Michael Simo

Michael Simo, Cuban immigrant and former President of Local 6, Hotel, Restaurant and Club Employees & Bartenders Union, AFL-CIO, and Vice-President of the New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council, died on Monday, December 17, in New York's Calvary hospital after a long struggle with cancer. He was 66.

Born in Cienfuegos in 1946, Carlos Miguel Simo Santalla was an aspiring actor, attended classes at Havana's legendary National School of the Arts and was a fixture in the city's vibrant 1960s arts and club scenes. Briefly a member of a traveling theater company, he joked that he redefined the role of Soldier #2.

He showed an early talent for organizing. While working as a cowhand on Cuba´s Isle of Pines in the late 1960s he founded an independent cinematheque, persuading the Cuban Film Institute to loan him films. "I showed Godard and Truffaut to the farmhands."

After a succession of jobs, and studying at the University of Havana, he became a dispatcher at a large state-owned warehouse. "The place was chaotic: no systems or controls; trucks went in and out and nobody knew what they were carrying; records and invoices were not kept." He restructured the operation with great success, but was summarily fired when he did not "volunteer" to fight in Angola, circa 1975.

He arrived in the US in 1980 as part of the Mariel boatlift, spent time in a refugee camp then settled in New York City. He considered it a good omen landing on July Fourth, the sky filled with fireworks. He held menial jobs, before entering the restaurant business where he worked his way up from dishwasher into union leader.

He worked as a waiter at Tavern on the Green restaurant in Central Park in 1989 when NYHTC started a union organizing drive there. He was recruited to join the union negotiating committee and became an important rank-and-file union leader. After a successful ten-week strike, he was elected union delegate and chairman at the restaurant.

In 1993, appointed as a Business Agent for Local 6, he was a respected union representative who fought aggressively for the members of the union. In 1996 he was elected Vice President of the NYHTC and in 2000 President of Local 6. He supervised the enforcement of the union contracts and negotiated many excellent agreements, winning millions of dollars in back pay and additional wages for it's members.

Peter Ward, President of the NYHTC attributes his success to a genius for finding simple, elegant solutions to complex problems. He forged close friendships with co-workers and considered the union his extended family.

An enthusiastic mentor, he adopted three young adults: John, Christopher and Angel Guzman.

He is survived by his mother, Haydée Santalla Pi, his siblings, Pablo Simo Santalla and Ana Maria Simo and her partner Kelly Jean Cogswell, his close friend Jeff Brown and wife Theresa Brown, his nephew Thomas-Olivier Sinquin and his cousins Ricardo Tomás Pi and Ada Rodríguez Hautrive. His father, Carlos Simo Muñoz, died in Havana in 1982.