Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin), December 24, 2005, Saturday

Copyright 2005 Journal Sentinel Inc.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)

December 24, 2005 Saturday
Final Edition

SECTION: D Business; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: A union leader for the global economy;
Professional workers must adapt to thrive, Junemann says

BYLINE: JOEL DRESANG, Staff, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

BODY:
For Greg Junemann, the Bay View man who is international president of one of America's fastest growing labor unions, it's all about the pie.
Whether it's making businesses more competitive, saving organized labor, sustaining the standard of living or contending with the triple-witching forces of globalization, demographics and technology, Junemann says the pie is what matters.
The idea goes back 30 years, when Junemann was a new hire at Allis-Chalmers. The local leader of the United Auto Workers offered advice that stuck with Junemann and guided him.
"He said the whole point of all of this is we work to make the pie as big as possible, and then the union tries to get you your fair slice of the pie," Junemann recalls. "He said, 'But always remember. If there's no pie, you don't get a slice. So get the first part first. In other words, we have to be as productive as possible."
Junemann recounts the story at Mitchell International Airport, not far from where he grew up or where he lives, but a long way from that factory job of his youth.
Junemann is the globetrotting president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents nearly 59,000 workers, including rocket scientists, judges, economists and sewer inspectors.
While the prominence of unions overall has been diminishing for decades, Junemann's group has doubled its membership since 1994.
Traditionally, professional workers were a somewhat protected class, but with globalization and new technologies, more engineers and technical workers are seeking security through unions, says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University.
"The reason that professionals are turning to unions more and more is this sense that they are being treated with less and less respect," Bronfenbrenner says. "They're feeling very insecure and disrespected."
But it's more than refuge Junemann aims to offer the knowledge workers of the 21st century. He envisions employee-driven unions helping members develop careers, collaborating with employers to train the work force, raising productivity, outsmarting the competition - and growing the pie.
Junemann says union members need to work with business leaders and policy-makers to plan ahead and tackle what he sees as the greatest threat to professional workers: global competition.
"We're really missing the boat on developing our own work force," he says. "Instead, when we see work going from Milwaukee to wherever, as long as the stock goes up we feel a level of acceptance. And I think we need to be alarmed about it.
"We're not going to stop it, but what we need to do is to say, 'OK, if we can't do the work cheaper than they do in India, how can we do it better? Or how can we do tomorrow's work better?' So let's figure out what tomorrow's work is and create a work force that's enabled to do that."
Junemann, 53, worked his way up through his local union at Ladish Co., where he was a cost estimator. He took leave in 1994 when he got elected secretary-treasurer and organizing director of the international union. He has been president since 2001 and is up for re-election in July.
Junemann and his wife, Toni, decided to keep living in Bay View because even if they moved closer to union headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., Junemann would still be traveling a lot. He figures he's on the road about half the year.
Junemann says more unions need to be like trade unions and provide skills training, apprenticeships and lifelong learning. By doing that, he sees unions appealing to independent contractors and groups of professional workers at small- and medium-sized businesses. He says more employers would be willing to work with unions to meet their work force needs.
"It encourages the employer if I say I'm going to help you build a better work force. So I don't just go in there and say we're going to drive up your labor cost," Junemann says. "It's the pie thing. We're going to help you build a more competitive organization. I think that's where the new model of unions has to go."
Junemann's approach to broadly "uplift" union members and connect them as partners with management combines "two strong and important but often minority views within U.S. unionism," says John Heywood, director of the graduate program in human resources and labor relations at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
"This does not mean unions doing what firms want," Heywood says via e-mail. "It means two sides with strength and mutual respect sharing information, understanding problems and working toward common solutions."
Bronfenbrenner says Junemann has been successful because he knows how to fit strategies to the idiosyncratic needs of workers and conditions they work in.
Bronfenbrenner, who recently had Junemann speak to her students in Ithaca, N.Y., says he is part of a new generation of union leaders she describes as both aggressive and pragmatic.
"You have to know when to organize. You have to know when to fight, and you have to know when to work together," says Bronfenbrenner, who credits Junemann for organizing white-collar employees at Boeing and leading them through a dispute that she refers to as "when the nerds went on strike and won."
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