Caucus weekend awards and preview: Beryl Major, DC 37 retiree and board member, Municipal Credit Union

For decades, Beryl Major took pleasure in her work at District Council 37, the public employee union. She found so much enjoyment serving public sector workers that rather than retire cold turkey, she took a position on the Municipal Credit Union’s board of directors, where she helps workers who she said may be overlooked by commercial banks.

Major began working for New York City’s municipal hospital system as an office associate in the 1970s. Her supervisor inspired her to get more involved with DC 37, where she started as the youngest labor education trainer. She was involved with a women’s summer school program started by women at DC 37 that taught organization and communication skills – as well as their rights as activists – to people within and outside the public sector leadership.

Major went on to work at Local 420 of DC 37, a union representing health care workers, as director of membership development. There she trained shop stewards and worked with lobbyists on legislation.

In the early 1980s, Norman Adler, DC 37’s director of political action and legislation, tapped Beryl to manage the campaign for then-City Councilwoman Mary Pinkett, who Beryl described as the first “labor person” on the City Council. She loved knocking on doors and threw herself into other campaigns, eventually working as U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke’s political director.

“It was always us against the status quo, at the time, and that’s what labor was about,” she said. “We were always fighting uphill for workers’ rights, so my career tended to go along the path of social equality issues, women’s rights, political rights, those type of things.”

Today, Major has grown more involved in her East Elmhurst, Queens, community, where she recently worked with neighbors to fend off a developer’s plans for a large hotel and conference center she described as unsuited for the residential area.