He fought in World War II, attended Brooklyn College and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and took his first union job as assistant director of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters in Chicago, in 1955.
[1] Under Gotbaum's leadership, DC37 successfully organized thousands of municipal hospital workers in the 1960s and helped create New York City's Office of Collective Bargaining.
During the New York City bankruptcy crisis in the mid-1970s, Gotbaum and DC37 agreed to major collective bargaining concessions, which set a pattern that forced other municipal unions to do the same.
After a trusteeship by AFSCME, Hill was ultimately succeeded in 2002 by Lillian Roberts, who first started working with Gotbaum in 1959.
Joshua Gotbaum, another son of Sarah and Victor, worked in the Carter,[6] Clinton and Obama administrations and was a recess appointment as director of Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in 2010.