't afford them so I had
to get out of the journalism business and into a
real job.
And somebody at the AP Bureau had
been approached by a CSEA rep to come to work
there and she decided she didn't want to make the
move but told me about it and I went and
interviewed with Phil Kirker, the first PR
director as I recall of CSEA, and he hired me as
his assistant and the rest is history.
THE INTERVIEWER: What were some of
the things that you did?
MR. PERKINSON: Well, when I started
I was doing brochures for the county out of --
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well, the first one I ever did was for Irving
Flamingbaum of Long Island, the county --
president of the county chapter of CSEA in Nassau
County, and he wanted some brochures and so Phil
assigned me. That was my job for about three
months, writing brochures for Irv Flamingbaum, a
delightful guy by the way.
And then as Phil was getting up
there and decided to move on and I was named
director of public relations and remained there, I
believe, as I recall, I must have -- six years I
think I worked for CSEA.
THE INTERVIEWER: So this was the
early 1960s.
MR. PERKINSON: Early sixties. I
think I joined in '62, maybe '63.
THE INTERVIEWER: M-m h-m-m.
MR. PERKINSON: And I left -- when I
left there I went to work for the Teachers’
Retirement System.
THE INTERVIEWER: Okay. Can you
tell me, when you went to work for CSEA was CSEA
kind of a well-known quantity for you in the
Capital Region in particular?
MR. PERKINSON: It was getting
there. The State emp...of course, I think the
first members were State members and they were
starting to make noise like a real union would do.
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It was never foreseen in the early days as a
union, nor did they want to be as I recall. It
was an association and good association members
didn't act like union members, but they learned
later that that's what you were supposed to do.
So, yeah, it had a -- it had a good
reputation. It -- they didn't negotiate, of
course, in those days for the State employees. I
recall meeting with Nelson Rockefeller with Joe
Feeley, Joe Lochner, Jack Rice and myself, and
probably Bill Baum, the former research director,
and you would sit down and Rockefeller would treat
you like State employees were treated and you'd
get up and there'd be no commitments to anything
but then you'd go and meet with Al Marshall, who
was the budget director --
THE INTERVIEWER: Sure.
MR. PERKINSON: -- one of the
brightest men I've ever met and a tough
negotiator, but a very fair administrator.
THE INTERVIEWER: H-m-m. what
did --
MALE VOICE: (Inaudible) find a wire
real quick like.
THE INTERVIEWER: Where were the
CSEA offices at that time?
MR. PERKINSON: 8 Elk Street. It
was a build...I don't know who built the building,
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but it had black, shiny material on the front of
it. It was not a very imposing building. The
best part of it was it was right next to The
watering Hole where most of the legislators went
and most of the public employees went on Elk
Street, directly across from the north entrance of
the State Capitol.
THE INTERVIEWER: And what -- how
many staff were there, do you remember? was it a
handful of staff or --
MR. PERKINSON: Well, when I went in
-- went to work there, there were probably 20 to
25. Most of them working on the -- in the mail --
not the mailroom necessarily, but on developing
mailing pieces for the -- to solicit new members
and that type of thing. And Joe Lochner, of
course, is -- he and I discussed this, the
Executive Director, and he was -- he was a heck of
an employee.
He really believed in unionization.
Eventually -- I don't think he lasted until the
unions came in but he treated it like a union and
he expected everybody else to. He was a great
leader, Joe.
THE INTERVIEWER: M-m h-m-m. Now
tell me a little bit about the dynamic in those
days of the role of the executive director versus
the elected president of the union.
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MR. PERKINSON: Well, like most
associations there was always a disagreement on
who was the top boss. Joe used to say that he let
the president think he was the boss because Joe
was actually calling all the shots, which wasn't
actually true. we had some very good presidents
in those days and they understood how to work with
the paid staff. I think back to Joe Feeley and
Ted wenzel -- I'm not sure if I was there for any
other president, but there was a clash at times
and -- but nothing ever serious while I was there.
THE INTERVIEWER: M-m h-m-m. Now
the presidents were not fully-paid staff. They
were just kind of there, elected by the membership
and would spend some time at the association?
MR. PERKINSON: Exactly. They would
not be there full time. They had generous leave
time from their agencies. Joe Feeley worked for
Tax & Finance, and they understood that as
president of the union -- actually the State CSEA
when he first came in -- that he needed time off
and they gave it to him but he worked. He went to
work every day in his State job, within reason, so
it was a -- I mean the employees at Tax were very
proud to have Joe Feeley, a fellow worker, as the
statewide president of the Civil Service Employees
Association.
THE INTERVIEWER: Well, tell me a
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little bit more about him.
MALE VOICE: I'm sorry guys. Sound
Department's gonna stop you again.
THE INTERVIEWER: What kind of
person was he? You know, how did he direct?
MR. PERKINSON: Well, Joe was a big
man, semi-gruff, but he tried to be gruff but he
was a very nice person. He was a graduate of Holy
Cross. Had worked for years in the Tax Department
and was -- learned how to be a politician and ran
for the presidency in the way that they did in
those days, very informally, and loved being the
president of CSEA.
He expanded the Field Department,
the Field representatives; hired a lot of local
guys, as we discussed earlier. Half of them, at
least, came out of Siena College because others
were already at CSEA recommending and it worked
very well, and Joe enjoyed it. I used to call the
Field reps "Feeley's Irish Mafia," so many of them
came out of --
THE INTERVIEWER: M-m h-m-m.
MR. PERKINSON: -- Siena and out of
Troy were Irish.
THE INTERVIEWER: True.
MR. PERKINSON: So it was Joe was
very fair to everybody. A real laid-back guy.
THE INTERVIEWER: And now tell me a
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little bit about Ted wenzel because my
understanding is that Ted wenzel was like a
long-time presence of CSEA before he had -- before
he was actually elected as the president.
MR. PERKINSON: well, he was totally
different from Joe. Ted once told me that his --
one of his first jobs was -- and I'm sure it
was -- was working on the construction of the
George washington Bridge in New York City as a
young man fresh out of college. very proud of
that, talking about putting the casings into the
underwater and how they did it. Ted loved that.
He was a detail man and he was much more reserved
than Joe Feeley. He was not a touchy-feely people
person.
He was a fair boss. He was -- he
loved being president. He was more autocratic, if
you will, than Joe Feeley and he treated it like
the presidency of any other entity, and he
eventually left and -- for the Teachers'
Retirement System. I'm not sure if he came to the
presidency from the Teachers' Retirement System or
from the Education Department, but that was his
thing, education, and he was up there as the
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assistant executive director of the Teachers'
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Retirement System and kept his hand in CSEA and
then I think he lost the presidency, or his run to
be re-elected as I recall --
THE INTERVIEWER: In the mid-
seventies.
MR. PERKINSON: In the mid-
seventies, right. And that bothered him a lot, I
know that but, you know, he was a good president.
He expanded the membership rolls like he was
supposed to do.
THE INTERVIEWER: Tell me a little
bit about the dynamics of the organization. I
mean there was -- obviously it was a membership-
driven organization. what kind of -- I mean I
assume there was kind of like an annual meeting,
because we're having our 90th -- 98th --
MR. PERKINSON: Yes, there sure was.
THE INTERVIEWER: -- annual
delegates meeting.
MR. PERKINSON: Right.
THE INTERVIEWER: Was that the main
event of the year or was there --
MR. PERKINSON: Oh, Lord, yes.
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THE INTERVIEWER: -- events
throughout the year?
MR. PERKINSON: Yeah, but there were
meetings, events, especially as the local
government side of CSEA began to expand, and when
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people like Irving Flamingbaum from Nassau County
and the rest of the county people, strong leaders,
and they wanted to be treated just like the
members of the board who were State employees.
People like Sol Bendet for the insurance company,
one of the toughest leaders anybody ever met, and
he was -- he demanded that they be treated the
same as the Albany employees of the State and of
the Association. He used to think that Joe Feeley
was loading up a little bit too much on locals,
but Sol was a great member of the board and he was
smart and he was tough. He did a lot for CSEA.
THE INTERVIEWER: And the board
would meet regularly and established the policy
direction?
MR. PERKINSON: Oh, absolutely, and
they would fight with Joe Lochner, as you and I
discussed, was really the -- he was the second
official executive secretary or whatever we called
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it at the time, after a gentleman, Earl Kelly, who
was the head of the Classification Department of
whatever State agency that was done for State
employees, and as you and I discussed, Joe
succeeded Earl after a tug-of-war between the two
of ‘em who was gonna be the paid -- the lead paid
staff guy. Joe Lochner won that battle.
THE INTERVIEWER: Tell us that
story. Was, as you've heard it --
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MR. PERKINSON: I heard it directly
from Joe Lochner. Earl -- Joe was in the -- the
both of them had been in the Army during world war
II. Joe got out earlier than Earl did and Joe had
worked for CSEA before he went in as an -- and
Earl had seen himself as the executive director.
whether or not he was, in fact, was apparently a
debate among several people.
But he came back and Joe was in his
off...the executive director's office, and Earl
came back and the evening he was first there he
moved Joe -- Joe's stuff out and Earl sat at the
executive director's desk, daring Joe in a way to
say something and Joe didn't say a word. He just
came back that next night himself and moved
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everything of Joe's out and upstairs and sat there
and Earl walked in and looked at him, shrugged his
shoulders and walked away and that's how Joe
became the executive director of CSEA and he was a
great executive director. Tough as nails and
brooked no interference from anybody, but treated
the employees very well.
THE INTERVIEWER: Okay. Now there
was another power center in the organization at
that time, too, that we haven't talked about yet
and that would be the General Counsel, so to
speak, the --
MR. PERKINSON: Exactly.
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THE INTERVIEWER: -- the attorney
representing -- and that seems to have been almost
a direct line of succession --
MR. PERKINSON: It was, very
definitely.
THE INTERVIEWER: -- to the law firm
of DeGraff Foy.
MR. PERKINSON: DeGraff, Foy, Conway
& Holt-Harris. And I'm sure John DeGraff was the
original Of Counsel to CSEA, assigned from the law
firm, and he was succeeded by -- I mean George Foy
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had a lot to do with it. George Foy was the -- if
not officially, he was the lead counsel for
DeGraff, Foy, a very tough guy, and did all the
negotiating with the Legislature for CSEA when --
and then Harry Albright, Jr., whose father was
president of a leading Albany bank, was assigned
to succeed John DeGraff as the formal Counsel.
And Harry was a totally different --
Harry worked behind the scenes. He -- a very
quiet, self- effacing, got the job done very well,
and then he broke in Jack Rice, John Carter Rice,
as the Counsel and Jack was a totally different
personality, who did a wonderful job. He led the
negotiations with George Foy and the CSEA and its
members did wonderfully, in my opinion, when they
were running it and it -- I had left by the time
Jack Rice stepped down and I don't know who
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succeeded Jack but, yeah, that law firm was very
instrumental.
Harry Albright -- as a matter of
fact, he left to become Superintendent of Banking
under Nelson Rockefeller, so that was a -- that's
the kind of influence the CSEA had.
THE INTERVIEWER: People talk a lot
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about the political strength that the organization
had back in those days in kind of an informal way.
For example, they didn't do actual endorsements of
candidates --
MR. PERKINSON: No.
THE INTERVIEWER: -- but there was a
lot of involvement in the political process. what
do you remember about how all of that worked?
MR. PERKINSON: well, just as you
said, there was a lot of back-room stuff going on
and the candidates -- not local candidates,
statewide candidates -- would play up, if you
will, to our elected officers. Joe Feeley loved
politics and a lot of candidates understood that
Joe liked it and they played to that part of Joe
in the best possible way. I'm not suggesting that
anything other than a politician getting an
influential member of the community and his group,
whatever it was, and that's what they did. They
would come after our officers, the statewide
candidates, and they'd meet with certain ones and
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ask for, if not an endorsement because we didn't
endorse in those days, I assume they still don't,
at least some background pressure, and it worked
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and a lot of people got a lot of votes out of CSEA
because -- and it was tit for tat. Wwe support
you; we hope you support us.
THE INTERVIEWER: And there was, of
course, always every year legislation that would
be advanced --
MR. PERKINSON: Oh --
THE INTERVIEWER: -- for the most
part addressing the terms and conditions of
employment through the legislative process or
through Civil Service reform and I would assume
that the Board had a very direct role in helping
to move a lot of that along.
MR. PERKINSON: Oh, no doubt about
it. As we discussed, particularly you take Nelson
Rockefeller. He would not negotiate. You didn't
negotiate for your salaries on the State level in
those days. They had no part of that, but he
would meet with the leadership of CSEA and he
would play up to everybody and then escort you
out.
And Al Marshall, one of -- his
budget director and a very, very bright, tough,
amiable guy, he was the contact in those days, and
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they would negotiate with Al and it wasn't a
formal negotiation. we'd sit down with the budget
director and his staff and try to work out
particulars and obviously the salaries and the
fringe benefits, and then on the State -- on the
local level we'd meet with the top people in the
big -- particularly the big agencies.
I mean we had -- of course we had
officers from the Motor Vehicle Department,
Taxation & Finance and all the name agencies, and
we would go in and meet with them on employee
matters. Of course, they were employees too, so
they didn't mind that too much.
(Laughter.)
THE INTERVIEWER: One of the things
that I think is almost a, you know, misunderstood
part of CSEA's history is how important the
organization's insurance program was in the growth
of the organization in terms of signing up new
members and the offers for the insurance and the
savings that you would get that usually offset the
cost of the dues.
what do you remember about how that
program worked?
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MR. PERKINSON: well, it worked just
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about as you say. There was a -- I thought it was
a good benefit. They had a lot to say within CSEA
because they were taking a lot of money out of the
employees to pay for the insurance benefits, and
it's -- again it was you rub my back, I'll rub
your back, in the best sense of that, and it's --
I belong to the American Legion and I kid with my
wife all the time: Is this an insurance company
that I belong to or is this -- is this somebody
who represents veterans?
It's a big part of any organization
and it pays the way and they sell it and we sold
it that the more the insurance benefit permeates
the membership, the less the members are gonna
have to pay in dues or in other costs. And again,
that's common sense, but they had good programs in
those days, as far as I was concerned.
THE INTERVIEWER: Now, tell mea
little more about the communication operation
because I know that there was a relationship back
at that time with the Civil Service Leader and
that that was the official publication. How did
that relationship work and how effective was that
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vehicle for communicating with the membership?
MR. PERKINSON: Well, it depends on
who you talk to how effective it was. It predated
me and it was a -- I almost said an incestuous
relationship, but I shouldn't use that term. It
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was a close relationship that had been sold to the
original -- some of the original officers of CSEA
and it wasn't really, in my opinion, a good deal
because we paid too much for it and got too little
back. It was not only every member got the Civil
Service Leader and -- but it was also sold to
other membership groups in the New York City area
in particular, and a lot of the ad revenue went to
the New York City part -- or to the owner of the
Civil Service Leader, and I don't even know when
they ended the relationship. It was after I left,
but there was -- there were a lot of things
brewing then and a lot of members Upstate didn't
think that it was worth what everybody was paying,
quite frankly.
THE INTERVIEWER: M-m h-m-m. It was
actually 1978 when they ended --
MR. PERKINSON: Oh, it was that
late.
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THE INTERVIEWER: -- and we began
publishing our own --
MR. PERKINSON: Yeah.
THE INTERVIEWER: -- publication,
but how did it actually work. Did they -- would
they send out reporters to cover the stories or
did they have people assigned to it?
MR. PERKINSON: Oh, no. There were
no reporters, so to speak. There was an editor.
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His name was Paul and, quite frankly, I can't
remember his last name; a very nice guy and a good
salesman, good PR person, and he would wine and
dine as much as he could the leadership of the
CSEA, including the public relations director, and
he would do 95 percent of all their reporting that
was done and he would get material from us in the
Public Relations Office and we would inundate him
with material that we wanted in.
we would not always necessarily get
it because they had a bigger, more influential
group of New York City employees who were always
also in the same editions that went out. They
would -- as I recall, they changed the front page
for the Upstate State employee editions, and
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everybody got a copy of the Civil Service Leader
as I believe every Thursday. But then people from
out -- from the membership complained bitterly
that it wasn't worth what we were payin' and we
were payin' a lot.
Jerry Finklestein was the publisher
and you never saw Jerry ‘cause he had a lot of
things going in New York City, a lot. I mean he
was an entrepreneur of the -- like the highest
kind, but Paul, whose last name escapes me, he did
everything. He was the business person, he was
the cameraman, he was the reporter. They didn't
have a big staff. They got paid like they had a
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big staff, but they had about two people as I
recall.
THE INTERVIEWER: M-m- h-m-m. what
were some of the other vehicles that you had for
communicating with the members directly?
MR. PERKINSON: Well, it was mainly
newsletters and speechifying, if you will, out in
the -- I mean I spent a lot of time around this
state of New York speaking to chambers of commerce
and other local groups. I went every place and it
would pay off because I also was part of the
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lobbying operation for CSEA and, as you know, I'm
sure, you meet these people, these politicians
back on their home ground and then when they see
you in Albany they kind of think that you're from
back home, or at least they met you back home.
And it was a -- and we would meet
with local newspapers. Their people would get us
introductions and we used -- at that time I think
we had 2000 small members in Upstate New York,
clothing stores and drugstores and things like
that, and then we had the State employees. These
were -- I'm talking county employees for the small
members Upstate, and they knew everybody.
THE INTERVIEWER: M-m h-m-m.
MR. PERKINSON: And you'd go out and
they'd arrange for you to speak to the Chamber of
Commerce and they'd have their Legislative
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representatives there and it -- I and two of the
people who worked for me spent a lot of our time
just goin' around the state speakin' to groups
along with legislators and it was -- and it
worked. It was a really good way to meet your
people who determined your future.
THE INTERVIEWER: M-m h-m-m. One of
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the things as I've looked through the history of
CSEA and looked through the newspapers and the
different materials, it seems like very early on
there was a real public relations mindset, kind of
an understanding that a lot of the organization's
ability to leverage action dealt with trying to
move public opinion and have greater understanding
about what our interests were really all about.
Where did that come from?
MR. PERKINSON: well, I think it
came, number one, from a recognition that we in
some instances weren't doing too well for our
members and that we had to get out and we had to
reach out to the publics that work on influence
and I spent all my time, most of my time, trying
to get our members to get involved locally with
the politicians in our area and with the
administrators and the press in their area, anda
lot of our members did a great job. They were
naturals. It was their life, and particularly on
the local level.
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On the State level is the Albany
people and the people like Joe Feeley who were
wonderful because they were articulate and they
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believed in what they were doing and they were
good public employees and they spent a lot of time
meeting with not only the statewide reps in Albany
but the local people because that was -- Mayor
Erastus Corning, the man with the longest tenure
of any mayor in the history of big cities or large
cities in the United States, was a personal friend
of Joe Feeley's and they'd have lunch many days in
the Fort Orange Club and, I tell ya, CSEA could
get practically anything within reason they needed
or wanted in the city level because of
relationships like that.
THE INTERVIEWER: H-m-m. You must
have been at CSEA during the time when they were
starting to move towards the Taylor Law and full
collective bargaining rights.
MR. PERKINSON: I certainly was.
THE INTERVIEWER: what do you
remember about those times and the movement in
that direction?
MR. PERKINSON: well, only that the
time had come where that relationship had to be
formalized. You couldn't keep -- continue to meet
with your hand out, so to speak, and that's how it
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was, and a lot of the leaders so-called on the
State side, for example, would treat you like, you
know, here they come in with their hand out.
we'll give them something and then that's
exactly -- that's why you needed -- most of us
came on to the Taylor Law and other advances in
formal collective bargaining long before some of
the members did. I mean we just -- you just
couldn't continue the way we were going and it was
a lot of infighting in that.
A lot of people wanted that. oh,
they liked that old relationship. Gee, the
Governor knows my first name. well, that didn't
mean anything. It didn't get you any fringe
benefits or any salary increases, so I think --
Joe Lochner, very strong on going for a formal
type relationship, but State employees and county
and county groups, and I think the paid staff was
there before the membership was.
THE INTERVIEWER: Um, there was --
certainly CSEA was an independent organization at
that time. It was not part of the AFL-CIO. Do
you remember anything about the relationship with
the AFL-CIO unions?
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MR. PERKINSON: There wasn't much of
a relationship. I mean there were no meetings
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between the two. There was -- who was the first
AFSCME, the tough AFSCME --
THE INTERVIEWER: Jerry Wirth.
MR. PERKINSON: Jerry wirth held
tremendous influence for public employees, I mean
a tough, smart, intellectual. I don't know if you
know him, if you ever met him. He was what I
always thought was the prototype for the head of
the union, head of a big union like ours. But
they -- there was never any big move to bring the
two groups together. Certainly our -- the AFC --
the CSEA wasn't ready to join something like the
AFSC -- or ASC --
THE INTERVIEWER: AFSCME.
MR. PERKINSON: -- AFSCME. Because
they were, you know, they had a wonderful
relation...life. They were treated like
celebrities by the State -- head of State
Departments, other politicians, and they thrived
on that. Not that they weren't -- they were good
negotiators but they loved the attention they got.
AFSCME on the other hand wanted -- they wanted
27
formal relations with whoever they were
negotiating with and they wanted to do it the way
a union did it and they were bumping their heads
for the years I was there about whether or not
these two groups could ever get together.
THE INTERVIEWER: H-m-m. Certainly,
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especially in the early years, CSEA was a very
male-dominated organization. Do you -- what do
you remember about the role of women at that time
and how was that changing?
MR. PERKINSON: Well, you're right.
It was male-dominated, but then women started to
get elected, as I recall, out in -- well,
certainly in the State agencies, within the
agencies themselves. The CSEA played a big role,
a big social role, if not necessarily in a
business role, but a big social role, and we had
-- we always had three, four, five women, maybe
two, three or four women on the board, but
certainly it was dominated by males, no doubt
about that.
THE INTERVIEWER: You know, I don't
know whether you have any recollection of this at
all, but there was one woman in the history of
28
CSEA, Beulah Bailey Thol (phonetic) in the 1930s.
Do you remember her being around at all --
MR. PERKINSON: No, I wasn't --
THE INTERVIEWER: -- in the sixties?
MR. PERKINSON: I was just a child
then.
(Laughter .)
MR. PERKINSON: No, I remember
hearing about her, yeah. I'ma little older than
you guys but I'm not that old.
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THE INTERVIEWER: Because there's a
story that she apparently was at the cornerstone
laying when they were building 33 Elk. I was
curious if you had ever met her, you know, an
event like that.
MR. PERKINSON: No, I heard about
her all the time but I don't think I ever met her,
but she was certainly a famous person in the
movement, if you will, but Joe Lochner'd never let
her in the door because she would have taken his
job.
THE INTERVIEWER: M-m h-m-m. Tell
me a little bit more about the dynamic among the
staff. what was the, you know, the interaction
29
between folks and were they mostly based out of
Albany?
MR. PERKINSON: Mostly based out of
Albany because we didn't have that big a staff.
You know, we had the director of research,
director of public relations, the executive
director, the assistant executive director, one
Henry Galpin, who may not have been there when you
were there, and then we had assigned counsel from
DeGraff, Conway & Holt-Harris, so it was a small
group of people trying to run them and, I tell
you, Joe Lochner brooked no interference. You
were a top-notch executive as long as you agreed
with Joe. The moment you didn't, then you had a
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problem.
I mean Joe was tough. He -- but he
was fair and he let you do your own thing. I mean
nobody -- he never interfered in the public
relations side of it, but he'd insist on seeing
news releases, for example, because he was
responsible for it, for that kind of thing, but
there was just a small group, and people like Joe
Feeley deferred to that small group for the
minutiae, for the detail stuff.
30
Everybody got along pretty well. I
don't remember any clashes while I was there, any
major clashes. As long as you did what Joe said,
then he cut you a lot of room. No, he was a tough
boss.
THE INTERVIEWER: CSEA is closing in
on its hundredth anniversary. I mean you
certainly were there for a portion of the time and
had a chance to see the organization from a
distance in subsequent years.
why do you think this organization
has been able to survive that long?
MR. PERKINSON: Because it's been
well-run and because they knew what they wanted.
In the early days they really didn't know how to
get there, so they invented a way to get there and
they knew that they were dealing with politicians
on behalf of employees who didn't get much in the
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early days.
I mean retirement was the big thing.
Other things, the benefits came along. Salaries
always lagged, but then they began to understand.
If they couldn't have formal negotiations, they
were gonna have informal and they were gonna get
31
this done and they did.
So I think in the early days, the
people who were there in the early days, made the
organization what it is today.
THE INTERVIEWER: M-m h-m-m.
Anything that I haven't touched on that you think
is particularly important, looking back? Anything
coming back?
MR. PERKINSON: Well, not that I can
think of. You know, a couple of --
THE INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
MR. PERKINSON: -- thinking I was
there a hundred years ago.
THE INTERVIEWER: You started to say
that there were a couple of things that --
MR. PERKINSON: No, I was kidding
about what you said about how long ago I was there
and how old I am today.
No, I loved working there, but I
made a career decision to move on and move on I
did, and actually went to work with Ted wenzel at
the Teachers' Retirement System.
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THE INTERVIEWER: H-m-m.
MR. PERKINSON: And was a member of
32
THE INTERVIEWER: Very interesting.
Any other personalities that we
didn't touch on that you know, real characters?
Obviously we've been populated by characters over
the decades.
mind?
Is there anybody else that comes to
MR. PERKINSON: No, you know, not
offhand. Irv Flamingbaum was a great character
out of Nassau County, and Sol Bendet of the State
Insurance Department in New York City. Tough,
tough guy.
Lochners of
Wenzel in hi
sense.
run an outfi
great.
Perkinson.)
Good guy, fair guy. And then the
this world and the Feeleys and Ted
s way. All characters in the best
THE INTERVIEWER: M-m h-m-m.
MR. PERKINSON: You had to be, to
t that big and still keep your job.
THE INTERVIEWER: All right. That's
MALE VOICE: And we're stopped.
(Conclusion of interview of Gary
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