AFRICAN
AMERICANGerald Hudson
INTERNATIONAL EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
As one of the nation’s leading labor leaders for
the past 15 years, Gerald "Gerry" Hudson has had a
wide-ranging impact on the fight to improve the
lives of working families.
Since June 2004, he has served as Executive Vice
President of SEIU. He leads the work of the union’s
Long Term Care Division, which represents nearly
500,000 nursing home and home care workers
nationwide. Through new strategies, alliances, and
campaigns, SEIU long term care workers are building
a powerful workplace and political voice for
themselves and for the elderly and disabled
consumers they serve.
Hudson also is helping lead SEIU’s efforts to win
quality, affordable health care for all ,
immigration reform, and other major initiatives by
strengthening the union’s partnerships and alliances
with community groups.
Hudson was working at the Hebrew Home for the Aged
in Riverdale, N.Y., when he joined SEIU Local 144 in
1978. He went to work at then-District 1199 in 1986
as the union's education director; he was elected to
the local’s executive vice president position three
years later. For more than a dozen years, he's
supervised 1199 New York’s political action,
education, publications, and cultural affairs
departments.
During his tenure with 1199NY, Hudson coordinated
the merger of the 30,000-member Local 144 into SEIU/1199.
He also founded the 1199 School for Social Change—a
former alternative school in the Bronx—and served as
a trustee of the Local 1199 Training and Upgrading
Fund, Home Care Workers Benefit Fund, and Michaelson
Education Fund.
Hudson also has had an extensive career in politics.
He not only led the presidential campaign of Jesse
Jackson in New York and the successful New York City
mayoral campaign of David Dinkins, he also served as
deputy director of the Mario Cuomo for Governor
campaign in 1994. While Cuomo himself was not
re-elected governor, Gerry's leadership was
instrumental in electing H. Carl McCall the first
African American controller in New York state. In
1996, Hudson served as political director of the New
York state Democratic Party
Hudson lives with his wife, Carol Joyner, and their
two children, Camara and Amilcar, in New York City.