Mary fought her way into history as the first woman to lead a Central Labor Council in Southern California. She also faced the challenge of being the first Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the newly joint San Bernardino and Riverside Counties Central Labor Council in 1977. Leading a council is a battle in itself but taking on an organization twice as big? That’s a fight few would be ready for.
Mary Curtin was born in 1935 in New York. She was married with 6 kids including her sons Mike and Kevin Curtin. She moved to the Inland Empire with her family around 1963 from Pennsylvania after a friend of her husband told him about work opportunities in the west coast. After working various jobs since the age of 12 and getting her BA and MFA at UC Riverside, she became a community college teacher of language and literature at RCC. Her journey into labor organizing started here, as her son Mike Curtin describes,
“She was a member of AFT…there were five of them that were working in the instructional media center…[the RCC school board] decided to fire them as credential personnel and immediately rehire them at the same rate as non-credential personnel so that they couldn’t accrue tenure or benefits.”
They sued the school board and won, though none of them continued working there after three years. This Caught the attention of Burnell Phillips, Secretary-Treasurer of the Riverside County Labor Council Before the merger, and encouraged her to take his position after the merger, much to the annoyance of Earl “Tiny” Wilson, the Secretary-Treasurer of the San Bernardino County Central Labor Council. Mary ended up becoming not only the first Secretary-Treasurer of the post-merger Labor Council in 1977, she was also the first woman to lead a labor council in the area.
Through her work as Secretary-Treasurer, she held an emphasis on labor education and women’s rights. She organized conferences and workshops dedicated to educating people on how to organize one’s workplace. These workshops were also developed as new labor laws were put into place by congress, in some cases leading to re-education of already established union members. She also attended various women focused union events such as the “Women to Women: A Dialogue for the 80s” Conference and the “Women-in-the-Work-Force” Conference. In July1985, she won Unionist of the Year at the Labor Recognition Awards
After 12 years she retired from her position in June 1987. Mike talks about her reasoning behind stepping down,
“She basically determined that she had accomplished what she wanted to accomplish… she never did want to make it a career job… like a fiefdom… once she figured out that she had done as much as she could…she was ready to go.”
After her work at the labor council, she became a freelance writer specializing in Labor History, Celtic Literature, and Political Organizing. She recently passed away after a long battle with dementia in 2018, leaving behind a legacy in the Inland Empire Labor resistance movement.
