Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, June 22, 2009, Monday

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Chicago Daily Law Bulletin

June 22, 2009, Monday

HEADLINE: In Geneva; he was in his element

BYLINE: MARIA KANTZAVELOS

BODY:
John N. Raudabaugh collected so much paperwork in Geneva that he had to ship a box and pay extra to check an additional suitcase to carry it all home. A partner in Baker & McKenzie LLP, Raudabaugh was on his way back from a conference of a United Nations agency focusing on his area of expertise: the world of work. Raudabaugh, a longtime management-side labor lawyer with a master's degree in labor economics from Cornell University's School of Industrial & Labor Relations, was in his element representing U.S. employers as a delegate to the 98th International Labour Con-ference, which this year included a special summit on the global jobs crisis. "It was like graduate school to the nth de-gree -- sitting in the lecture halls," he said.

Raudabaugh, the son of a former college professor of rural sociology, filled many legal pads with notes from the meetings he attended, oftentimes until 10 p.m., six days a week during the conference of the International Labour Or-ganization, which was held from June 3 to Friday. He was fascinated, he said, by the passionate talks on the global jobs crisis delivered by several heads of state and government leaders, such as Brazil's Luiz Incio Lula da Silva and France's Nicolas Sarkozy. "The two of them are very clear about pushing the notion of a global regulation of finance so these problems don't happen again," he said. From his law office in the Prudential Building, where shelves are stocked with books on such topics as labor history and the union movement, Raudabaugh reflected on his experience as a delegate at the conference of the ILO, a tripartite U.N. agency that annually brings together representatives of governments, em-ployers and workers to discuss and adopt international labor standards in the form of conventions and recommendations, and to pass resolutions that provide guidelines for general policy and future activities of the organization. Participating as a delegate to a U.N. agency was a first for Raudabaugh, who joined Baker & McKenzie as a partner three years ago, bringing years of experience as a practitioner and as a member of the National Labor Relations Board in the early 1990s, at the appointment of former President George H.W. Bush. He conceded that he headed to the conference with a few preconceived notions. "I had nothing more than just preconceived notions, based on sort of a U.S.-centric view on things, that it was going to be more of a Euro-centric, socialistic kind of approach to things," Raudabaugh said. "What I discovered was that it's a very open discussion among all parties throughout the world community. I was pleased to see that it was an open-minded discussion, considering multiple viewpoints." Raudabaugh was among about 4,000 dele-gates from the 183 member states who participated in the conference of the ILO, which was founded in 1919 and be-came the first specialized agency of the U.N. in 1946. At the event, he participated in a new committee that was formed to address the impact of the global economic crisis on employment. The committee came up with its "Global Jobs Pact," designed to guide national and international policies aimed at stimulating economic recovery, generating jobs and pro-tecting workers. "It was more of a generalized commentary on the fact that, in the world financial crisis and economic meltdown, it appeared that the impact on workers was not really addressed," Raudabaugh said. "The question was -- without getting into finger-pointing, which did go on initially -- what can the developed world do to help those in the developing world to come out of this recession? And, also very importantly, let's inject the discussion of job loss and economic support now, and not just focus only on the financial market restoration." Raudabaugh also addressed the plenary session of the conference with an overview of a yearlong pro bono project that he and dozens of Baker & McKenzie lawyers recently completed on behalf of the U.N. Development Programme. The project had lawyers looking at issues involving forced labor, child labor and gender inequality, and offering recommendations to the Office of the Global Defender of the Poor on how to create an informal mechanism in developing countries to identify and remedy violations of the U.N. conventions addressing those three areas. Raudabaugh's contribution to the pro bono project fo-cused on the issue of child labor. In 2004, there were 218 million children, ages 5 to 17, working in the world, he said, citing statistics from the ILO. Of those 218 million children, 126 million were engaged in hazardous work. Raised in Virginia, where his father took a job under the Eisenhower administration in charge of the Rural Extension Service, Raudabaugh was influenced by college professors at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School to study labor eco-nomics. He thought he'd pursue a doctorate and teach. But he remembered his experiences serving in the Navy as an aide to a senior supply corps admiral, which had him dealing with labor issues at ports where civilian workers were represented by unions. "I started thinking that was pretty interesting, so I took a deviation and went on to law school [at the University of Virginia School of Law]," he said. When he's not representing senior management in complex labor relations matters and related litigation, and when he's not taking family trips, or reading and bike riding with his 11-year-old son, the self-described "Internet nerd" is delving into the world of labor law and labor economics via blogs and Twitter; he's an arena player on politico.com. Elizabeth E. Stern, a partner in Baker & McKenzie's Washington, D.C., office, where she heads the global migration and executive transfers group, served on the pro bono project with Raudabaugh. "Even now, he's still a scholar," Stern said. "He's constantly following what the trends are in labor rights. He's so fascinated in that area that he follows it with an intellectual curiosity." What has kept his interest in the area of labor, Raudabaugh said, is the notion that "the world of work impacts everybody." "Whether we be in what we think are sophisticated workplaces or more traditional working experiences, everybody has concerns and issues," he said. "How do you respect the tradeoff between the interests of those who perform the tasks, as opposed to the interests of those who took the risks and made the investment to create the workplace in the first place? -- It's just a very interesting social dynamic."

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