[Teresa Perez-Wiseley] Called and for 30 days,
go to work with us.
We can't give you the money you're making,
but go to work with us.
My husband finally said, "Between your dad and you,
you know you guys love
the God damn union, so go to work for them.
Go ahead and go to work for them.
Between my salary and whatever you make, we'll be okay."
I was like, oh my God,
I'm going to drop like
$8,000 and no benefits because it was the local,
I said, "Oh gosh everything I've ever fought for,
I'm going to actually accept for nothing?"
I said, "I don't know."
I talked to my dad about it and my dad said, "No.
Not only no, but absolutely not.
Do not take the job."
I was shocked. I said, "What?"
He said, "Do you know how hard it is to
work as a union organizer? Do you know?"
He went on and on, and he says, "No,
and if they're not going to pay you
even what you're making, forget it.
Go to law school where you're supposed to go."
Well, it never felt
that when he said something like that,
that was it. I took the job.
I went to work for them and they gave
me the job title of Steward Liaison, fancy title.
What I was supposed to do was organize,
elect, select,
train stewards at all the worksites.
I can still probably give you a tour
of Austin's worksites today.
(laughing) I laugh when the girls say,
"They water plants down there,
or the so and so building is down there."
They will say, "Mom, you're
the only one in the whole world that
tells people the city of Austin worksites."
Then I said, "Well,
shall we go to the state sites?
I know those too because I had to organize them."
Any how that was one of those things that
happened and I went to work for them.
About four months later,
I met a guy named John Dowling.
He had come to Austin to find out what the City of Austin
local wanted educationally wise
from the International Union
because I had an education department.
There was three of us that worked
for the Union at that time,
I was the lowest rank person.
(noise) The two bigger bosses said,
"I don't want to go to the stupid meeting
with education department,
you go with the leadership, we don't want to go."
I had been at a hearing
and so I came late to the meeting.
They were already all there talking with
John Dowling and Bailey Walker, his assistant.
John was Acting Director,
he was going through an interview process,
and Bailey was his assistant.
The meeting room we were at,
you could see all the city of Austin in this glass wall.
As I spoke, I looked out there,
I don't know how many city employees at the time,
but I said, "We should be
providing educational training to anybody and everybody,
anybody that wants to come as a way to get them in."
I said, "Whether it's how to fix
a resume or whether it's how to
lead a meeting or things that will
be of value to the workers here at city of Austin,
including safety OSHA training and went on."
When I was through,
when I had come in, like I said,
I had been at a hearing, for some reason,
I had worn my cowboy boots.
I had a pair, I still have them, put away somewhere,
that I still wear, and I had
taken them off because my feet hurt.
This is part of the story, so
I put them away somewhere, I put them to the side.
At the end of the meeting,
everybody were eating and whatever and
John Dowling came up to where I was and he said,
"If you want to know where your shoes are,
you have to accept the job with me."
I said, "Okay, now that's
the interesting way to ask somebody for a job."
I said, "What?" He said,
"I have a position.
I need a Spanish-speaking individual.
Can you speak Spanish?"
I said, "Yeah, I can speak Spanish."
"Can you write Spanish?"
I said, "Fairly well."
I said, "Not perfect but somebody has to check it.
Besides, I'm not going to
interpret for you and I'm not going
to write things for
you in Spanish unless you pay me more."
I said, "Because we've been
fighting for extra pay for those benefits at the city,
why would I do it for you for less?"
He just laughed and he says,
"You'd have seven states.
You'd have to come to Washington.
You might have to do stuff internationally,
and we can pay you
what you were earning before
you went to work for the local?"
Well, that was 18,000.
He says, "We have benefits."
He went on and on about the benefits.
I thought, oh my God,
I've died and gone to heaven because this is
other than an offer I had for 30,000 to be
a PR because really part
of my background is public relations,
to be a PR person in Houston,
I had never had an offer like
that and I could not live in Houston.
So I said, "No."
I said, "Don't people have to
apply for these jobs internally first
and then if you don't hire somebody,
then you open the job
up to the people in the world basically?"
He said, "Well, sure."
He said, "It's already open."
He says, "The job's open."
I said, "You offered me the job." He said, "I did."
I said, "Something doesn't sound right."
I said, "After all the stuff we
fought for here and everywhere else,
that doesn't sound right.
No, I'm not applying for it."
He laughed and he says,
"Well, I'm not going to tell you where your boots are."
Well, it turned out I found them by
accident. They were in the refrigerator.
But that became the way I found my job.
For 29 days I got calls from people all over the country,
that did the work that I was being asked to do.
I got called from other leaders around the country that
needed Spanish-speaking educational staff
to come to their states calling me and saying,
"I hear you speak Spanish.
I hear that you're really good,
please apply for the position."
On the 30th day at
3:30 because it was 4:30 over there, Washington DC,
I called and I spoke to Joyce Casey and I said,
"Joyce, I was told to call
you if I was interested in applying for the work."
"Yeah. Yeah. I've heard about you." She was tough.
She said, "So are you going to take the job or not?"
I said, "Well, I'm going to apply."
"Be here Monday. I'm going to order you a ticket,
it'll be there in a few hours,
get on a plane on Saturday. You'll have a hotel.
Take off Saturday and Sunday,
enjoy Washington DC and we'll
see you at nine o'clock on Monday morning."
I told my husband what she said,
he says, "Go." I went.
The ticket was there. I went to the airport.
It had the itinerary at the hotel and everything.
They even had wired me money.
I got there and I've never been
to Washington DC in my life.
My father had, but I had not.
I went around walking around touring.
I went to a Smithsonian,
I did that stuff,
and Monday morning, the hotel
was really practically across the street.
I went into the asked me building
and they asked me
who was I and who did I need to
speak to because it was closed off.
You had to have a way to get in.
I said, "Well,
I was supposed to be here to meet with John Dowling."
"Oh, you're meeting with Joyce Casey? Okay."
Here's your tag.
Get on that elevator
right there and then go on up to,
I think it was a seventh floor at that time.
I said okay.
I went to go get on the elevator,
and what was really interesting was there was
this elder man standing in front of the elevator,
stooped over a little bit,
everybody else was behind him like over here.
They we're getting in on the elevator.
Nobody was near him,
I walked right up to where he
was, I didn't know who he was.
He said, "Who are you?"
My name is Teresa Perez-Wiseley.
Oh, you are on your education rep.
He says, "Well, I'm Jerry Wolf.
I'm the president of this union."
I know who he was because I had read the book,
and there were two books out on ASCFME,
so I'd read them and I said,
Mr. Wolf, he shook his head.
I look and everybody was standing further backward,
holy shit, this really is the president.
I said, you're really the president?
He says "Yeah,
been it for a long time. Get on the elevator."
I got on the elevator when the thing rang,
and he says, "I'm going to
get off the floor before you."
He says, "I've heard a lot of good things about you."
I said, okay.
He said, "Don't let Joyce Casey scare you.
She's just mean on the outside."
His elevator opened, he got off.
He's, I'll see you later.
He got off, and then I went up
one more floor and I went over there.
As I came around the corner,
there was a rip roaring fight going on
between a man and a woman in an office.
I could hear it all the way
from the elevator and I thought,
oh my god, what is that?
As I got closer, it was getting closer and
closer. I got there.
There was no one there in the reception area,
so I just sat down.
I don't know, 10 minutes later,
she came out of the office yelling at him or something.
She slammed the door and she goes, "Who are you?"
I said I'm Teresa Perez-Wiseley,
and he goes, "Oh, okay.
Here. She give me a bunch of paper and she says,
"Fill all this out, and
when you're through, let me know."
It was a bunch of employment paper.
I'm filling it out and I'm thinking,
I filled it all out and I gave it to her
and I said so when do I get
interviewed? She said, interviewed?
You are hired, 5:00 PM on Friday.
5:01, let me correct that.
You're hired, you got the job.
What did you think? You came here for an interview?
I said, yes.
No baby, you're hired.
That began my 30 year relationship with her.
We became good friends.
She still calls me. She was
having a fight with John Dowling.
I said, you were fighting with John Dowling?
She says, "Oh, that white man just drives me crazy.
She was African-American,
just as crazy as hell.
John comes out and says, "Quit calling me a white man.
I'm from Ireland, I'm Irish.
I'm a potato eating Irish man."
I was shocked,
but that's how I met him.
I started working in seven states.
By the time I was through,
I worked in 39 states.
I had worked in Puerto Rico.
I assisted in the preliminary negotiations of
the last contract with
Panama Canal employees and the DOD,
because it was still under the rule of the United States.
I dealt with the Air Force,
the Navy, the Army.
Not the Navy, but the other water one?
All five of them, every branch
of the US military was part of
this negotiating team on the military side for the canal.
Then there was five of us, Bailey Walker, myself,
the president of the local whose name
I can't believe I don't remember anymore,
and a couple of other people that were from the local.
The contract was this big.
They had taken every federal contract
that ever seen and put it into one.
This was their contract.
I'm looking at it going,
oh, because we came in two weeks early.
When I first saw it, I said,
dude, it can't be bigger than this.
That was the cover. I said we have to make that this big.
Well, we never made it that big.
I think it was about this big when we walked in.
We cut some pages,
and we walked in dressed like regular people.
They walk in in there fancy dress,
all the little things on them,
and all the bars and the huge ribbons.
I thought, oh my God,
this is going to be interesting.
Bailey Walker,
unbeknownst to me until a few days earlier.
Oh, I know. There was another guy.
The lead guy was
our Inter-American rep. We
only have two left in the whole world,
and he was one of them and Bailey had been in the CIA.
I didn't know that until much later.
Bailey was also a certified priest,
Roman Catholic priest.
When we first got the assignment to go over there,
I told them, do not ask
me to carry a brown paper sack with money.
Do not ask me to do any of
that espionage shit that you guys
supposedly did when you were younger,
because I think you're still both in the CIA.
I don't want nothing to do with you all in that world.
We're going into a foreign country,
don't even think of including me.
For one I can't run fast enough to not get killed.
(laughing) I said, and secondly,
I don't believe in the CIA and what you do.
They just laughed. We get into this hearing,
and Bailey's wearing all black leather,
big black glasses,
and a leather hat.
I'm like, who are you?
The other gentleman had on what we used to call a suit.
In the FBI world, they were called the suits.
He was dressed just like that with one of those little,
I forget what they call the hat, and black glasses.
The rest of us looked like peasant compared to them.
We walked in there, I was
more nervous about the fact
that I was sitting with Bailey and,
I can't remember the gentleman's name,
but it's in all the history books of ASCFME.
We lasted 45 minutes before it went into impasse.
We had already hired somebody and she was waiting
in Miami to get a phone call to come in to mediate.
Two weeks and 45 minutes,
my whole bargaining experience
was over on the Panama Canal,
because it had to be mediated
by a federal mediator. The federal mediator-