LOCHNER
CSEA HISTORY PROJECT
BILL LOCHNER INTERVIEW
March 1, 2007
MR. MADARASZ: Okay. This is March
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the 1st, 2007. we're in Albany, New York and
we're speaking with Bill Lochner who is a
longtime employee of CSEA, recently retired.
He's also the son of Joe Lochner, who was CSEA'S
first employee and longtime executive director
of the Association so --
MR. LOCHNER: Glad to be hear, Steve.
MR. MADARASZ: Thank you, Bill.
Let me ask you this: Obviously you
have a long family affiliation with CSEA.
MR. LOCHNER: Indeed.
MR. MADARASZ: When did you remember
first being aware of the Association and your
father's role in it?
MR. LOCHNER: It's rather vivid. In
my memory are location at 8 Elk Street and in a
way the organization was a baby-sitter for me
because every member of my family was recruited
to work for CSEA when crisis time developed and
that was typically twice a year when we did
mailings to the membership and my father
insisted that my mother, my two older sisters
were required, mandated, to come in and operate
the key punch machines so that we could get the
huge mailings done, so my younger brother and I
naturally had to come along for the ride.
And what I remember most was the
manipulation of the elevator. I'll never forget
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that. For any child that was amazing to push
buttons and go up and down and it had one of
those pull-across glass dividers that, you know,
made it official. I'll never forget that.
Our location at 8 Elk Street was next
door to the Society for the Propagation of the
Faith and call my sense of humor quirky but it's
indelibly etched in my mind that CSEA's
headquarters was right next door to the Society
for the Propagation of the Faith and I thought
that that was quite apropos.
So from my earliest memories, Pat
Demurio, so many of the icons of early CSEA,
were a very small group, very closely knit and
it was very top down in management. My father
ruled the roost and that's just the way it went
for many, many years.
MR. MADARASZ: Good. Tell us about
how --
(Inaudible conversations.)
MR. MADARASZ: Tell me about how your
father first came to work for the CSEA and what
were those circumstances.
MR. LOCHNER: To the best of my
recollection, Steve, my father graduated from
Christian Brothers Academy in 1930 and it's
significant in that he's from the South End,
which was a cultural melting pot and where the
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South Mall -- at least we called it the South
Mall when it was built, now the Empire Plaza --
had a -- the South End originally housed many
immigrant groups.
My grandparents were immigrants from
Germany and they didn't have much and the fact
that my father went to Christian Brothers
Academy was a serious deal because it required a
real strain on the resources of the family to
send him there and it left an indelible
impression upon him.
So they didn't have the resources for
him to further his education and it was in the
depths of the Depression and the organization
hired him, I believe, in 1930, not much out of
high school, as the first employee of the
organization and it was one of those magic type
of scenarios where I think he was born and
destined to have that job and once he sunk his
teeth into it, growing the organization was his
mission.
And that never ended up until the time
that he left service as the executive director
and certainly beyond. CSEA was in his blood
from 1930 until the day he died.
MR. MADARASZ: Do you know who
actually hired him?
MR. LOCHNER: Yes. I believe it was
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Mr. McDonough, who was the president at the time
and they had a strong bonding and from what I
recollect they had a tiny cubbyhole in the State
Capitol that they operated out of and over
decades they slowly but surely gained stature as
a lobbying group for public employees,
proselytizing for public employees and trying to
make their terms and conditions of employment
improve but because we didn't have recognition
as a bargaining agent this was all done through
political channels, as I recollect.
MR. MADARASZ: What kind of stories
did your father tell you about those early days
and how the organization really --
MR. LOCHNER: Well, I guess he
recognized early on that I was the responsible
party within the family to answer the phone and
it was a party line, in fact, at the time and
the phone never stopped ringing at my house and
I was officially designated to be my father's
personal assistant since my sisters wanted
nothing to do with it and neither did my mother,
being a CSEA widow at the time, because my
father was married actually to CSEA as much as
he was to his wife.
I handled a lot of the home telephone
messages and assured people as sincerely as I
could that my father would return the phone
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calls (laughter) and that they had, in fact,
contacted Joe Lochner's residence but he wasn't
available at that time.
And Sol Bendet, I will never forget as
-- I mean I'm a youngster, you know, maybe nine
or ten years old taking messages for my father
and I would get phone messages from Sol Bendet
from the City and he was notorious as a ball-
buster and that's the only term I can think of
and I would have to appease Mr. Bendet who just
would not get off the line and would rant and
rave about how CSEA had to do this and CSEA had
to do that and so from my earliest memories I
recall being the individual responsible for
taking my father's messages and making sure that
he returned his phone calls.
Aside from that, it's so clear in my
memory that when my father closed the door in
his bedroom he was not to be interrupted and
make sure you get the context of this. He had a
card table set up in his bedroom and stacks of
paperwork and it was really fascinating to me,
not because of the content of the paperwork but
because he had this machine that had a big
microphone and it made wax disks and I think it
was a dictaphone, some type of early dictaphone,
and he would spend countless hours every weekend
in his bedroom with the door shut and with
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instructions not to interrupt him and he would
go through stacks of paperwork and dictate so
that on Monday when he went in to the office he
could, you know, give that to his secretaries
and, you know, they could get the word out,
whatever the oracle from Albany said.
And that was pretty much the way it
was. Very top down. He ran the organization
and there was -- nobody could question it.
MR. MADARASZ: M-m-m. Tell me a
little bit more about his style and personality
because I know as I looked through documents
that he prepared it certainly looks like he was
very organized.
MR. LOCHNER: Extremely organized, and
I would say that my brother, the CPA, more
follows those facets of my father's personality
and I do not. what was interesting is that I
definitely feel that my father's sense of humor
is something that left a profound impression on
me and also his remarkable communication skills
and facility for getting people to work together
and when they failed to work together he would
yell, scream and pull his hair out and then
apologize so, I mean, he had a volatile temper.
He would scream and yell a lot but the
individuals that I came to know within the
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organization absolutely loved him.
The loyalty was just unbelievable
because at the end of the day they knew that he
was a perfectionist and that he wanted to
fulfill the vision of this organization and that
we all played a part in it and that created that
community of interest that we all shared. You
know, it was a very, very small organization
that I knew as a child growing up.
we had not gone through the explosion
of growth that pretty much coincided with the
Taylor Law's conception in '67.
MR. MADARASZ: So in those days there
were very few employees --
MR. LOCHNER: Very few employees.
MR. MADARASZ: -- and you're saying
recruiting --
MR. LOCHNER: Recruiting the family to
do the mailings was pretty standard operating
procedure. Everybody was on a first-name basis
and there were picnics; not the spectacles that
we have today. we don't have enough of a wide
angle lens to get everybody in the picture.
But, yes, I vividly recall get-togethers with
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the family of CSEA during the summer and a very
close-knit organization.
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MR. MADARASZ: Now, if your father
started in 1930 and was here well into the
1970s --
MR. LOCHNER: Right.
MR. MADARASZ: -- he really presided
over some enormous growth in the organization --
MR. LOCHNER: Yep.
MR. MADARASZ: -- in every conceivable
way, not only in actual membership but just even
in technological change and operating
circumstances.
MR. LOCHNER: Right. No question
about it.
MR. MADARASZ: How did you see him
moving through those transitions?
MR. LOCHNER: Well, I really believe
that his motivation was providing value to the
membership and giving them some sense that there
was, again, that community of interest that they
shared as public employees. I mean that really
is the baseline and since we couldn't bargain
collectively and were lobbying for the best
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interests of public employees pre-Taylor Law,
then the value of CSEA membership was
synonymous, I think, with member benefits.
It had -- you know, that linkage was
key and that resulted in the development of our
group life insurance programs which to this day
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are an extremely valued benefit by the
membership and a host of other benefits that
flowed from that. Supplemental life, accidental
health and, let's see, we had automobile
insurance. I mean we had the gamut of it and
primarily offered through TerBush & Powell,
which was our insurance organization out of
Schenectady and underwritten by Travelers.
And I just remember that because it
was so imperative in my father's mind that we
offer something of value to the membership at
the lowest possible cost and the best possible
value and it seemed like the insurance programs
were the ticket and he was the driving force for
that.
MR. MADARASZ: How -- did you know how
they went out and sold it?
MR. LOCHNER: Yeah, I do, (laughter)
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because in 1973 after I graduated from SUNY at
Albany the -- I was an educator and that was my
training and I really believed that I would go
on to a successful career in education as -- I
had the inspiration from my older sisters who
became educators and when I graduated after my
student teaching I realized that, yeah, teaching
was interesting, but there was an awful lot of
action within CSEA.
And I heard about it every day. I
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mean you couldn't sit down at the kitchen table
without my father launching into, you know, a
dissertation about what had gone on that day and
he definitely monopolized the conversation, as
you can well imagine. He was quite a talker and
I was successful in getting an appointment to
work on the CSEA insurance programs in September
of 1973, shortly after I graduated from SUNY,
and it was a phenomenal opportunity to learn
from the ground up the structure of the benefits
that CSEA provides to the membership.
And it kind of was a litmus test for
me. Did I like working with the membership?
could I articulate what the benefits were and
13
explain them in a way that was meaningful to the
employees? And it set the stage for appointment
to a labor relations specialist -- actually an
organizer position when the regions were created
in 1975, so that was a -- just a tremendous
opportunity to get firsthand knowledge of how
benefits worked, how they were underwritten,
what employee eligibility criteria were and one
of the main hooks that CSEA used was if you sign
up within your first "X" number of days -- I
don't know, was it 30 days?
If you sign up as a member within 30
days, then there's no doctor's examination and
you're guaranteed insurable. whoever thought
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that up was a rocket scientist because it went
over extremely well and was very important to
getting people to sign up as members.
MR. MADARASZ: That was Ed McMahon,
wasn't it, that dug that up?
(Laughter.)
MR. LOCHNER: I think we were doing it
long before he was --
MR. MADARASZ: Yeah, right.
MR. LOCHNER: -- and I think was kind
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of an aside. One of those great untold stories
in CSEA is how important the insurance program
has been to -- not only the growth of the
organization --
MR. MADARASZ: Yeah.
MR. LOCHNER: -- in terms of signing
up members, particularly in the '30s, '40s, and
"50s, but that it also helped lay the groundwork
for CSEA when the Taylor Law came into --
MR. MADARASZ: Oh, no doubt.
MR. LOCHNER: -- effect because on the
one hand employees didn't want to lose the
insurance if they didn't select CSEA as their
representative and --
MR. MADARASZ: M-m h-m-m.
MR. LOCHNER: -- by the same token
CSEA had an enormous network --
MR. MADARASZ: Right.
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MR. LOCHNER: -- of people who were
able to go out and sign up those members because
they were already selling them insurance and --
MR. MADARASZ: Right. I would imagine
your father was instrumental in setting up that
structure for (inaudible) touching the members.
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MR. LOCHNER: Indeed. The -- it's
important to point out that the State side and
the local government side not only have a long
history, sometimes not a very pleasant history,
within the organization of getting along and
caring about each others' interests but I
believe that for State employees in particular
CSEA positioned itself as an organization in a
superb way.
we were in the right place at the
right time with the right product and I think
that the membership saw that and felt that that
was the ticket to move forward. We were well
known, we had established a track record as a
valued commodity and it was so early in the
collective bargaining process that I think
people really didn't exercise a heck of a lot of
thought about it. They went with the flow.
But in local government it was much
more difficult to ring the bell because
management didn't want any time for the
employees to meet with representatives to the
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CSEA. It was like pulling teeth and management
would just not grant permission for
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representatives to meet with employees. It had
to be done off company time, whereas the State
was more accommodating and reasonable with
regard to access to employees.
And I think, you know, one of the key
aspects of the State agreements probably from
the getgo was that we had access to employees.
without that, you didn't have much and certainly
that was one of the major stumbling blocks in
marketing CSEA to local government, so the State
kinda led the charge.
MR. MADARASZ: That brings up two
questions. while you were growing up do you
remember your father traveling a lot?
MR. LOCHNER: Yes. And I would
occasionally go on trips with him to keep him
company and Buffalo was always a fun time but,
yes, he spent a significant time on the road
preaching to the elected officers of CSEA and
trying to get them to see that productively we
could go a lot further than a parochial
organization, so he did a substantial amount of
traveling but, you know, it's hard to
underestimate the impact of CSE...of Albany and
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CSEA, inextricably linked.
This is the State Capital. This is
where a lot of the action took place and as a
lobbying group if you weren't in Albany trying
to get the ear of the Legislature, you were
nowhere so, I mean, you had to go out and deal
with the membership in various loca...in
particular, Long Island and the City were always
major, major headaches for CSEA organizationally
and I'm not sure exactly why, other than maybe
people Downstate were a little bit more self-
actualized. I don't know, but they knew what
they wanted. Let's put it that way.
They knew that they were paying dues
and they wanted CSEA to do something for them,
whatever that may be.
MR. MADARASZ: Do you think there's a
unique CSEA culture?
MR. LOCHNER: Oh, yeah. Oh, there's
no -- and I'm not sure how you would define
that. There are a lot of layers to it. You
know, we've seen the enemy and it's us. I mean
there's a lot of internal rivalry within CSEA
and I don't think that makes us a unique
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organization. I think that makes us, you know,
like almost any other organization.
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I'm not ashamed of the fact that I'm
my father's son, but I certainly had to endure
an awful lot of finger pointing, you know,
because of nepotism. There -- I think within
CSEA there -- I'm not unique at all. As you've
probably found out through your interview
process there is a lot of family connections
within CSEA and I think it was -- as we were
growing as an organization, you reached out to
family and friends that you could rely upon that
were gonna get the job done and for my part I
just think it was destiny.
I trained as an educator, but I knew I
wanted to go where the action was and this was a
very exciting time for CSEA in the early
seventies. I mean we had an Irish mafia that
was operative at that time and, you know, if you
go down the list of the names who were movers
and shakers within this organization, Corcoran,
Conneby, Cooney, Reidy, Naughter, Jase McGraw.
I mean the ringleader, Jase McGraw. You know --
MR. MADARASZ: (Inaudible) an
19
important one.
MR. LOCHNER: Who?
MR. MADARASZ: Dolan.
MR. LOCHNER: Oh, yeah (laughter). My
father's successor. (Laughter.) About the
culture of CSEA. (Inaudible) blows off before
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they do yours. I -- you know, as we got bigger
the in-fighting got more intense. I mean
there's no question about it but the -- my
impression is this, and I'd be remiss if I
didn't point out those individuals who were not
part of the Irish Mafia: Manny Vitali not
Irish, and Herm Switz who was a legend, so those
were the nucleus of people on staff and they
were kick-ass. I mean their ego knew no
boundaries and they were the pros from Dover and
what did they have in common?
well, beside from being Irish and a
lot of them from Troy, they're all Siena -- most
of them were Siena graduates. Maybe all of ‘em
were Siena graduates and my father tapped into
that resource and I think that it paid some real
dividends for the organization. They were the
best, they were the brightest and,
20
coincidentally, there's an awful lot of people
in State government at that point in time that
were classmates of theirs.
So, I mean, a lot of communication
could take place because there wasn't as much
stigma involved in doing business with the union
because you knew these people and they were
okay. You know, whereas in Local Government the
union was not looked at as, you know, something
that you wanted on the premises and in State
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government I think the union was looked at as a
resource for change and improving public
employees, and if you were in management that
wasn't such a bad thing.
MR. MADARASZ: So I guess you could
also make the point that as a lot of the things
were developed with the State, they found their
way to trickle down into Local Government.
MR. LOCHNER: No doubt about it. In
'75 when the regions were created, and that was
huge. I mean I remember organizationally how
traumatic that was and I really believe that
that was a tremendous testimony to consensus at
work. That for us to survive as an organization
24:
we needed to get away from being a central
Albany-based organization that told -- that
dictated how things were going to operate and
that the sense of regions gave each geographic
entity an identity.
Not that they didn't have them before,
but this really was substantial and I guess the
point is best made by virtue of the fact that
the regional office, the Albany Regional office,
wasn't in headquarters. I think it started in
headquarters but then McDermott was absolutely
instrumental in getting the regional office
established and that's where I first went to
work. I didn't report to work at headquarters.
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I reported to work at the brand spanking new
regional office on Colvin Avenue, so that was a
very, very exciting time.
And in my initial years of employment,
first two and a half years of employment as an
organizer, I was very, very fortunate to visit
virtually every State agency in the Capital
District area, get exposed to how they worked
and partially through the insurance background I
had visited some of those in an insurance
22
capacity, but then I got to see how they
operated from a labor/management point of view
and it gave me such a heads up as to how things
could work if there was collaboration between
the parties.
Nothing prepared me for what Local
Government was, right, and I don't want to paint
it completely black and white, but in my mind it
-- once I had -- became an LRS in '78 with a
specifically defined field area, Saratoga,
washington and warren County, it was 90 percent
Local Government contracts and maybe 10 percent
State, so all I did was Local Government and the
State agencies had their act together and they
required ver...a minimal amount of my time,
whereas Local Government was a crisis every --
every minute of every day ‘cause they were so
clueless on how to do business.
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It was shocking to me. I'm not just
talking about -- I mean everybody. All the
stake holders were clueless. Management didn't
want to work with the union at all. The unions
were a very unnecessary evil as far as
management was concerned, with the exception of
23
school districts, which I think were a little
bit more receptive because NYSUT or NEA -- yeah,
NEA before NYSUT was formed, blazed that trail,
so school districts were more supportive of
union organizations.
Towns, cities, villages, counties, no
way, especially not in Saratoga, warren or
washington counties, which is a bastion of
Republican patronage and power, so --
MR. MADARASZ: Very interesting. I
mean was the union seen as threatening that
patronage?
MR. LOCHNER: Absolutely. Enforce
Civil Service Law? why? You know,
noncompetitive class positions? Are you a
Republican? Okay, you got the job. Sheriff
deputy, can you count to three? Are you a
Republican? well, then, here's your gun and
your badge (laughter). It really -- I don't
want to be facetious but when I say that
noncompetitive class positions, your drivers in
the highway department, your nursing home
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personnel, your building employees, it was all
patronage and it was who you knew and that's how
24
you got your job and management never let you
forget it, so I mean that was the picture.
Now if you were a competitive class
employee, that helped but, you know, the rule of
three was if you have two Democrats and one
Republican, there wasn't any question as to
which was gonna get the job (laughter), you
know, and everybody -- I mean it's a small world
and maybe what we're talking about is the
evolution of an organization from a very, very
small tight-knit group that just got bigger and
layer upon layer of complexity was added into
the mix.
And, in particular, Local Government
is what I know because that's where I spent
my -- virtually my entire career doing, was
Local Government.
MR. MADARASZ: It sounds particularly
interesting because what you're describing is
really the reason why CSEA came into existence
in the first place in 1910, which was --
MR. LOCHNER: Right.
MR. MADARASZ: -- to have some merit
and fitness in public employment as opposed to
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LOCHNER
simply a patronage (inaudible).
MR. LOCHNER: Absolutely. Right.
well, my father never got tired of saying that
it was Rocky who delivered on the Taylor Law and
that was a Republican Governor and he never got
tired of reminding people that, you know, you
have to be pragmatic and support both parties
and we do and I still maintain that's a pretty
good philosophy.
MR. MADARASZ: Tell me a little bit
more now about what you describe as the exciting
time in the early seventies. I know others have
described it as a time of enormous growth. That
there was great opportunity to carve out a niche
and make a name and make a difference in a lot
of practical benefits and --
MR. LOCHNER: M-m h-m-m.
MR. MADARASZ: -- just that every time
you turned around the organization was growing
in leaps and bounds.
MR. LOCHNER: No doubt. No doubt
about it. The cadre of people that I mentioned
were your -- were hired in the late sixties and
were responsible for many, many contracts on the
26
State side and Local Government and collectively
they were very charismatic individuals and the
analogy I'd like to make is that at that
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particular point in time the membership just was
not empowered at all. They had no clue what was
going on and they had implicit trust that CSEA
was gonna deliver and I call it, you know, the
Lone Ranger effect.
These guys, you could hear Sergio --
what is it, Sergio (inaudible) in the background
with the spaghetti westerns. You know, like
Clint Eastwood riding into town and you'd pan to
his face, he'd grit his teeth and he'd get off
the horse and kick ass. That's what these guys
did and, honestly, they were my role models. I
mean I was pretty impressionable at twenty-three
years old when I came on board and these guys
were the ones that I looked up to and they
groomed me to assume that role and I adapted
very quickly to it.
And, you know, at the beginning of my
career the membership turned over an amazing
amount of power and control to make decisions
for them to their LRS or CBS. I was shocked. I
27
just could not comprehend that employees just
did not feel equipped to make those decisions,
felt that since I was the emissary from
headquarters of the region that I knew what to
do and that I would do it and that things would
work out okay and, you know, I didn't do much to
dissuade them from that belief (laughter).
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LOCHNER
You know, and that's just the way it
was, is that there was a lot of ego involved and
we got a lot of things accomplished for the
membership because management was not
sophisticated. I mean they hated unions for the
most part but they were not very sophisticated.
This was before they hired attorneys to go to
the bargaining table on their behalf and I think
that the people CSEA had working for us at the
time were not just a half-step quicker, they
were a full step quicker, and we got
accomplished the collective bargaining process
inroads in minimizing management's power that
we've enjoyed ever since, you know?
And I think that the template of
contracts was established in the seventies and
we've been operating off that template ever
28
since. I mean, you know, once the Taylor Law
determined that you couldn't strike and that it
was two-for-one penalties if you did and, you
know, then you put together contracts that
focused on due process was key.
I mean part of our strength as an
organization was that we didn't -- we
effectively represented employees because we
knew the due process better than management did.
we were more diligent about doing the background
investigations, but they caught up eventually
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LOCHNER
and became very good at it themselves, but we
had already achieved those contract protections
that are kind of taken almost for granted today.
You know, codifying the health insurance,
establishing due process in the grievance
procedure, access to employees, codifying the
benefit structure and telling management that it
was an improper practice to change anything
without consulting with us first (laughter).
That's how it was.
MR. MADARASZ: How did you see the
change evolve with membership becoming more
empowered over the course of your career?
29
MR. LOCHNER: I think it was a -- you
know, it's easy for me to say that it's a great
thing for employees to take ownership of their
organization and I truly believe that. I just
wish it was less haphazard. I've had some
outstanding officers to work with that I believe
that I mentored and everything I invested in
training them they gave back and more.
Unfortunately we have a high burnout
factor with our officers. That's been endemic
within CSEA from square one. we have some
exceptional people that stick with it long term,
but most people have a term or two and they burn
out and, you know, it's just an impossible job
appeasing the membership, especially when you're
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one of their peers.
It's tough enough when, you know,
you've got the imprimatur of the organization on
you. well, I'm not elected, I'm appointed by
the organization and, you know, this isn't a
popularity contest. This -- you know, I'm here
to help you because I've got a solid background
in labor relations not because, you know, I
throw the best parties or because, you know,
30
other people like me.
And I think that the struggle for the
membership to take ownership of their contracts
and run their units and their locals has been a
process that is incomplete, is still we're
working on it organizationally and we'll
probably always continue to work on it.
And I used the term "Lone Ranger"
before. The Lone Ranger's dead and buried and
deservedly so. That worked at a time when we
were young but I don't think that it's the right
way to approach labor relations and working with
the membership now, but we don't have very many
A teams, and by A teams I mean an ensemble cast
that can go in there and know what their
responsibilities are, take ownership of a
contract, go back and sell it to the membership
because this really -- you know, you put me on
that team to represent your interests and I'm
Page 26
LOCHNER
here to tell you that I did that and I did my
job and, you know, we as a negotiating committee
make this recommendation.
I look behind me from time to time
Claughter). You know, you always felt that your
31
negotiating team -- you know, from the moment
that you signed the tentative agreement to the
time you presented it to the membership you
always wondered, you know, how much waffling
came in and where the fortitude went because
very often they weren't prepared to stand up for
what they had done and it was the LRS who did it
and pulled the strings.
so, you know, I do think that it's --
that we are on the right track. we do a lot of
good things with our leadership training. It's
never been my role to determine how we spend
money as an organization but I can say that the
training of staff is rudimentary. In my
opinion, very rudimentary, and I think it's
effective in what it does but there is very
little in the way of follow-up and there's not
much for seasoned veterans. They're pretty much
on their own, you know, to do the best you can
within the organization and I think it's
improved somewhat but that's basically the way
it has been.
MR. MADARASZ: I think you mentioned
Page 27
LOCHNER
something before about your father and his
32
insistence on some pragmatism and I think it
would be fair to say that that's probably a
quality that continues within CSEA --
MR. LOCHNER: M-m h-m-m.
MR. MADARASZ: -- to this day,
sometimes to the point where perhaps others who
might want to be more strident or more activist
in the activities might be critical of --
MR. LOCHNER: M-m h-m-m.
MR. MADARASZ: -- of CSEA, yet there
always seems to be a focus on trying to get the
job done. How would -- how would you look at
that situation between trying to strike that --
MR. LOCHNER: M-m h-m-m.
MR. MADARASZ: -- balance between
activism and pragmatism?
MR. LOCHNER: JI think exposure, long-
term exposure, turns activists into pragmatists.
I wish I had a nickel for every activist that
was gonna change CSEA and set the world on fire
through their direct participation as an
officer, grievance chair or what have you,
because people come in with certain expectations
and certainly managing expectations is the
33
Page 28
LOCHNER
biggest challenge to anybody within the
organization.
And what I mean by that is that when
people pay dues, they project certain
expectations and how it's changed is I pay dues,
you do the work. You're paid by CSEA and, you
know, I pay my dues and that's all I have to do.
I don't have anything more. You do it because
that's what I pay does for.
And fortunately that mind set has
gradually changed so that people recognize,
well, wait a second. If I, you know, I need to
make a contribution to the collective benefit
and good of not just the people in my job title
but this bargaining unit as a whole and they
have -- they become more experienced, more
pragmatic and more effective the longer they're
involved, in my opinion.
But the history of CSEA is that, just
like the immigrants, we have absorbed wave after
wave after wave of activists and a lot of those
people have percolated to key positions within
the organization and play very, very valuable
roles but I think that precarious balance in
34
blend of keeping -- the people that come in here
with fire, you want to nurture it and not
alienate them and I think that we've done a
Page 29
LOCHNER
pretty good job of welcoming them into the fold
and then subtlety mentoring them to be effective
representatives of the organization, so that
process isn't gonna change, although my
experience is that we're getting grayer and
grayer.
It's always been leadership that were
time tested, but now within the organization
it's, you know, I'm really worried about the
brain drain, make no bones about it, that I
don't know where some of the institutional
memory is gonna come from when a Don Kelly
leaves, when a Dave Stack leaves? I mean, I
don't (laughter) you know, I'm forever grateful
to Dave Stack for managing my retirement
portfolio, believe me, until the time that I can
take responsibility for it myself.
There are icons within this
organization. I don't know how we're ever gonna
replace -- we will but, you know, those are two
that come immediately to mind.
35
MR. MADARASZ: Kind of an interesting,
you know, point because go back to your father's
day, too, with some of the expertise. Because
while you talked about there being a small
staff --
MR. LOCHNER: Yeah.
MR. MADARASZ: -- there was also a
Page 30
LOCHNER
relationship with a very effective and well-
known Albany law firm that represented the
interests of the organization on the outside.
MR. LOCHNER: (Laughter.) what were
-- what would the conversations about CSEA's
history be with Roemer and Feathers, right?
MR. MADARASZ: I was thinking about --
MR. LOCHNER: Right.
MR. MADARASZ: -- DeGraff Foy.
MR. LOCHNER: DeGraff Foy, yeah. Oh,
absolutely.
MR. MADARASZ: DeGraff Foy with a
relationship that goes back to the thirties.
MR. LOCHNER: Oh, no doubt about it.
Jack Rice was one of my idols growing up and
remains so to this day although I haven't
maintained communication with him, but
36
brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Cockeyed or
not, he was just a tremendous strategist and
wired and, you know, we had outstanding legal
representation through the DeGraff Foy firm and
as I recall Rice was really, in my recollection,
the ringleader.
And Jim Roemer was on board with the
firm and I knew Jim because I was the paperboy
on Palmer Boulevard and his dad and family lived
on Palmer Boulevard in Westmere, you know, a
suburb of Albany, and so I knew Jim slightly.
Page 31
LOCHNER
He was an adequate basketball player and member
of the DeGraff law firm and saw an opportunity
to insinuate himself into that dynamic and
successfully staged a coup d'etat that resulted
in him being our Chief Counsel, so that was an
amazing time and, you know, that whole
controversy between having an in-house and an
out-house (laughter) law firm, we could go on
forever.
But maybe the best thing that Roemer
brought to the table was Feathers. I mean Jim
Featherstonhaugh was equally -- people would
form an impression of Jim when they met him. He
37
was about five foot six and he was prematurely
bald and, you know, didn't seem to have that
much charisma, whereas Roemer was six three, you
know, prematurely gray but looked like a
senator. Had embroidered shirts and, I mean, he
epitomized what an attorney should be.
And when they were together, the
synergy between those two was absolutely
amazing. That was our golden period as far as
I'm concerned as far as legal representation.
They were the pros from Dover, but what's
underestimated, in my opinion, was Feathers.
Feathers knew and was wired to the Governor's
office and he was and is to this day one of the
most admired lobbyists bar none in New York
Page 32
LOCHNER
State.
So I definitely recall all of the
battles, organizationally, as it related to the
law firm and, you know, the fact that -- Joe
McDermott was right in the thick of that
situation, our former regional president and
president of CSEA, and I don't know how to
qualify the impact of McDermott other than to
say the first day that I was employed I met Joe,
38
shook his hand, and I never forgot it and he was
a real, shrewd power broker and he aligned
himself very closely with the law firm. They
took very good care of him and provided a lot of
good insight and judgment, I think, to not only
Joe McDermott but to the organization as a
whole.
And then, you know, we subsequently
went to an in-house law firm and I think that
that's worked very effectively for us but, you
know, as far as shoot 'em up, bang, bang and,
you know, getting things done and having
Cinaudible) Roemer and Featherstonhaugh were
really the big two.
(Simultaneous inaudible conversation.)
MR. MADARASZ: Let me ask you to talk
a little bit more about Joe McDermott because
obviously you had a very good relationship with
him --
Page 33
LOCHNER
MR. LOCHNER: Oh, yeah.
MR. MADARASZ: -- over the years.
MR. LOCHNER: TI did.
MR. MADARASZ: Tell me how you saw him
grow and change. He was somebody who you say
39
was region president --
MR. LOCHNER: M-m h-m-m.
MR. MADARASZ: -- in CSEA and a vital
force. He became executive vice president and
eventually president of the organization. How
did you see his evolution?
MR. LOCHNER: Joe was -- first of all,
he was with the Department of Transportation and
these are subtle things but you can't discount
"em. Bill Hennessey was the director of DOT;
he's also my baseball coach (laughter). In full
disclosure here, Featherstonhaugh married me the
first time (laughter) and divorced me the first
-- and helped divorce me the first time so, I
mean, I knew these people real well.
And it was quite an eye-opening
experience for a young kid to be around these
very charismatic people, but charisma is not
what you think of with Joe McDermott, not at
all. He was a poker player, very bright, but
because he worked for Department of
Transportation in a PS&T position, he had juice.
I think that he had carte blanche to do whatever
Page 34
LOCHNER
he needed to do as regional president and this
40
was pretty much unheard of.
But, you know, Bill Hennessey
subsequently became the statewide Democratic
Chair and all I can say is that he was an
incredibly bright guy that had a personality so
big and it permeated down within his selections
to HR and how management and the union dealt
with one another and Joe McDermott benefited
from that immeasurably because he could pretty
much come and go and do whatever he damn well
pleased on behalf of CSEA.
It's not that he had a no-show job but
he was very wired throughout the Capital
District Region and once again he was a PS&T
employee and I think that wenzel certainly was
the individual that is the personification of,
you know, the scholarly, you know, educator that
was from the Education Department, as I recall,
and he had, you know, a tall, commanding
presence and, you know, follow me and, you know,
we enjoyed some outstanding leadership from the
ranks of the PS&T, which is why when we
subsequently lost the decert of the PS&T there
were some questions as to whether or not we were
41
Page 35
LOCHNER
gonna survive as an organization.
And we did very successfully. I think
we shocked ourselves and a lot of other people
that we were able to get over that and develop
new leadership but, you know, there's linkage
there. There's a bridge. McDermott was the
bridge, in my opinion. He is only -- I don't
think he made a lot of mistakes. I think that
he recruited some very good people that were
close to him.
Michelle Agnew was my secretary when I
first started within the region. Of course,
she's everybody's secretary but McDermott's as
well and Joe brought her along with him and she
wielded a lotta power, both at headquarters and
within the region. Joe was successful in
getting his agenda across and pulled an awful
lot of strings and a lotta people said, yeah,
Joe, I'll do that for ya. He was a very well-
organized, shrewd politician. That's just the
way I remember him.
And he was -- you know, he had a
reputation of being a real hard ass for staff.
I never really, you know, I was out on a strike,
42
our first strike with -- against the
organization and McDermott was the focal point
of that and, you know, there's an awful lot of
dissension and hard feelings and, you know, he
Page 36
LOCHNER
crossed the picket line, yada, yada, yada.
well, he had to wear a couple
different hats and I'm not an apologist for
McDermott. I will say this: That he treated me
fairly and I thought that he was an effective
individual and moved the organization forward
and, you know, I'm not gonna fault him for Jack
Corcoran because my father hired Corcoran and
that was the biggest mistake he ever made and he
admitted that to me and anybody else that would
listen to him but, you know, he made that
particular bed and then the rest of us had to
lie in it.
(Pause in the proceedings.)
MR. MADARASZ: Okay. This is Part 2
of our conversation with Bill Lochner on the Ist
of March 2007 in Albany, New York.
Bill, we were talking a little bit
about Joe McDermott before our break. Tell me
about some of your experiences with some of the
43
other CSEA presidents who you knew. I know when
we first started talking this morning you said
that Joe Feeney was somebody who you have a
vivid memory about.
MR. LOCHNER: Right, because he had a
very, very deep voice and he was old school, one
of the few presidents that I think my father
feared. He was very involved with CSEA. I
Page 37
LOCHNER
think that, you know, when you look at the
portraits of the presidents that are in this
room, I can't imagine that any of ‘em lacked for
passion in their belief that they were going to
play a role in improving the terms and
conditions of employment of public employees and
Joe Feeney is someone that I remember from my --
one of my earliest recollections as someone who
is a hands-on president, who didn't delegate
responsibility, who really worked his role and
certainly wenzel -- he set the stage for wenzel
and I don't know if there's ever been anybody
quite like Ted wenzel as the president of the
CSEA.
He had the ability to lead and to
alienate like none other (laughter) as I recall.
44
I was at the infamous Palace Theater fiasco. It
was one of my earliest days of employment with
CSEA and when the -- when the president was on
the stage and it appeared like the membership
was going to manifest itself as a mob and lynch
him, I'l] never forget, what the hell have I got
myself into with this organization.
MR. MADARASZ: what do you remember
that being all about?
MR. LOCHNER: It was about the State
contract, as I recall, and you know, sometimes
the presentations of the State contract went
Page 38
LOCHNER
smoother than others. we learned through trial
and error that getting toget...getting a huge
mass of people together like at the Palace
Theater and telling ‘em this is what the
contract is may not be the best strategy.
And then we shifted gears and if
memory serves me correctly we then sent out
reconnaissance parties to -- that were composed
of members of the respective statewide
negotiating committees and they did their
dog-and-pony show throughout the state and, you
know, hit as many centrally-located areas to
45
explain the contract and to -- you know, it's
one thing to get the details of the contract in
the CSEA work Force or prior to that the CSEA
Leader, but it's another thing to have live
representatives there to explain it to ya.
And I really think that we as an
organization learned well that you just can't
pack people into a room, tell ‘em this is the
best we're gonna get, and that they're going to
endorse that. That's not the way it worked.
Ted had some issues in communicating
his vision to the board of directors and to the
membership but he was probably the first
president of the modern era of CSEA and, you
know, he was photogenic. He put on his warrior
headdress -- you know about that?
Page 39
LOCHNER
MR. MADARASZ: No.
MR. LOCHNER: Oh, yeah. He had this
full warrior chief, you know, like a Sioux
Indian, the headdress that would go way -- you
know, with the feathers, very ornate, and he'd
wear that from time to time, you know, to
demonstrate that he was E1 Hefay (phonetic) and
I'l] tell ya (laughter) we had some eccentric
46
personalities within the organization and I
remember Ted well because he had a long life and
he -- even after he was president of CSEA he was
involved and then, you know, McGowan.
MR. MADARASZ: Did many things in the
community but not with CSEA.
MR. LOCHNER: Right. Yes. Right.
well, I'll never forget when we organized the
Delmar Library and Ted's wife was on the board
of directors of the library and the library did
not appreciate CSEA organizing these public
employees who should be ready, willing and able
to volunteer their time to the library so there
was always conflicts of interest so, you know,
as cerebral as Ted Wenzel was, we went from
there to Bill McGowan, who was "deez" and "doze"
and "dems" and the cigar and, I mean, I can't
imagine a broad -- a greater shift.
But Bill tapped into something that
Ted didn't have which was a membership that
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LOCHNER
identified very, very closely with him and, you
know, I think in our dialogue today it just --
it's a recurrent theme that the membership
wanted at a certain point in time to be told
47
what to do and then they became more aware of
what their power was and they wanted a
leadership that they could communicate with and
that would integrate their input and roll up his
sleeves and be one of them, and I certainly
think that McGowan represented that.
And he was notorious for having the
answers to everybody's problems in his briefcase
(laughter), and it was like the briefcase was a
big black hole and I don't think anything ever
came out of it once it went in, but Bill was
working on it and he had you believe that he was
working on it so he definitely was a man of the
people. There's no question about it.
And McDermott was, as I mentioned
previously, was more in the model of a Wenzel in
that he was a -- Joe was a very articulate
speaker. I think that he presented his ideas
well and he had a network bar none, and I think
that it helped that he had -- you know, the
State employees seem to have a more realized
community of interest and they stuck together
and they were successful in electing officials
because of that identification.
Page 41
LOCHNER
48
where Local Government was just much
more fragmented and it was more difficult to
have people elected from that particular era,
and when you think about regional -- Al Mead.
Al Mead was the regional president from the
Health Department and, you know, it just seemed
that regional leadership came from the State
rank and file primarily.
MR. MADARASZ: And certainly if you
look at the more recent history of the Capital
Region CSEA, it really has been the most
volatile region in the organization. why do you
think that is?
MR. LOCHNER: The State locals are
very well-organized for the most part. I think
that they over decades have done a better job of
informing their membership. I think that --
this is generally speaking. You still have
State agencies and authorities that don't
communicate effectively, but I do feel that the
State has had more of a laissez-faire attitude
in that, you know, I mean if you're doin' union
business, it's not that big a deal because
indirectly the state can benefit from it if
49
Page 42
LOCHNER
you've got a more tuned in, cooperative, self-
actualized membership. I think that they see
that there's some benefit in that.
I think that there is substantial
rivalry between the vested interests of Local
Government and the State as far as the division
-- or as far as, you know, their vision for
where CSEA should be going and the services that
CSEA should be delivering and, you know, whether
it's true or not there is a perception that CSEA
has had the luxury organizationally of a State
group of officers that were much more effective
in getting their agenda across than Local
Government.
And Local -- ironically, I think from
CSEA's perspective, the services have been
funneled to a remarkable degree to Local
Government, whereas some State-represented
personnel would say, well, you know, how come
the organization spends so much money on Local
Government? what are we getting out of this?
And when you stop and think about the
decerts and all the money that CSEA has had to
spend in Local Government to protect our right
50
to represent long-established bargaining units,
those concerns probably have some validity and
it's always that delicate a balance between how
are we best spending the resources of our
Page 43
LOCHNER
organization.
And I think that that leads to a lot
of political rivalries internally and I firmly
believe, calling on some recent history, Tappy
Garrison (phonetic) as regional president in the
Albany Region now for two terms, the key to her
success was going out into Local Government,
rolling up her sleeves and taking names and
kicking some butt and making a name for herself.
I'm convinced that she never would have been
successful in getting elected to her second term
unless she took her message out to Local
Government and sold it effectively.
And I think that in the past, despite
being an outstanding regional president, Al
Mead, for example, never had that audience,
never had that loyalty in Local Government. His
base was in the State and that unfortunately you
can't bank on that to come through in elected --
when you're running for elected office.
51
Sometimes that support is a mile wide and an
inch deep.
MR. MADARASZ: well, you're kind of
alluding to another point that I wanted to raise
and that would be a significant difference
between your father's day in CSEA and your day
in CSEA --
MR. LOCHNER: Yeah.
Page 44
LOCHNER
MR. MADARASZ: -- where in your
father's day everything was very male
dominated --
MR. LOCHNER: Yes.
MR. MADARASZ: -- and certainly women
have been much more actively involved in the
last generation --
MR. LOCHNER: No doubt.
MR. MADARASZ: -- of CSEA. How did
you see that evolve?
MR. LOCHNER: Well, there were no
female labor relations people when I was hired.
It did not exist. I will always remember
meeting Marge Carow (phonetic) for the first
time and we were talking about the leverage and
leadership that was provided by the law firms,
52
the out...you know, the outside firms, and then
when we went in-house and Marge took over as in-
house counsel as I recall, that was mind
boggling that we had a female attorney as our
in-house counsel.
I mean that -- that really was a
breakthrough. It was perceived that life in the
trenches doing collective bargaining contracts,
grievances and labor management, that was very
much male oriented work and CSEA really deserved
a lot of credit for, I think, breaking that mind
set.
Page 45
LOCHNER
And I have a colleague in Region Iv
went to Sage, who came up through the ranks,
worked at headquarters, came out into the field
and I have a lot of respect for the fact that
women have proved that they are as adept as men
in getting the job done. They weren't as good
drinkers, but on the other hand they were quite
successful in getting to a bottom line.
MR. MADARASZ: Depends on who you're
drinking with.
MR. LOCHNER: That's right. And I
really think that that whole -- you know, you
53
went to CBA, Christian Brothers Academy, which I
didn't do. I defied my father on that. Then
you went to Siena. I didn't do that, I went to
Albany State, so I was a bit of a nonconformist
but, you know, I thought I was a nonconformist
at the time, but what difference does it make
and then I went to work for the organization.
well, if you're a woman you couldn't
go to Christian Brothers Academy and Siena
probably didn't have a lot of female under-
graduates, but once we got into the seventies
and we had -- who was our first regional
director that was a female?
MR. MADARASZ: Diane Campion
(phonetic).
MR. LOCHNER: Diane Campion. Okay.
Page 46
LOCHNER
That was another huge breakthrough and
culminating in our first female regional
director in the region, Kate Luscom (phonetic),
who came into our region about 20 years ago as
an intern; that we had an intern program that
somebody came up with this idea. Hey, let's get
these master graduates from Michigan and hire a
bunch of 'em and we did and Kate was one of ‘em
54
as an intern.
And then we figured, well, gee, they
did a really good job. Let's hire ‘em
permanently and what a success story she's been
and I'm very proud of the fact that women are
doing labor relations now seemlessly with male
counterparts and that we've been working
shoulder to shoulder now for quite some time.
And there was a sense of rectifying an
imbalance because we understood as an
organization that women were -- our membership
was predominantly women. why the hell didn't we
have any women working in other than clerical
capacities, so I think CSEA has developed a
conscience over time. Some people would
question that but I believe that we
organizationally have really attempted to make
our staffing more closely resemble what goes on
with our membership, what the demographics are
with our membership and that's been a key to our
Page 47
LOCHNER
success. So that has been a profound change
within the organization and, you know, about
time.
MR. MADARASZ: Okay. Tell me some
55
more about some of the other characters who
you've experienced in CSEA and I know one who's
coming to mind for me, certainly, somebody who
was very, very important in the communications
department was Dan Campbell.
MR. LOCHNER: Oh, yeah.
MR. MADARASZ: Tell me about working
with Dan Campbell and his role in advocating for
the membership.
MR. LOCHNER: It's probably not well-
known but Dan and I were quite close. Having
come out of an education background I knew how
to read or write -- read and write, and Dan very
often collaborated with me because he had many
areas of skill and expertise, you know. His
renown with a bull horn is well documented, but
sometimes his ability to put sentences and
paragraphs together with the appropriate
punctuation left a little bit to be desired and
I was there to assist him.
And Dan was the consummate team
player, absolutely the consummate team player.
He represented the type of individual who when
you asked him to do somethin', he just -- he
Page 48
LOCHNER
56
would do it and he would do it successfully and
with -- he didn't have much of an ego that I
recall but if I asked him for anything I could
bank on it because he would do it and he had a
long, distinguished career with CSEA.
And, you know, I've got maybe -- CSEA
as an institution really owes so much to our PR
Department. I mean -- and this isn't a self-
serving statement because I have two
representatives (laughter) of that department
with me, but I'm talkin’ about Joe Relyea
(phonetic).
Remember Joe Relyea? well, this is
before your time. He had a trench --
MR. MADARASZ: A trench coat.
MR. LOCHNER: Yeah, trench coat, you
know. He looked like he was right out of
AB...you know, A...one of the major news carrier
services reporting to -- I mean, it was -- he
was such a stereotype but it was like the wizard
of oz.
we had a PR Department that was
amazingly effective at putting our image out
there and people throughout the State, our own
57
membership, but more than that; people who read
Page 49
LOCHNER
the newspaper or saw TV had this image of CSEA
being this all-powerful, omniscient
organization.
what we know is that it was this
little guy behind the curtain pulling all the
Cinaudible) and blowing all the whistles and
makin' all the smoke because when you look at
CSEA's budget and when you look at how many
people we employed over the years -- I mean
we're bigger now but we're still not big
potatoes, but I mean I remember when we were
tiny and we still had an aura about us as an
organization that was way out of proportion to
what we could actually deliver but that didn't
matter because the membership and the public at
large thought CSEA, New York State's largest
public employee union. That was it.
And we tried to live up to that and
Dan was in the trenches more than anybody that I
can ever remember leading the chants and when
CSEA had contracting out issues, he -- and we
still do and we did during Dan's era, nobody was
more effective at rallying the troops and
58
getting the logistics situated so that if CSEA
had 20 people there outside it looked like 200
or there was 200 people loud and he gave his
heart and soul to CSEA and he was instrumental
in helping me decide that I should go at 55.
Page 50
LOCHNER
There's not -- and I'm very serious
about that. Dan died, he and I were very close
in age. His loss shook our region to its
foundation. I don't think Phil Reidy (phonetic)
has still recovered from it and I knew that I
just did not want to go down the way Dan went.
In his own -- knowing Dan, he -- that
was a tremendous -- you know, he gave everything
to the organization and he had his flaws as we
all do, but he -- I was privileged to work with
him. He's a hard-working individual and he may
not have been as polished as some of our other
PR people but he got the job done so -- and he
died prematurely, as a lot of good people within
CSEA have. Joe Picareon (phonetic) our -- one
of -- our second regional director, very
prematurely, so -- and there's others.
But certainly the PR Department, as
far as image building, I -- there's no way that
59
you can put a value on it, none. Even now.
MR. MADARASZ: what do you remember
your father saying about that because it's
pretty remarkable as you look back.
Could you just look outside and see
what all this banging is?
(Laughter.)
MR. LOCHNER: All right. For the
record, you two need marriage counseling.
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LOCHNER
You've been together too long.
(Laughter.)
MR. LOCHNER: You're getting on each
other's nerves and you know each other too well.
MR. MADARASZ: I guess, you know, the
point that we were talking about was the
importance of the communications and PR efforts
to the organization. I think what's remarkable
if you look back is the sophistication of what
the organization was doing to promote its image
really very early on --
MR. LOCHNER: Yes.
MR. MADARASZ: -- in its history. I
mean throughout the decades and way beyond what
many other organizations were doing at that
60
time.
MR. LOCHNER: My best guess is that I
don't want to identify Albany as the fountain of
power and wisdom because it sure as hell isn't,
but neither is it a backwater and we hired
people with established credentials to get
CSEA's -- to polish CSEA's image and I think it
exceeded beyond anybody's expectations and it
continues to this day.
Whoever the rocket scientist was that
came up with the idea of CSEA being a sponsor
for NPR -- you know, for National Public Radio,
and whoever came up with the idea of those sound
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LOCHNER
bites by President Donohue on the news at 6 and
11, I just think that it's some -- this
organization has succeeded in getting our logo,
you know, CSEA Night at SUNY. You know, there's
so many examples I can think of where we had
permeated into the community's consciousness.
How many other organizations can say
that and for as long and as successfully as we
have and the sad part about it is we can't rest
on our laurels at all because our society is
becoming, at least in my opinion, much more
61
fragmented in its allegiances and its interests
and we have been a source of consistency and
cohesiveness, but I think that the challenge and
the bar is always being set higher for us and I
think that, you know, whatever new idea -- and
just the partici...my participation today in
this is meaningful to me.
Not just because of my family history
but, you know, I still believe in the
organization. And personalities aside, because
I've certainly rubbed people the wrong way and
other people have certainly irked me, but aside
from that, we as an organization have found our
way through consensus building and we've evolved
from top down to a horizontal platform. You
know, we've managed to integrate that in a way
that's meaningful so that people feel that they
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LOCHNER
have some impact on what goes on within this
organization. At least I like to believe that.
MR. MADARASZ: Okay. Actually that
was a great answer to the question that I
traditionally ask as the last one, which is why
we've survived --
MR. LOCHNER: (Laughter.)
62
MR. MADARASZ: -- a hundred years.
Let me ask you this: Tell me for you
personally what were some of the best things
that you experienced here and some of the more
difficult challenges.
MR. LOCHNER: All right. The
opportunity to start doing contracts when I was
in my mid-twenties. Conservatively I believe
I've done in the ballpark of 400, maybe 500
contracts over my career, and I take pride in
that not for any one contract, but I like to
think that I built on the base that I was given
and that I was in the right place at the right
time to be the workhorse in this area for Local
Government contract negotiations. That's what I
excelled at.
Maybe in retrospect it would have been
so much better if I -- if we were less crisis-
oriented as an organization because it just
seems to me that's our modus operandi. we have
been very, very crisis-oriented and the demands
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LOCHNER
that are placed on field staff and headquarter
staff are great and they don't seem to be
lessening. They seem to, you know, layer after
63
layer of responsibility. And you know, that's
not any different than any other organization.
However, by being in the right place
at the right time I think that I helped tens of
thousands of people have a better future. I
mean what more can you ask for? That alone to
me is satisfaction enough.
The fact that for from 1930 until 2006
there's been a Lochner that has worked for the
organization makes me feel very proud and there
are others that I'm not gonna mention today that
have great continuity within this organization
but I love CSEA and want nothing but the best of
our organization to proceed into the future.
As far as the negative side? There's
plenty of it, the decerts, so disheartening
because we really want to have the hearts and
minds of our membership and when the decert
activity occurs you're smacked in the face with
the realization that there's a strong
contingent, at least 30 percent, of your
bargaining unit membership that doesn't like
what you're doing and doesn't like you as an
organization and wants out because they feel
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LOCHNER
64
that they're gonna get a better deal somewhere
else.
And I think that we have been
remarkably successful in convincing people that
false prophets are not going to be beneficial to
them in the long run; that we can run on our
record and continue to be the effective
representative that we have historically been.
But in all -- the decerts have been a
real challenge but that's part of the game and
you suck it up and you move forward. And as I
pointed out, when we lost 40,000 people in one
swoop with the PS&T election, a lot of people
thought that was the demise of CSEA.
It isn't and we've lost other groups
in Rensselaer County, for example, and we've
moved forward and we just try to do our best
every single day and I think that's all you can
do. Otherwise, I feel privileged that the
organization selected me to do some high profile
contracts that I wasn't responsible for but they
needed somebody to go in in a crisis situation
and perform and I was the go-to guy for a long,
long time and I think that that paid dividends
65
for me.
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LOCHNER
In particular Shenendehowa Central
School District, Danny -- President Donohue's
home school district (laughter). I did that for
many, many years. The City of Troy, which has
been -- which has turned many people prematurely
gray and (laughter) I've done that. The Peru
Central School District up north, I mean -- you
know, yeah, there is gratification. I
volunteered to do a lot of contracts that took
special effort because you have pride in what
you do.
I regret that, you know, the first
fifteen years of my employment were tainted by a
regional director who I really feel lacked
empathy for the human resources that he
supervised. I mean -- I was a tough grind. I
came in as a young idealistic individual and ran
right into the face of a two-bit Bonaparte
(laughter) that was extremely difficult to work
for, never could do enough for. Unbelievably
autocratic and who brought me up on disciplinary
charges because I grew a tiny tail and kept it
hidden underneath my shirt but he knew it was
66
there and he attempted to bring me up on
disciplinary charges because I grew a pony tail.
That was frustrating.
Now, for every situation like that,
and that was the first fifteen years that I was
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LOCHNER
employed, and it wasn't fun but I learned from
that experience and because he was such an
autocrat it manifested itself in a camaraderie
within the people that he supervised that was
second to none because we all had one thing in
common. we hated this guy, so that proved to be
beneficial.
But my comments today really don't
focus on the negative because I have so much to
be grateful for. when my wife became i11 about
a year and a half before I retired I needed
time. The organization was there for me.
when I needed help and the resources
of the Legal Department, I've always been very
pleased with the assistance that I've received
from headquarters in training and education. In
particular, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention
that we continue to do a good job training our
membership and our officers. I just wish that
67
we didn't lose 'em as fast as we trained 'em. I
don't know what we're going to do to get a
handle on that dilemma.
You know, all sorts of ideas have been
floated but, you know, there's gotta be a way
that we can liberate the LRSs in the field from
doing some of the work that they -- you know,
the day in-day out work of just writing a
grievance.
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LOCHNER
You'd be shocked, I'm sad to say, that
there are many jurisdictions now where the LRS
still has to hold hands and baby-sit bargaining
units because they just don't have the ability
to utilize the grievance procedures that are
right in the contract and so the LRS has to help
them, and that's not a bad thing.
It's just that we don't have a chance
to do the internal organizing that really needs
to be done, so that summarizes, I think, some of
the feelings that I have that some of the
longer-term staff would really benefit by some
additional training and programs that are
related to separating your life from your job.
There's a lot of people that have
68
passed on because they couldn't draw the line
between where the role of CSEA and the real life
and family, you know, where it begins, where it
ends. It's a problem that many people encounter
but I think that within CSEA it's been always
very difficult because we live and breathe the
organization and feel like we're on call 24/7 to
service the membership.
And, you know, you get into it and
then you wake up at the end of your career and
you realize, gee, what about my family? what
about all the nights I was out? what about all
that and I just feel that there is a need to
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LOCHNER
reach out to some of our long-term staff and
give them -- it's not training in skills per se;
it's in coping.
You know, I really feel that we've
lost some very important people because they
couldn't handle the stress that's involved in
representing this organization. I came close
myself to losing it all. I just feel very, very
fortunate that I didn't and that I was able to
wrap up my career and move forward.
MR. MADARASZ: Any areas that you'd
69
like to get into that you think we didn't cover
or --
MR. LOCHNER: I'm gonna take a quick
peek here at -- I did receive this e-mail and I
took some notes.
(Brief pause.)
MR. LOCHNER: Oh, that's interesting.
Oh, two things. On behalf of my brother Joe
(laughter) he's a year, 15 months younger than
me, who worked in CSEA's print shop before he
went on to become a CPA and work for the Public
Service Commission.
when I walked in the door today and
saw Ray Latham (phonetic) the first thing out of
Ray's mouth was, “How the hell is your brother
Joe?"
(Brief interruption of interview.)
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LOCHNER
MR. LOCHNER: Ed, do you still have
control of all your faculties?
(Laughter.)
(Simultaneous conversation.)
MR. MADARASZ: You walked through the
door and you saw --
MR. LOCHNER: JI saw Ray Latham and the
70
first thing he asked me was how was my brother
Joe. My brother Joe is 54 years old now and
stopped working in the print shop when he was
probably 22 or 23 and that's CSEA. That is the
kind of camaraderie and brotherhood that I stil]
feel such satisfaction in.
When I come in and saw Ed I remembered
all the derogatory things that Jim Martin said
about him. That made me laugh.
You know, there are ways that we can
bridge the idea that headquarters is where bad
people live and work and that we in the regions
have to be very careful who we talk to in
headquarters because it's gonna come back and
bite us in the ass and, you know, sometimes it
does but, you know, Ross Hanna wears a pony tail
now (laughter) and he hasn't been brought up on
disciplinary charges lately that I'm aware of,
you know?
There are so many interlocking
connections that we have talked about today and
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LOCHNER
all of them, you know, made some contribution to
make CSEA what it is. It's not one person. It
wasn't Joe Lochner, although I do think that he
71:
ran with the ball and nurtured what he was
given.
And you know, one of the areas that we
didn't talk about today, which I feel my dad
recognized early on and he's always gonna be
identified with the insurance program, but what
people don't realize is that he was the one that
got FINSERV (phonetic) involved. He was the one
that when computers and data collection were
just evolving, he hired some consultants that
made inroads to getting this organization up to
speed.
Now, some people would argue that we
still operate in the 19th Century as far as our
sophistication with computers and so forth. I
don't think that's true. I think it might have
been true at one time, you know, because it was
very slow for the regions to go on-line and, you
know, I mean some of our efforts to get up to
speed with technology, you know, fell flat on
their face, they really did.
But for the most part we emerged as a
viable organization because we're able to
streamline our ability to communicate with our
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LOCHNER
72
membership and that came through computerization
and getting less labor intensive mass mailings
done and, you know, shifting our publication
from, you know, the old school Leader to the new
school work Force.
You know, that kind of stuff, I think,
is very, very important. I want to see CSEA
continue to be on the cutting edge of labor
relations in New York State, and if it's to do
that we have to somehow continue our ability to
develop that consensus from so many different
sources.
The difference between CSEA and other
unions, in my opinion, is that we are a house
composed of a million -- thousands and thousands
of different job titles and different
allegiances, and we somehow put ‘em all together
and get a general consensus that we're moving in
the right direction, but grudgingly.
Nobody's ever really wildly
enthusiastic about the direction we're going in
but there's a general perception that, yeah,
CSEA does get the job done. well, I want to
nurture that in the future and when you're
73
representing just cops or just nurses or a
special interest group that is homogenous, I
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LOCHNER
think your job is a helluva lot easier.
We represent every type of
configuration. Wwe represent private sector. we
represent public sector. we represent hybrids.
You know, we have gotta be everything to
everybody and so far we've done a damn good job
over the last 80 years or so in achieving that
objective and maybe our story that we're working
on today is going to be the piece of the puzzle
that's going to get people to realize there's a
beginning, there's a middle and hopefully
there's no end to the union movement in New York
State and elsewhere.
I'm sad that our union membership has
declined to the degree that it has but if
there's gonna be a saving grace it's gonna be in
the public sector and we've gotta step up and
step up to the plate, and to achieve that it's
not the field staff telling people what to do.
It's persuading, cajoling, leading by example to
get the job done and that really is a hard job
to do.
74
I think we're done, Ed.
MR. MADARASZ: That sounds like the
end of the video as a matter of fact. There is
material here.
MR. LOCHNER: Good. TI knew this was
gonna be fun.
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LOCHNER
(conclusion of interview of Bill
Lochner.)
Page 65
