[Excerpt] 1199's contract campaign of 1989 resulted in more than a contract victory for 50,000 hospital and nursing home workers. It marked the moment when 1199 reconstituted itself. The method and form that reconstitution took had everything to with the peculiar history of the union and a fundamentally destabilizing leadership crisis, with the racial and ethnic diversity of the people in the union and the different kinds of work they do, and with the industry they work in. Ironically, some of the techniques used to achieve the victory, developed to compensate for structural weaknesses, reinforced those weaknesses. The union's continuing problem is to find ways of integrating its successes with its ordinary life.