Barbara Hillman fidgets. She hugs herself as she rocks forward, the index and middle fingers of her left hand grasping an invisible cigarette and beating a tattoo against her right arm. She sticks out her chin, purses her lips, arches her eyebrows, peers over her black-rimmed reading glasses–the right earpiece connected to the frame with what looks like a hunk of paper clip–and speaks quietly, deliberately, pausing between words: “We are not . . . unaware . . . of your concerns.” Her accent sounds New Yorky with nasal intonation and Gs carried over: “That’s something gless than we’re asking gfor”; “You’re limiting git.” Always in charge, she commands the attention of her audience, usually nonverbally. Sometimes she has to issue a verbal reminder: “Listen to me! You always have to listen to me!”
Hillman’s office is on the scruffy side, with a view of the CNA building’s red bulk dead ahead and cranes atop the library-to-be next door. It’s a small office, with high ceilings buffeted by a constant blue cloud of cigarette smoke, smoke the noisy ventilation system does little to dispel. The floors are bare wood; a gangly rubber plant gawks toward the window.
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The Hillmans were–and are–a liberal lot. Her grandparents were immigrants. Her mother was a clerical worker; her father (the source of her accent) went to City College of New York in the 30s, has a master’s degree in civil engineering, and was involved in union organizing in the 40s and 50s. “He was blacklisted a lot. I thought everyone’s father changed jobs every two weeks.” Labor organizer Sidney Hillman was a relative, but the family considered him a “right-winger,” and the branches seldom intertwined. Her family was Jewish, but nonpracticing: their real religion was politics. “It was all we talked about.” One of Hillman’s two sisters is a labor union attorney: the other is a labor organizer. Hillman’s parents still live in Chicago; unconventional candid photographs of them adorn one shelf of an etagere in her office.
She lives near the lake, on Wellington, and she likes to cook–dinner is her one meal of the day; if she eats breakfast or lunch, she reports, she gets sleepy. Hillman ran for state representative in 1980, as a Democrat, but was defeated in the primary. “Change in this country, the setting of goals, objectives, whatever, is a political process,” says Hillman, exhaling smoke. “When I was in law school, there was a feeling that things could be done through the court system. . . . I think we were fundamentally wrong. Whatever your goals are, it has to be a political process. Changes are going to be incremental.”
“I am very much aware in every situation that I am not the union. I am representing, the lawyer for the union. As a matter of reality, whatever happens, it is not going to be my reality, and thus I will not make decisions. Now, obviously, I have a certain amount of experience, and if that experience doesn’t bring wisdom, at least it brings me some feel as to what is possible, and that feel is based on what’s going on in the world–what settlements have been nationwide, what settlements have been in the industry, what the problems have been. I really believe workers–and everyone I deal with is a worker–are not greedy or selfish, and that the demands that they make are not out of line. There’s usually a reason for why they want something. So that’s the basis for negotiating–trying to explicate or articulate the reasons.”
McGee has only two complaints about Hillman: one is a tendency common to labor lawyers to “steamroll” her own side as well as management when she decides it’s time to settle; McGee feels a few more things could have been squeezed from Lyric’s team, although she’s essentially very pleased with the new contract. The other complaint from McGee, an asthma sufferer, is Hillman’s smoking; while she doesn’t light up during meetings with management, she puffs away nonstop and unapologetically with her committee. “I put up with it–because she’s doing a lot of good for our side.”
“In the final analysis, though, she’s very fair, and knows when to be aggressive, and when it’s best not to pursue her position to the ultimate. She has a good feel for the overall purpose of a big bankruptcy case, and a good feel for compromise, for working through situations and coming to a reasonable solution. She’s one of those people who, over the course of a long case, even though you’re adversarial, you know will deal with you with the utmost professionalism.”
