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 Washington, D.C.