N+1: Did it feel unusual at the time to be organizing as white-collar workers?

ROSENSTEIN: There weren’t a lot of precedents. But we felt that we were part of a movement because there were a lot of university office workers who were organizing at the time. We were very optimistic that we were breaking boundaries, and that we were going to be able to go on to organize tens of thousands of university workers, women workers, office workers, white-collar workers — that this was going to be something that other people would pick up. And it was very exciting.

There were other precedents. There were some other university workers and college workers who were organized in our own union, District 65. Publishing workers had organized originally into an independent association in the ’40s at HarperCollins — it was then called Harper & Row. And that unit survives to this day as part of Local 2110. Workers at the Museum of Modern Art organized in the late ’70s, and they too organized as an independent association. And you know it was all for the white-collar workers. So there was stuff that was happening.