Celebrating 50 Years of CSA
Half Century of Unionism
by Anne Silverstein
CSA officially turns 50 on Jan. 30, 2012. To commemorate this, the union will hold a number of special events culminating in a gala dinner/dance April 27 at the Waldorf Astoria. Each month, the CSA News will highlight a milestone in the union’s history. This month: How the CSA Welfare Fund began.
CSA is quite proud of its Welfare Fund and with good reason. The Fund offers supplemental benefits that rival those provided by any other municipal unions. It is well worth celebrating the Welfare Fund, one of the major benefits of union membership. Fought for by the founders, these benefits should not be taken for granted by today’s members.
Supplemental health benefits were clearly on the minds of the union’s founders; by February 1963, a Welfare Committee began exploring the possibility of providing a group major medical policy. (A tip of the hat to Committee members Chairman Harry Kase, John Heine, Solomon Kimmel, Ellen Mc-Guire, CSA Executive Director Albert L. Morrison and Caroline D. Schneider.)
On July 1, 1964, supplemental major medical insurance became a reality; more than 900 supervisors enrolled. Since that first policy, CSA hasn’t stopped trying to improve benefits for members. (Among the items established by the Welfare Committee: a tax-sheltered annuity for supervisors, approved by the Board of Education in 1965.)
One of the earliest references to an actual welfare fund can be found in the CSA Bulletin – the precursor to the CSA News – of February 1966. At a January meeting, committee members discussed the “best possible uses to which a welfare fund might be put” and made three recommendations to the Executive Board.
1) Major medical insurance should be provided to all supervisors
2) Extended Blue Cross benefits should be purchased for all supervisors
3) Apply whatever balance remains in the Fund to buying a group life insurance policy for all supervisors.
In April, the Bulletin announced, in a twoline head across the front page: Welfare Fund Will Receive $140 Per Supervisor; Consultants are Retained to Help Choose Benefits.
Albert Morrison, who wore many hats during his work for CSA ultimately becoming the President of AFSA, was selected as the Fund’s first administrator. The Executive Board elected five trustees: Robert B. Harris, Joseph H. Aaron, CSA President Stuart C. Lucey, Henry Kase, and Walter J. Degnan, (who also served as CSA President for eight non-consecutive years.)
By late 1966, CSA opened the doors of its full-time office at 186 Joralemon St., Brooklyn, and had hired an assistant to the administrator and a secretary. (Believe it or not, the Welfare Fund’s current telephone number, (718) 624-2600 was CSA’s original telephone number!)
Such was the technology that CSA asked members, in the CSA Bulletin, not to use the phone for routine calls because emergency phone calls could not get through. Members were urged to write for forms and to handle other mundane transactions.
In January 1967, the Board of Education approved a new program to be administered by the Welfare Fund: a dental and optical program. By 1969, CSA hired Elinore Jaffe, Brooklyn born and raised – to run the Fund. She came with experience setting up and running a Welfare Fund for the International Union of Electrical Workers (Local 485), which was right down the block from CSA. Under Ms. Jaffe’s watch, the CSA Welfare Fund continued to grow.
When she died in 1977 after a battle with cancer, CSA Treasurer Irwin Shanes stepped in to “temporarily” fill the spot. During his “temporary” tenure of nearly 30 years, CSA established the Day Care Council/CSA Welfare Fund and the Retiree Welfare Fund, and implemented the catastrophic benefit among many other initiatives. In addition, Mr. Shanes created a system that allowed Retiree Chapter benefits, which supplement the Welfare Fund, to be automatically processed through the Fund.
Under Mr. Shanes and his present-day successor, Dr. Douglas Hathaway, the Welfare Fund has provided a level of personal service that is unheard of in similar organizations. CSA members have often written over the years to thank an individual staff member for how their problems were handled. The Fund provides a symphony of benefits, worth thousands of dollars to individual members, and that helps to provide members in need with a little piece of mind.
