Profiles in Dignity: Quiet Man’s Actions Speak for Him
Tom Hennessy believes that listening and "taking the long view" better serve the union in the long term.
ST. PAUL, MINN.
The film classic “The Quiet Man” portrays an Irish-American hero who’d prefer to win the day not by fists or force, but by patience and humor. If pushed far enough, though, he’d come out swinging.
Tom Hennessy may be AFSCME’s “Quiet Man.”
The Minnesota native, now retired from his duties as director of Council 14 and as a member of AFSCME’s Judicial Panel, left his mark on more than 45 years in union work by infusing those positions with a deliberate, thoughtful manner. “When I lose my temper,” he’s fond of saying, “that’s when I lose my good sense.”
Hennessy’s journey to union work led through the stockyards in South St. Paul, where he took a job right out of Cretin High School. Somebody might joke that prodding hogs and sheep out of their chutes prepared him well for his later encounters with balky managements.
As with a lot of members, his first interaction with the union (the United Packing House Workers) stemmed from personal motives: “I was a little irritated because the day crew meetings were on Friday, and that was my bowling night. We were facing a strike, and I wanted to know what was going on.” So he showed up at the night crew’s meeting on Wednesday. “They weren’t pleased about it, but they let me stay.” Tom caught the union “bug” (and later worked to have the meeting night changed).
He started as a steward in 1953, then held a variety of offices over the next 16 years that tested his patience, but never raised his temper. In one of those “forks in the road” that life sometime presents, he was approached by the AFL-CIO for full-time union work as a field organizer, but the position didn’t materialize.
“But it worked out better for me” — and for AFSCME.
Council 151 snapped him up as a business agent — working on the front lines of contract negotiations, grievance processing and other nuts and bolts issues.
Ask him what makes a good negotiator, and he’ll answer without hesitation: “Patience ... flexibility, and the ability to think on your feet. ... The best [negotiators] know how to look for solutions rather than simply how to draw lines.”
Three years after his hiring by AFSCME, he signed on to become director of the new Council 91, which took in employees in Ramsey County.
One of his “hires” during that period (1977) was an earnest young schoolteacher turned insurance salesman, Jerry Serfling, who Hennessy tapped to work as a business representative. Hennessy hired the kind of people he was — people who weren’t hotheads, but “who stayed through the issues, who didn’t get too bombastic,” who weren’t so taken with the cause du jour that they missed sight of the “longer view of things.”
Serfling, now assistant director of Council 14, credits that Council’s successful emergence from the merger of 91 with Council 3 (Hennepin County) as largely Tom’s handiwork.
“It took a lot to pull together two very different councils, one east and one west of the Mississippi, pull together their two boards, and their individual activists,” Serfling noted. “Tom had the perseverance, the personality and made the personal effort to make it happen.”
Roger Siegal, his successor as Council 14 director, agrees. “He’s not flamboyant, but he has an inherent belief in the concept of unionism.”
He also wasn’t afraid of confrontation, attests Luanne Koskinen, who saw him lead a strike by social, financial and clerical workers in the Anoka County Welfare Department during the summer of ‘79. Shortly into the 13-week walkout, he was felled by a heart attack. “Everyone was at such a high emotional pitch, having gone through negotiations and mediation,” recalls Koskinen. “Then to have that happen to Tom. We were all very scared.”
But he recovered in time to see a successful resolution of the walkout. Over the years, he’s helped run probably half a dozen such confrontations, and they always pain him. “It’s easy to take people out on strike,” says Hennessy quietly. “It’s not so easy to get them back.”
Koskinen, also hired as a business rep, remembers Tom telling her at that interview: “What you have to do is to keep your ears open and your mouth shut, because you learn a lot more that way.” It’s a bit of wisdom she acknowledges has been invaluable in her current role as a Minnesota state legislator.
That same calm deliberation made Hennessy a natural choice for AFSCME’s Judicial Panel. He was appointed to fill out the unexpired term of Al Church in 1987 and went on to serve two more terms.
Most of the cases he heard were fairly clear-cut, often involving one member bringing another up on charges. “Many of these involved personal feelings that had been festering for years.” John Sefarian, Judicial Panel chairman, affirms Hennessy’s unflappable nature. “He is,” he says simply, “the quintessential Minnesotan.”
Since his retirement in 1996, Tom uses his patience with a fishing rod, going after walleye and bass. He and Helen, his wife of 42 years, divide their time between their suburban home in Woodbury and a cabin near Moose Lake.
The years mellow a person, but Tom has always seen the value in being a quiet man in the sometimes burly world of unions: “If you let yourself get too angry, that’s when you make mistakes.”
By Chris Dodd
