Henry Nicholas

Hometown: Philadelphia. Union: American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, Council 1199C. Affiliation: AFL-CIO. Background: Nicholas began his labor career in 1956. He represents 17,000 hospital workers locally who are members of Council 1199C. He is also an international vice president of AFSCME and president of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees. Nicholas was recently elected executive vice president of the national Coalition of Black Trade Unionists.

Henry Nicholas smiled as he sat in the pulpit at Canaan Baptist Church yesterday and heard dozens of speakers, many of them elected officials, praise him for his work as a labor leader and a community activist. Three hours into a tribute organized by a group of ministers, the man of the hour rose. Nicholas graciously thanked his admirers and then challenged them to prove how much they respected him. Nicholas, president of District 1199C of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Workers, said that he was launching a mentoring program, and he put officials on notice that he would be calling on them to make contributions.

Henry Nicholas, a well-known labor leader and poltiical activist, has learned the meaning of the old saying, If you want a job done right, do it yourself. Or maybe he just can't get anybody else to do the job. Nicholas said he's pretty sure he's going to run as an independent in the mayor's race. "I believe the people need something to vote for in November," he said. On Tuesday, he changed his voter registration from Democrat to independent. He has until August to file for the election.

A panel of Philadelphia judges is trying to determine why Henry Nicholas, a prominent union leader and political activist, was arraigned and freed in about half the normal time after his arrest for an act of civil disobedience tied to the recent Presidents' Summit on volunteerism. Nicholas, president of the Hospital and Health Workers union, was released from a holding cell 10 hours after his arrest April 30, after a Democratic ward leader and other supporters called a bail commissioner on his behalf and a top city prosecutor said he had no objection to a speedy release.

The campaign that never got started is over. Labor leader Henry Nicholas said yesterday that he would not run for mayor as an independent candidate in the general election. Nicholas, who last week summoned the media and supporters to a news conference where he was expected to announce his candidacy, revealed his final decision by fax in a one-page statement. Nicholas, in a brief interview yesterday, said he would support neither Democratic Mayor Rendell nor Republican M. Joseph Rocks in the November election.

"Four twenty-seven! . . . 115!! . . . 427!!! . . . 115!!!! . . . 427!!!!!!" The flimsy gray partitions in the Wyndham Franklin Plaza, designed to mute the soft cocktail-party sounds of developers and accountants, are flexing in and out like a bass drum. The municipal trash workers of Local 427 and the Teamsters of Local 115 are gathered for a parliamentary discussion - what, are they kidding? - of issues relating to the campaign for mayor of Philadelphia, particularly privatization, which to a lot of union guys means They're Gonna Take My Job. Then someone throws a chair.

If Henry Nicholas could lift his house on his shoulders and carry it down to Society Hill, he thinks it would be worth at least $300,000. But Nicholas' late-19th-century mansion, designed by architect Wilson Eyre, is in North Philadelphia. It cost him $10,000. Because of where it is, he said, no bank was willing to give him a mortgage even for that small sum when he bought the place in 1983. And these are the same banks, he said, that handle millions of dollars in business from the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees Local 1199C, the city's second-largest union, which he founded and has run since 1974.

The leader of the union that represents health-care employees at Temple University Hospital on Sunday threatened a strike over an arbitration dispute involving a terminated employee accused of sexual harassment. "We're prepared to shut it down," said Henry Nicholas, president of AFSCME District 1199C, which represents hospital employees across the city. There's almost no chance, union representatives said, of an actual strike - the union contract contains a no-strike clause. But for its president to even mention a strike - at a hospital that has historically enjoyed a strong, amicable relationship with its union - shows how upset the union has become over the arbitration dispute.

Henry Nicholas (above center) of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, is arrested yesterday at 2nd Street and Germantown Avenue. He and other protesters, members of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, cleaned up a park and planned to set up shacks to live in. Cheri Honkala (left), director of the Kensington group, is led to police van.

At Allegheny University Hospitals/Hahnemann, more than 400 members of Local 1199C of the National Union of Hospital/Health Care Workers protest cutbacks. At Broad and Vine Streets during rush hour yesterday, union president Henry Nicholas said, "There is a swift decline in the quality of patient care . . . and the people have got to take back their health care system from the Wall Street speculators. "

The leader of the union that represents health-care employees at Temple University Hospital on Sunday threatened a strike over an arbitration dispute involving a terminated employee accused of sexual harassment. "We're prepared to shut it down," said Henry Nicholas, president of AFSCME District 1199C, which represents hospital employees across the city. There's almost no chance, union representatives said, of an actual strike - the union contract contains a no-strike clause. But for its president to even mention a strike - at a hospital that has historically enjoyed a strong, amicable relationship with its union - shows how upset the union has become over the arbitration dispute.

Longtime labor leader Henry Nicholas, 76, has no plans to retire and said he's never had a tired day in his life. "I'm a lucky guy," he said. Even so, Nicholas has been consciously grooming a successor to lead District 1199C, the 11,358-member hospital workers' union for employees in dozens of the region's nursing homes and most of Philadelphia's major hospitals. "The character of a leader is to make sure that when he can't lead, someone else can," Nicholas said. "I have an obligation.

In the dirt-floor doorway of a Mississippi sharecropper's home built of logs chinked with Spanish moss, a little boy, no more than 4, clung to his father's leg, terrified. "At least several times, I observed my father standing in the door when the Ku Klux Klan with hoods on came to get him," said Henry Nicholas, the labor leader. "With me hanging on his leg, he would cock the gun and tell them to make their moves, and he'd stare them down until they rode away. "That never, ever left me. My father wasn't afraid, but I was. He wasn't scared, but I was scared to death.

Union leaders representing 1,400 workers at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital braced for a possible strike Saturday night as an 11:30 p.m. deadline neared with no contract from a marathon bargaining session. "We are not close," said Henry Nicholas, who, as president of District 1199C of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, represents licensed practical nurses, hospital escorts, nurses' assistants, kitchen staff, and other unionized support workers at Jefferson, in Center City.

It is parents' duty to teach civility In his letter of July 5 ("Youth violence and school funding"), Henry Nicholas, president of District 1199C, National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, says of the recent violence on North Broad Street that "we should compare it to the violent knifing of the School District budget and make the obvious connection between the two. " I see no connection. The School District's duty is to teach its children reading, writing, and arithmetic.

In about a month, 20 secretaries, clerks, and administrators - all employees of one of the city's most storied unions - will participate in a National Labor Relations Board election to decide whether they want to be represented by a union themselves. Ironically, their employer, longtime labor leader Henry Nicholas, declined to recognize the bargaining unit when he was presented with signed petition cards from a majority of the workers. Nicholas is a staunch supporter of a proposed federal law known as "card check," which would allow unions to organize workplaces without a separate election if a majority of workers sign cards requesting representation.

Girard Medical Center will lay off about 100 people April 24, a few days after it permanently closes its Continuing Care Hospital, according to a notice filed with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. Girard Medical Center, at Eighth Street and Girard Avenue, is part of the North Philadelphia Health System, which includes St. Joseph's Hospital at Girard and 16th Street. The medical center is a 168-bed long-term acute-care hospital, its Web site said. "NPHS and its Girard Medical Center have been striving in these harsh economic times to maintain the operation of CCH," the Wednesday notice said, adding that officials had met with other area hospitals to generate more referrals.

Helen Jenkins Bigham was a groundbreaker, in her 50s and again in her 70s. The second time it was at the People's Emergency Center in West Philadelphia, which helps families that often "are headed by single young mothers who have never lived on their own. " "They typically read at a sixth grade level or lower," the center's Web site states, "and have little or no work experience. " In a eulogy last Monday for Mrs. Bigham, PEC president Gloria Guard said, "Our ability to have touched thousands of lives never would have happened without her. " On Dec. 22, Mrs. Bigham, 94, died of abdominal cancer at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood.

James T. Ryan, of Lansdowne, 71, a labor educator and social justice activist, died of cancer Tuesday at home. For 26 years, Dr. Ryan was director of the Training and Upgrading Fund of District 1, Local 199C of the National Union of Hospital and Healthcare Employees, AFL-CIO. The fund was created in 1974 in a collective-bargaining agreement between the union and nine Philadelphia hospitals. Its purpose is to provide educational benefits to assist union members and the community to upgrade job skills and to keep pace with increasing technological demands.