Joseph DeSilva Dies; Headed Retail Clerks Local

Joseph T. DeSilva, who retired in 1973 after heading the AFL-CIO Retail Clerks Local 770 here for 36 years, died Sunday at the age of 81 after a long illness.

He died at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Los Angeles, one of the facilities that DeSilva helped create out of negotiations that gave food industry members medical care through Kaiser, an early Health Maintenance Organization.

DeSilva, who once referred to himself as a “pretty successful third-grade dropout,” had been one of the nation’s best-known local-level union leaders because of his pioneering work in winning contracts that featured high wages and such advanced fringe benefits as psychiatric and dental care.

Reputation as Maverick

In 1960 he shocked his union colleagues by supporting Richard M. Nixon’s losing presidential bid and then later by backing Ronald Reagan’s successful campaign for governor in California even though he usually supported liberal Democrats. Such endorsements, coupled with his often controversial actions inside his own union, created his reputation as a maverick.

William R. Robertson, head of the AFL-CIO Los Angeles County Labor Federation, called DeSilva a “legend in the labor movement who elevated low-paid grocery workers to a decent standard of living and whose fringe benefit victories helped set a pattern for the nation. He will be long remembered for those achievements.”

Robert K. Fox, DeSilva’s management counterpart as head of the Food Employers Council for most of the years the union leader represented the clerks, said:

“I bargained over the years with union representatives at all levels, and DeSilva was probably the most talented of them all. He was blessed with great instincts as to what costs the industry could bear and what his membership would accept.”

Wanted to Be a Star

Born in New York, DeSilva learned to read mostly by reading aloud to an illiterate father. He came to Hollywood in 1923 to, he said, “replace Rudolph Valentino as a movie star.”

But, failing at that “because of my (New York) accent,” DeSilva worked at a variety of other jobs, including clerking, and in 1937 he helped form Local 770 with about 200 members. It now has 24,400 members.

He leaves his wife, Sophia; two sons, Daniel and Thomas; a daughter, Gloria, and seven grandchildren.

Funeral services will be private.