Victor Gotbaum will be remembered as a great labor leader, even though he never commanded a national organization, based on two accomplishments: the growth of District Council 37 during the 22 years he ran it, and his outsize role in helping to rescue the city from the mid-1970s fiscal crisis, in the process preserving collective bargaining and full pension rights for municipal workers.
He had a larger-than-life personality that allowed him to be both profane and persuasive in dealing with the media and popular with those who worked for him, who were grateful for the latitude he gave them but occasionally cringed at the way he treated them or others when angered. It’s revealing that one of his department heads used two seemingly incongruous adjectives to describe him: “kind” and “vicious.”
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