Before Hudson came to SEIU in 1978, he worked at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale, NY. He was elected executive vice president for District 1199 New York, and coordinated this group’s incorporation into SEIU. Hudson has also served as political director of the New York State Democratic Party, and led the union’s campaigns in support of Jesse Jackson’s presidential efforts in New York.
******
Gerry Hudson
“The poor are dispersed in jobs which are difficult to organize because of scattered, small units, seasonal employment, etc., and where the potential membership is so impoverished that it cannot even finance a basic union structure at the outset. Where these workers have succeeded in creating their own organizations—in the hospitals of New York and the fields of California, for instance—they have done so by being a labor-oriented civil rights movement and not just a union. The people belonged to minority groups and as such, they were able to appeal to a broad segment of the community, to the rest of labor, the churches, the middle-class liberals, the idealistic young and so on.”