IN THE BEGINNING — PEF’s first leader and president, John Kraemer, is shown above at PEF’s founding convention in 1979 flanked by the other first statewide officers: Angelo Massa, Connie Cabell, Sal Monaco and Joe Salerno.
Below, Kraemer speaks at the 1995 PEF convention.
PEF mourns death of founder, John Kraemer
By SHERRY HALBROOK
PEF members were shocked and saddened to learn of the death of their union’s founder and first president, John J. Kraemer, who died October 13 in Yonkers at the age of 69 following a long illness.
“President Kraemer’s leadership led to adding at least 300,000 new public sector members to the NYS AFL-CIO,” said PEF’s current president, Roger Benson. “I expressed to his family PEF’s deep appreciation for his enormous efforts and sacrifice over many years in leading the effort to found PEF.”
CSEA did not affiliate with the AFL-CIO, until after Kraemer and many other concerned state employees succeeded in getting the state’s PS&T unit employees to choose PEF as their new bargaining agent in an historic 1978 election. That vote was actually the third time Kraemer had succeeded in putting the question of union representation before the state’s workforce. The first two attempts failed, but Kraemer refused to give up.
“John was a colorful, energetic, innovative labor leader. He was politically astute and dared to face any challenge fearlessly,” said Connie Cabell, his friend and fellow leader in organizing PEF.
Cabell, PEF’s first secretary-treasurer, also described Kraemer as, “a strong labor leader who set out to organize New York state’s employees into what he called ‘a real union — the AFL-CIO.’’
After more than a decade of struggle, and the help of many other people and unions, Kraemer was successful.
“John and Connie worked tirelessly cheek-by-jowl to perform many day-to-day miracles that had to be done,” said Stanley Byer, a PEF Region 8 activist from those earliest years.
“John negotiated the best contract pay raises PEF ever had — 8 percent, 8 percent and 9 percent,” Byer said. “But a few years later, he was indicted (for mishandling the union’s funds).”
Jim Sheedy, who succeeded Cabell as PEF secretary-treasurer and was later elected president, said he is reluctant to pass judgement on Kraemer, who had to create the union’s administration from scratch.
“I believe John was trying to do what he thought was best,” Sheedy said. “PEF only had about a half dozen employees at that time. All of the money he spent out of that slush fund was for work for the members. He wasn’t putting it in his pocket.”
The public-sector labor and legal environment changed dramatically following enactment of the state’s Taylor Law, which took effect in 1968 and set the stage for real public-sector bargaining and union representation.
“It was a wild time because it was a very formative stage of the labor movement in the public sector,” recalled PEF field representative Warren Lew, who worked closely with Kraemer in organizing PEF. “If John hadn’t worked so hard to bring about legitimate union representation for state employees, it would have been a long, long wait.”
Kraemer, a state Labor Department employee, left state service in the 1980s and worked for the United Way until his failing health forced him to retire.
Byer seemed to speak for many of Kraemer’s critics in PEF when he observed, “In retrospect, I have a lot more respect for John today, than I did when he was president.”
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