Cord Byrd: “it is rare that I get to extend a birthday greeting to someone older than I. It is even more uncommon for me to extend…”

“it is rare that I get to extend a birthday greeting to someone older than I. It is even more uncommon for me to extend such a greeting to someone who has been working the halls of the U.S. Senate longer than I. Today, I do both. With delight, I want to take a few minutes to extend a very warm and sincere, if a little belated, birthday greeting to a dear friend, Ms. Evelyn Dubrow, whose birthday was May 6. Affectionately, as well as professionally, known throughout Congress, Washington, D.C., and the labor unions around the country as ``Evy,'' she has been involved in the American labor movement for more than sixty years, most of the time as a labor lobbyist. She was with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, ILGWU, for more than forty years. More recently, she has been vice president and legislative director of the Union of Needles Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees, UNITE. Today, women lobbyists are quite common on Capitol Hill. According to the Hill newspaper, women now account for about one-third of the Capital's more than 11,000 registered lobbyists. When Evy first arrived as a lobbyist in 1956, women lobbyists were rare, and the U.S. Senate was still overwhelmingly a men's club. Evy was not deterred. She had come with a determination and a cause-- to improve the living and working conditions of American workers--and she was not to be denied. Her very first fight was opposing a proposal to outlaw secondary boycotts.”