AWARDS
The Labor Management Hall of Fame
2006 Inductees
David Foree
Retired Secretary/Treasurer, Southwestern Illinois Building and Construction Trades Council
Dave Foree has spent his entire adult life improving conditions for workers and making our community a better place to live. His distinguished career has been dedicated to establishing and strengthening the connections between labor and management.
He got his start in a Wireman Apprenticeship in 1961 and has been a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 309 ever since. Over the years, he has served Local 309 in a variety of capacities including president, vice president, executive board member, negotiating committee, health and welfare trustee, and wireman’s pension trustee. He was elected assistant business manager in 1990 and business manager/financial secretary in 1999. He then served as the executive secretary-treasurer for the Southwestern Illinois Building and Construction Trades Council until he retired in 2006.
Among his greatest contributions was his ability to develop and secure many Project Labor Agreements (PLA’s) designed to insure a stable work environment over the life of a collective bargaining agreement and rendering employment opportunities for union members. He has worked with regional employers to retain existing businesses and to enhance economic development, most notably including his work with Granite City Steel, ConocoPhillips Refineries, Lively Grove Energy Project, Scott Air Force Base, MetroLink and the Mississippi River Bridge Project.
Foree is a founding member of the Midwest Healthcare Coalition, former executive board member of the Leadership Council Southwestern Illinois and former labor co-chair of the Labor Management Committee. His distinguished contributions earned him the honor of being named the George R. Badgley Labor Man of the Year in 2003.
Tom Korte
Executive Vice President, Korte Construction
Tom Korte has spent 40 active years in the labor-management profession. During his tenure, he has been involved in virtually every aspect of the construction industry including working as a laborer, a laborer foreman, a carpenter apprentice, a carpenter foreman and supervising dozens of construction projects as superintendent in locations around the country.
As executive vice president and general superintendent of the Korte Company, he is responsible for all field operations, including the assignment, supervision and training of field management personnel and union craftsmen. He negotiates all union contracts and special project agreements for the company. Korte has also managed the Safety Committee, the Quality Assurance Team, Special Services Team, and the interior and support staff for the Korte Company and established substance abuse training programs and onsite safety programs for all trades people.
Korte is a long-time member of the Labor Management Committee and served as a co-chair for several years.
John Tucker
Retired Director of Mediation Services FMCS, St. Louis Region
John Tucker has had a 40-year career in the field of labor relations as a union business representative, mediator with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services (FMCS) and director of mediation services for eight years until his retirement in 2004. As an elected business representative with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, District #178 in Northeast Atlanta, he served from 1965-1976 negotiating major contracts in such diverse areas as cast iron, paper/newsprint, garment, and manufacturing. He also presented grievance and arbitration cases for these industries, arbitrating issues of discharge, suspensions, seniority, overtime assignments, work week schedules, qualifications on the job bid, illegal work stoppages and violence in the workplace.
In 1976, Tucker was appointed a commissioner with FMCS in Atlanta where he mediated major disputes in various industries. He also led mediation teams in Relationship by Objective Programs and conducted joint training sessions for labor and management in leadership, communication, grievance and arbitration skills. In 1995, he was appointed interim director, and soon after, director of mediation services. He directed 22 mediators in eight states and was called upon many times to head mediation in major negotiations. He has also led the organization of three major labor management conferences in the Midwest.
Among his most valuable contributions was successfully securing the naming of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville as one of four Technology Assisted Group Solution (TAGS) Centers in the nation, playing an instrumental role in helping the committee obtain a one-time $40,000 grant that allowed the Labor Management Committee to remain viable when funding from the State of Illinois was no longer available and assisting the committee in establishing the Gateway Labor Management Conference.
2002 Inductees
Dr. Ed Harrick
Retired Professor Emeritus, SIUE
Harrick has taught labor-management cooperation to thousands of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville students, many of whom have become successful leaders of industry, labor and voluntary not-for-profit organizations in the community. During his tenure he served as the chair of the University’s Management Department, founded the Center for Management Studies and Labor and Management Programs, and received a teaching excellence award. He personally authored a number of grants that have brought funds to SIUE; provided tremendous opportunities for research and learning for faculty and students; and produced a variety of studies, programs and services for the labor management community. He is the author of 16 articles, 17 monographs and some 50 paper deliveries and published proceedings.
Harrick has dedicated his entire career to fostering labor management cooperation in Southwestern Illinois. Perhaps his greatest contribution has been the nearly 20 years he has devoted to helping to build the Labor Management Committee Southwestern Illinois into one of the strongest and most successful committees of its kind in the country. Since 1987, he has worked as a mediator and an arbitrator to resolve labor conflicts. In 1992 he was honored by the national director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service for his contributions to the development of sound and stable labor-management relations in the United States and was later recognized for distinguished service by the Industrial Relations Research Association and the Human Resources Association.
Harrick is the former executive director of the Labor Management Committee, a position he served in for seven years. During that time he was credited with initiating innumerable activities including hosting of seminars and conferences, instituting a quarterly newsletter, the LMC website, education to careers initiatives, mock collective bargaining exercises, helping to establish the Labor Industry Museum, the Bill Weier Award which recognizes organizations exhibiting exemplary labor-management cooperation and the Labor Management Hall of Fame.
Tadas Kicielinski
Executive Assistant to the General President, Iron Workers International Union
Kicielinski has been regarded by union and management professionals alike as the most prominent and respected labor leader to have served working people and their unions in southern Illinois. His pre-eminent reputation as a labor statesman has been forged by his cooperative approach to labor-management relations and his tireless efforts to promote southwestern Illinois as a good place to work and live.
Kicielinski has been an iron worker for over three decades. He has served as the business agent of Iron Workers Local 392, the financial secretary treasurer of the Iron Workers District Council, and executive secretary of the Southwestern Illinois Building and Construction Council and the Board of Business Agents. He developed the “Wake Up Call” program which was delivered to area students by the Education to Careers Partnership to allow students to take employment tests administered by area employers, try their hands at various work simulations and gain insight into the difficult problem of drugs and alcohol abuse in the workplace. Kicielinski is also known for securing funds for the YouthBuild Program targeted at high school dropouts from the Metro East region and his extensive work with contractors from the Southern Illinois Construction Advancement Program which included the organization of a Career Fair where hundreds of eighth graders were introduced to different trades.
Kicielinski is a former co-chair of the Labor Management Committee Southwestern Illinois. He has served on the board of directors of the Leadership Council Southwestern Illinois, the Regional Chamber & Growth Association, the River Bend Growth Association and the Regional Chamber of Commerce Association. He was also appointed by Governor Ryan to assist in the planning of transportation needs for the state and was co-chair of the committee to expand MetroLink in Illinois.
2000 Inductees
George Goeddey
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training
Goeddey has served the labor and management community in Southwestern Illinois for 35+ years. He has served as shop steward, assistant chief steward, sergeant at arms and vice president of UAW Local 1027 at the Allis Chalmers Plant in Springfield, Ill. He was later selected as the apprenticeship and training representative of the Department of Labor’s Alton, Ill. office where he was devoted to training, educating and helping community members acquire the skills needed to help them be successful in a 21st century economy.
Throughout his career, he has worked with labor and management, community and government agencies, building trades councils, industrial trades councils, public schools and colleges in thirty-three counties throughout southern Illinois. He has assisted in the development of countless apprenticeship programs; worked with organizations such as the Urban League and the NAACP to ensure greater employment and career opportunities for minorities, women and other groups who have traditionally faced barriers in attaining their educational and employment goals; and helped develop local programs such as Education to Careers (ETC) and Career Expo, which are among the most important efforts in our community to address this problem and prepare the workforce for the challenges of a new work environment.
E. Gayle Johnson
Retired CEO of Shell Oil Company, Wood River Refinery
Johnson got his start working as a laborer, oil filed roustabout, auto mechanic, pipefitter, truck driver and card carrying boilermakers helper before joining Shell Oil Company in 1955 as a chemist and engineer. He quickly secured a supervisor position, became plant manager in several sites around the country and then took on several assignments with the corporate office before serving as CEO at the refinery at Wood River, Ill.
During his time as CEO, a number of incidents involving spills and releases into the environment occurred that eroded community support and lessened the company’s own confidence in its ability to operate without incidents. As a result, he spearheaded a joint labor and management environmental task force. His overall approach was to trust and to empower all employees to do what was necessary to prevent environmental mishaps and improve safety. Open communication, cooperation and training combined to yield a safety record that became the envy of the industry. The community’s trust in the plant eventually was restored. Furthermore, the emphasis on openness, cooperation and empowering employees to make the decisions that would help them do their jobs extended to the everyday operations of the plant. Johnson fostered a team based approach which reduced the need for supervision. Self-directed and joint work teams were created and provided with information (formerly deemed confidential and too sensitive) which they used to improve the quality and effectiveness of all plant operations. Moreover, traditional adversarial bargaining gave way to a more cooperative approach in which mutually agreed upon industry standards were met or exceeded and time and energy could be devoted to the continuous improvement of production operations.
Johnson involved union employees in every aspect of the business including United Way campaigns, the educational initiative with the area schools, community projects, the Shell museum and the rehabilitation of Kendall Hill Park which has become a showcase.
1998 Inductee
Bill Weier
Former Commissioner for Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service and Belleville Community College Professor
Weier worked for Union Electric Company and was a member of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 148 where he served as a shop steward, chief shop steward, vice president and member of the local union executive board before securing a position with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) in 1975. He represented FMCS for twenty years, during which time he mediated over 1,000 cases covering issues such as contract negotiations, strikes, lockouts, grievances and plant closings.
Bill also served as an assistant to the executive director of the Labor Management Committee and taught labor relations at Belleville Area College and coordinated its Education to Careers effort. His dedication to labor and management relations earned him awards, recognitions and honors, including the Outstanding Leadership Award in 1991 from the Labor Management Committee. Weier died in July of 1997 at the age of 64. The Labor Management Committee later introduced the Weier Award in his honor.
1997 Charter Inductees
Buddy Davis
Retired District Director of District 34
Davis began working as a laborer in 1950 at Alton’s Laclede Steel plant following an honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy. From 1952-1962, he served as USWA Local 3643 shop steward, vice president and full-time president at Laclede. He then served as USWA international staff representative and sub-district director assigned to the Granite City office from 1962 to 1977. From 1977 until his retirement in 1993, he was elected and reelected for four terms as district director of District 34 and member of the International Executive Board. District 34 consisted of Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and the southern half of Illinois.
Davis has served as an officer on several union councils and committees including: vice president of Illinois and Missouri State AFL-CIO Councils; chairman–USWA Illinois State Political Action Committee; president and member of Illinois Congressional District C.O.P.E.; chairman–Illinois AFL-CIO Community Services Committee; chairman of several multi-plant negotiating committees including American Can Co., American Steel Foundries, Asarco and National Steel Corp.
As chairman of the union’s negotiating committee at American Can Co., Davis negotiated the first labor-management cooperative program in the metal container industry. While chairman of the union’s negotiating committee at National Steel (including their Granite City plant), he negotiated an innovative contract (described as such by The Wall Street Journal and other business publications) which included a detailed cooperative partnership agreement establishing labor-management committees in each plant and at the corporate level, the first employment security program in the steel industry, profit-sharing and gain-sharing plans, and productivity programs.
Davis has been recognized for his accomplishments by University of Illinois Institute of Labor Relations, University of Notre Dame Union-Management Conferences, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director’s Award and St. Louis RCGA Edward Schnuck Annual Labor/Management Award. He has also served as the first president of the Alton-Wood River United Way, and is a past board member of the St. Louis and Alton-Wood River United Way, the Red Cross and the Wood River Pension Board; and, on fund-raising committees for the United Way, the Salvation Army, the YMCA and the Red Cross.
Bob Dosier
Retired Superintendent of Belleville Township High School District #201
He began his teaching career at the junior high school level in Columbia, Illinois in 1955. In 1963 he was employed by Belleville Township High School District #201 as a counselor, later serving as assistant principal, administrative assistant to the superintendent, and assistant superintendent before being named superintendent in 1985.
During his years at the Belleville Township High School District, Dosier played a major role in contract negotiations on both sides of the table. Early in his career he worked with the union as he was active in the negotiation process. Later he served management and was the chief spokesperson for the board and administration. One of the greatest testimonies to his influence and skills is the fact that he served as chief negotiator for the board during most of the years he spent in administration, a rare circumstance in educational bargaining and almost unheard of in a large (4,000 students) district like Belleville.
During Dosier’s twenty-five year administrative tenure in District 201, one of his responsibilities was personnel in the district. In that role, he negotiated with six unions representing the various employers of the district. Grievances rarely occurred and any that did almost always reached resolution through an informal conference. No strike occurred during Bob’s tenure with the district.
Dosier received a bachelor’s from McKendree College in 1954, a master of education from the University of Illinois in 1962 and a Ph.D. from St. Louis University in 1977. He retired in 1993.
Byron Farrell
President of Helmkamp Construction Company
Farrell joined the G. Helmkamp Excavating and Trucking Company in 1962 serving the firm as an engineer, superintendent, general superintendent and vice president before being named president of Helmkamp Construction Company in 1982.
As a leader in his profession, Farrell has taken a prominent role in the work of the National Associated General Contractors, having served as its national president. He has chaired the group’s Minority Business Advisory Committee and its American Consulting Engineers Council. He has also served on committees concerned with equal opportunity including Superfund, municipal utilities and the National Association of Women in Construction. Since 1975, he has been a director of the Southern Illinois Builders Association, serving as president in 1979 and 1980.
In 1978, Farrell and Robert Weis founded and served as a co-chair of the Involvement and Management Advance Growth and Employment (IMAGE), a forerunner labor-management committee to the Labor Management Committee of the Leadership Council.
In addition to his professional accomplishments, Farrell has earned a reputation for service to the community. He has served on the Wood River City Council, board of directors of the Piasa Council of the Boy Scouts of America and the board of the East Alton-Wood River Community High School.
Farrell has given unselfishly of his time and talents to assist the Metro east region. He recognizes the importance of a healthy regional economy as a foundation on which many elements of a better standard of living must rest. In turn, strong schools and educational services, widely available recreational facilities, and sound transportation all help to sustain the objectives of IMAGE. Because of his commitment to IMAGE and the improvement in labor-management relations that commitment has helped produce, the Metro-East area has become a preferred environment for businesses and families alike.
Farrell served in The United States Navy and received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Purdue University.
Paul Fultz
Retired Human Resource Representative of the Olin Corporation
Fultz worked over 40 years in the field of labor-management relations. He got his start with Region 14 of the National Labor Relations Board in St. Louis and worked with McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis before sending the majority of career (32) years working for Olin Corporation in East Alton, Ill. Throughout his career he participated in the negotiations of 75 labor contracts for Olin and McDonnell. These contracts added well over $100 million a year to the wages and benefits of employees of those companies, many of whom are residents of Southwestern Illinois. More specifically, he worked out the terms of those contracts with representatives of a dozen difference international unions including: the Machinists, the Steelworkers, the Teamsters, the Chemical Workers, the Electrical Workers, the Pipefitters, the Laborers, the Carpenters, the Operating Engineers, the Boilermakers and the Painters.
Fultz resolved more than 5,000 grievances, worked with at least 20 of the finest federal mediators in the service, spoke to a dozen or more conferences and to college classes on topics ranging from contract negotiation to grievance handling and from plant rules to arbitration techniques. He also chaired the Southwestern Illinois Industrial Association’s Industrial Relations Committee, and, in his spare time, coached more than 6,000 kids baseball and basketball games.
Fultz was the first coach ever chosen to the Greater St. Louis Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame when it opened in 1974, was presented the Southwestern Illinois Industrial Association’s first award for community service in 1979 and was named Kiwanian of the Year for the Metropolitan St. Louis area in 1995.
Dr. Paul Sultan
Professor, Author and Industry Expert
Sultan’s influence of public policy has been substantial. At the federal level, his work has improved the way we create matrices for the unemployed. In Illinois, his research helped to shape today’s legislation to create enterprise zones. In our immediate area, he sponsored a Leadership Council study of oral histories of 102 labor-management professionals. That documentation is represented in 2,500 pages of testimony in Lovejoy Library at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Dr. Sultan has been a frequent speaker at seminars sponsored by the Labor Management Committee. He has been invited to address unions, businesses, public agencies and private foundations.
Sultan enjoyed a sequence of academic appointments at the University of Buffalo, University of Southern California, the Clarement Graduate School and Southern Illinois University. At Claremont, he served as director of residence workshops for the U.S. Department of Labor with participant nominees drawn from throughout the country for their most promising research staff. He has participated in significant panels concerned with job creation in Washington, California, Illinois and Canada. He has received the National Conference of Christian and Jews Humanitarian award for his work to assure re-employment of ex-offenders.
He has written five books and hundreds of articles, monographs and position papers. He is well-known for generously sharing his work and files with those who ask. He is internationally known for having been the first to observe the empirical relationship between employment and inflation and described it in his Labor Economics text in 1954. Today it is known as the Phillips Curve.
Sultan was born as one of seven children of an immigrant father from Sweden. He is a graduate of the University of British Columbia and later received a Ph.D. from Cornell University.
Dean E. Turner
Retired Executive Secretary/Treasurer of Southwestern Illinois Building and Construction Trades
Turner’s career got its start Swift Packing before becoming involved with the Operative Plasterers and Cement Masons Local 90, where he served on the executive board and later became president and business manager. He was then elected executive secretary-treasurer of Southwestern Illinois Building and Construction Council—AFL-CIO in 1982. In 1993, he negotiated an agreement with St. Clair County securing construction work on the new Mid-America Airport for members of affiliated local unions of the Building Trades Council. In addition, he was successful in negotiating an agreement with Madison County for its construction work in Madison County. For his contributions to Southwestern Illinois, Turner was given Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville President’s Award of Merit in May 1993. He retired in 1994.
Turner served on the Leadership Council of Southwestern Illinois and as a member of the Labor Management Committee. He was inducted into the armed services in June 1949 and was discharged November 1952. He served in the Military Police in occupied Germany from December 1949 through October 1952.
Harold A. Wright
Wright joined his first union, the United Garment Workers of American, Local 298, in 1950. Shortly after he began work at the Belleville Post Office and was later elected president of Letter Carriers Branch 155.
His union met with postal management monthly, and he helped form a labor-management committee whose purpose was to discuss how to improve working conditions for letter carriers and increase production for the postal service. It was here that Wright found that communication and cooperation accomplished much more than conflict. In the 17 years that he was president, only two grievances ever left the local post office for a decision at a higher level.
In 1970, the United States Postal Service Reorganization Act gave his union the right to bargain nationally for wages and fringe benefits and gave the right to local unions to bargain for various working conditions at the local level. Wright led the union bargaining team in negotiating the first local agreement with the Postal Service in Belleville. Good labor management relations continued to be important because the union still did not have the right to strike. Labor and management working together as a team was critical.
Wright’s greatest experience with labor-management cooperation came when he became the first full-time labor liaison with the United Way for St. Clair, Clinton, Monroe and Randolph counties in Illinois. His role with labor took a sharp turn then because he had to institute a "peace maker" philosophy without sacrificing principle in order to be effective in his job.
The first year he was on staff with United Way, a CEO of a company told him that some three years earlier his company suffered a bitter strike and asked Mr. Wright to assist him in regaining a working relationship with the union. At the CEO’s request, Wright suggested a joint Labor and Management United Way campaign. The company and the union jointly worked on an in-plant United Way campaign and labor-management peace followed.
Wright was a delegate to the Southwestern Illinois Central Labor Council from the early 60’s and he has been executive secretary for 28 years. He became involved in the Labor Management Committee shortly after it was created and became convinced at once that he wanted to be involved with this type of work. He served as labor co-chair of the Committee for four years. Harold assumed a leadership role in the creation of the Labor and Industry Museum in Belleville, where he has served as president for six years and is the current treasurer.
Awards: Labor Management Hall of Fame | Weier Award