[Teresa Perez-Wiseley] They all looked at Olivia,
what was your case on fair treatment and fair pay
(inaudible) with who it was. How did I rule?
Were you ruled in favor of the union?
How ruling in favor of the union again today?
You pay these people, the pay that they
lost by the end of tomorrow,
or I'm going to start charging you.
I think it was something like 225,000
dollars a day fine for not doing it.
Then he (inaudible) went on and said,
how dare you bring these people
here and deny the arbitration,
which is final and binding.
You denied your own contractual languages,
I'm not going to put up with you,
the next time you come in here for one of these,
what do you think my position is going to be?
You pay them in two days.
They tried to tell us to go home.
Our attorney called the judge,
and he says no,
you pay for them till you pay them the money
that you denied them, and I want
to see a salary scale developed
within 20 days and
back to me here when these people here.
I think my first check was
like 30,000 dollars or
something like that because
it was over a period of time.
He went back all the way.
He says, we're using this young lady,
which was me, she's just starting point. Here forward.
Once you build that scale,
we'll then put that scale based on her first
18,000 will be the bottom.
Then we're going to go from there.
Well, what ended up happening was all
of us were moved to the top of
the scale. Every one of us.
Because everybody had been
there already that period of time.
I don't remember what the scale actually began at,
but if you took five years or four years of
whatever blas pay, it was substantial.
[Steve Arionus] Based on this experience,
what do you think that says about
the power of labor organizing?
[Teresa Perez-Wiseley] I think labor organizations
are very powerful.
Not as powerful as it used to be.
But today the largest and probably still the best union
in the country for public employees is AFSCME,
I don't think there's a better union.
We've been doing it longer than anybody else.
We weren't the Johnny come lately is like
ACIU, and all these other unions that have come in.
When they saw that they can make money,
I guess you can put it that way by organizing
public employees because nobody wanted us.
But, AFSCME took us on and started out as I think it was
a Federal Employees Association
of all men, actually in Wisconsin.
Then today it's probably 50 percent or more women.
I think it's African-American, and then probably Latinos
by race or ethnicity in its membership.
I think that the collective power of any group,
like whether it was (FOREIGN)
we could have gotten bigger.
What we could've done, we could
have been historical obviously.
What we did I think was still historical.
It trained a whole community of people
to then today be retiring from elective office.
Many of my friends went into office.
I never chose to be though I was asked to be many times.
Even in other states.
I've worked there six,
seven months and they'd say can you stay here,
we want you to run for state rep.
The thing about a politician is that
you're owned by somebody.
The powers to be the, put you in
the people who you're going to
represent that we should on you.
But issue is you are under scrutiny,
the microscope, and looking class.
As you see, I have no curtains.
I don't care if people see what I'm doing.
This is to protect the heat of the sun on
this side. I don't care.
They see me eating here. Whatever I don't care,
that's not an issue to me because I own my own destiny.
I'm not being controlled by anyone.
I have helped a lot of people get into office.
That's a much better position to be in.
That's who I prefer to be.
[Steve Arionus] While you were in,
how do you pronounce that?
[Teresa Perez-Wiseley] American Federation of State County
Municipal Employees International Union AFSCME.
[Steve Arionus] AFSCME. There were several political
activities, right?
[Teresa Perez-Wiseley] A lot.
[Steve Arionus] Was there any collaboration with
Latino advocacy groups or
with African-American advocacy groups?
[Teresa Perez-Wiseley] With just about everyone
that we can find.
That was one of the reasons they wanted me too.
I could go into a community,
meet a few people here and there,
you phone books and whatever,
make phone calls and attend meetings of
those groups, and be the crossover.
There were campaigns where
the white candidate was the one that was endorsed.
But to me and to others,
it was clear the brown candidate would win.
I was a crossover.
I would go work in
that person's campaign after hours on weekends.
When I wasn't having to work over
here or I didn't work over here at
all I was assigned to over
here just in case the underdog got in.
If you underdog got in,
then I was that person that would bring
them to the table because I had been there.
I did that probably more than 10 or 15 times in
my political career with AFSCME, it was still working.
It wasn't always something that they directed us to do.
Sometimes it was something that a few of
us that were in the movement knew how to be done.
We'd sacrifice a few of
us, and we'd go work in that other group.
[Steve Arionus] Did any of these campaigns
take place in Texas?
[Teresa Perez-Wiseley] Yeah. Houston was one of them.
Biggest one I guess was in Houston.
It was a mayor's race.
The guy that Labor had endorsed was a good guy.
It wasn't that he wasn't a good guy.
He was white. City of Houston has a lot of white mayors.
The city of Houston is city of color.
At that time, I guess the more
predominant active that was fighting
for leadership was the Hispanic community.
All the Hispanic politicians and all the Hispanic,
whatever we're working with
the Hispanic guy that was running for mayor.
I was one of the people that
during the day maybe I worked
a few hours for the white candidate.
But, most of the really good crucial hours
I was working in the other campaign.
I would literally take all my green T-shirts,
which is our color.
I'd put on his T-shirt, whatever it was.
Let's say in our union members to help him,
the brown ones first.
Then we would train them and then say,
you go and get all the other votes you can get.
It wasn't a thing that was always
sanctioned by the union,
but in a lot of cases they said,
"We can't go with a Texas AFL-CIO," or.
"We can't go with this (inaudible) they're wrong,
the one that should have been endorsed was this one,"
and so we did, and it did.
I did that in San Antonio.
I think I did it in Brownsville once,
El Paso once,
and (inaudible) once, well, Dallas.
Unfortunately, the mayor in Houston ended up in
jail in the long-run, never fails.
I don't remember what it is that he did anymore,
but the issue was that at the time,
it was the right thing to do,
and I knew it was the right thing to do.
When I retired from (inaudible) in 2007,
the one thing I said was,
"Now I don't belong to nobody.
I'm going to support
women and I'm going to support Latinos.
I'm going to try like hell to
focus what I can in those areas."
That doesn't mean that I haven't supported
white candidates because I have.
This community normally tends
to have a liberal city council member come from it.
In fact, up until 101,
we had five or six council members of this neighborhood.
Usually, the mayor, they came
from these neighborhoods here in this side,
west of 35, the terrible place.
I always laughed, I said, "I live here too.
A lot of good people live here."
I've done it and I'll do it
again if I have to live that life again.
I would vocalize.
I felt like if they didn't fire
me when we sued the union,
they better not fire me for expressing myself,
so I was always pretty much outspoken.
I had a following of stat people who said, well,
they've never would have hired you if you weren't who
you are, but I don't agree with you.
We need to do the numbers, and
the numbers suck a lot of times.
Because the underdog is the underdog,
the numbers aren't relevant to
us because we don't have the same.
If all things were equal,
then the numbers would make sense,
but things are not equal.
I don't think they're going to be
equal until that 2025 figure,
whenever it is that we take over the United States.
But even then the problem is,
and I always tell this to people,
and I've heard this analogy before,
that we're like the cockroach people.
Oscar Zeta Acosta talked about us as
a cockroach people. I love that book.
But if you have a bucket and it's full of roaches,
a roach survives atomic nuclear energy explosion,
a roach has been here since before man,
but it only survives by eating practically its own.
I don't even know if it's true of all Latinos,
but at least I know in the world that I live in,
cannot always support others to make it.
I believe in the,
if I made it to this point,
then I need to reach out and bring more people up,
not fight to get up to the top first, that's wrong.
Because if all we're going to do
is fight to get up to the top,
we're never going to make it.
One at a time doesn't work.
It's like the campaign I'm involved in
now, and not as heavy as I used to be.
I'm involved in it because I have
to see a woman become president before I die.
I have to see it,
and I would love to see a Hispanic woman,
but I don't think I'll get to see that.
I'm hoping that I'll see a Hispanic male
as Hillary Clinton's running mate,
but that hasn't been secured yet.
But, I know the names
that are up and we all are seeing them.
I had hoped it would be one of the twins of San Antonio,
but I think it's going to be somebody else.
But, I just worry about
when Hispanics and blacks
sometimes tend to become millionaires,
they forget their roots and they
become one of the masses that suppresses further.
If we become the majority someday,
that means we're going to have brown republicans,
which we already do, which I don't have
any idea what they
think they're doing in the Republican Party.
The Democratic Party may not resolve all our issues,
may not take care of our issues,
but they're the party we belong in
because (inaudible) is long gone.
There never was a labor party
organized, there was an attempt,
but a party that has such a racist foundation,
how the hell can you belong to it?
I don't understand. I have
a sister who votes republican,
I used to try calling her and saying,
"Did you vote yesterday?"
Sometimes it would work I think, sometimes it didn't.
She'd finally say, "I know the election's today,
don't even try to get me not to vote."
I would say, "I cannot
believe that you came out
of the same household that I did.
I just cannot believe it.
Where were you? In La-la land?"
Because she is a voting republican,
and it just drives me insane, to be honest with you.
It's a major embarrassment
that I have a republican voting sister.
But, I think we're seeing more racism
rise again now because of
the fear of the fact that we are becoming dominant.
You look at the City of Austin,
there's people that I know that had been fighting for
single-member districts for 50 years.
I came here thinking the City of Austin
has single-member districts because
Corpus Christi had them.
Little backward Corpus Christi
had single-member districts.
Here when it was district 1, 2,
3, 4, whatever position,
I thought it was districts until I voted and they said,
"No, you can vote for
all of them," I said, "All of them?"
From then, I became one of
the proponents for single-member districts.
Not as vocal as others,
but if you needed me,
I was there, and now we have it.
Now we have three elected, our first Latina,
I think she's probably tired of hearing that,
but our first Latina,
which there had never been a Latina.