The advertising blurb on the back cover of this book states in part:
"The union of hospital workers referred to as the 1199 sits at the intersection of three of the most important topis in US history: organize labor, health care, and civil rights. John Hennen's book explores the union's history in Appalachia, a region that is generally associated with extractive industries but has seen health care grow as a share of the overall economy."
John Hennen is professor emeritus of history at Morehead State University and this is his third published book. He is a native West Virginian and was educated at Marshall University and West Virginia University. This is his third book. He is an excellent researcher and a damn fine writer. This book is the history of one of the most unique unions in America, Local 1199, a union which defends the rights of healthcare workers in several states, most of which are in Central and Southern Appalachia. But the union was actually chartered and did its first organizing work in New York City. The book provides a scholarly account of the work of original organizer Leon Davis who was an immigrant from Belarus. It also covers the work of Tom Woodruff, another native West Virginian who was educated at Marshall University, and explores the connection between Tom Woodruff and Don West, the founder of The Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia, and co-founder of the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee. Woodruff and West both taught at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia, during a time when Woodruff was also running Appalachian Movement Press in Huntington, West Virginia, before Woodruff left those two positions to become an organizer for Local 1199 and began what is a storied career as a union organizer and eventual operating officer.
The book chronicles organizing efforts by 1199 in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Southern Ohio in the 1970's which were both successful and hard fought. The union and its organizers and members were resisted, red baited, and drug through the court systems of nearly every county they attempted to organize in. Hospital administrators frequently hired strike breaking companies which were generally billed as "consultants" and which used every means possible including arrest, red baiting, and general harassment to attempt to break 1199. The union did not win all its organizing effforts but, in the long run, it was more successful in organizing healthcare workers in Appalachia than anyone in the region ever imagined it could be. Across several small communities and small hospitals, they won key strikes, benefited from support among the communities which often had been strongholds of the United Mine Workers of America, and made union membership and its benefits a real part of life and the American Dream for workers who had generally been poorly paid, without benefits, and forced to live and work at the whim of hospital administrators many of whom proved to be just as mercenary as the local coal operators had been in earlier times when the United Mine Workers were attempting to organize coal miners in the early twentieth century.
If you are a student of organized labor, the Appalachian Region, a healthcare worker anywhere in America, or simply a supporter of basic human rights, you should read this book. It is a fine lesson in how determined organizers and union members can win against long odds. This union, its officials, and members lived a proud portion of history in the Appalachian coal fields and their story deserves to be heard wherever workers have felt as Ma Joad did in "The Grapes of Wrath" when she said,
"...it looked as though we was beat. Good and beat. Looked like we didn't have nobody in the whole wide world but enemies. Like nobody was friendly no more. Made me feel kinda bad and scared too, like we was lost and nobody cared... ."
The organizers, national officials, and members of Local 1199 never gave up, never backed down, and never were willing to accept being in a world where it seemed the whole world was their enemy. Read this book! :Union, Yes!
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