Carol Buckley

Home Attendant / All Metro Healthcare / New York, NY

"When my blood starts boiling or when 1199 calls me, you know I’m going to be there," says Carol Buckley, a Union activist if ever there was one.

Now in her 13th year as a homecare worker at All Metro Healthcare in Manhattan, Carol has been an 1199SEIU Delegate for "a couple of years." She explains, "I was a 'Hero' working in the 2004 election campaign in Pennsylvania for 7 months. I had to wait until I got back before I could be a Delegate."

She says her father was a member of the NAACP and, "I guess I was an activist even before we had the Union. Working people need a better life for their families and their children, and we are the ones to fight for it."

Now a grandmother three times over, she left her job in a nursing home when her two children were smaller, because of the long hours. When she became a homecare worker, she knew that "we needed a change and we deserved justice." But then, she says, "When 1199 gave me a voice, I just had to use it.

"We homecare workers are healthcare workers just like our sisters and brothers in the hospitals and nursing homes. But it is unfair: we are treated like we are at the bottom, with lower wages, fewer benefits, longer hours."

Carol Buckley is clearly not one to sit by and do nothing. "I'm someone who's going to stand up against injustice. That’s just me," she says.

How does her family take to her activism? "My family, my kids, they’re all kind of quiet. But I know they are all very proud of me."