"Fred A. Punch, president of Local 1199E, Hospital and Nursing Home Employees Union, AFL-CIO, in reply to recent questions from a group of Johns Hopkins University students, said they could be of help in labor organizing drives.

"If you really want to do something, cut off your beards, cut off your beards, cut off your [African] bushes, take off your dashikis. You've got to look like someone working people can relate to', he has told members of AWARE, a student group active in civil rights.

"But Mr. Punch, who has been successful in organizing about 7,000 non-professional employees at nine hospitals and several nursing homes the past year, said the normal problems of unionizing workers have become complicated by racist attitudes.

"Whites at many of the hospitals refuse to join the black-led union," said Mr. Punch, himself a Negro. For example, he said, "the union organized about 1,500 employees, mostly black, at Johns Hopkins Hospital but some 2,500 others mostly white, refused to join."

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posted 24 July 2008