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It's All About Relationships: Federal Mediator Retires after 33 Years of Service

Commissioner Ron Sweet, a federal mediator with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), retired in January of 2008 after 33 years and more than 4,000 negotiations under his belt, including an historic accord that ended one of the largest strikes in U.S. history.

Sweet played an integral role in bringing the Construction Labor Management Council of Southeast Wisconsin (CLMC) and its Building Advantage marketing initiative to the area. The goal is to promote the benefits of union construction by fostering relationships between labor and management.

Sweet began his career as a mediator well before he began working at the FMCS. He worked as an Industrial Engineer at the Ladish Company in Cudahy, Wis. in the mid 1960s as a steward, bargaining committeeman, and eventually became the president of the local union – the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) #92 AFL-CIO.

After leaving Ladish, Sweet served as International Representative for the Midwest area from 1970-73. From 1973-75, he lived in Washington, D.C., where he served as Director of Collective Bargaining and Director of Legislation for the International Union.

“My experiences working at Ladish and in Washington, D.C. really prepared me for my position at FMCS,” Sweet recalls. “Those roles helped lay the groundwork for me to work successfully as a federal mediator for 33 years, and those learning experiences are why I was able to enjoy the job.”

Commissioner Sweet started with the FMCS in 1975. In 1997, Sweet was assigned by FMCS Director John Wells to serve as the mediator for the labor negotiation between United Parcel Service and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Washington, D.C. The agreement brokered by Commissioner Sweet ended the largest labor dispute (250,000 workers) in the United States over the past 50 years.

“The UPS and Teamsters strike solidified my thinking that the working environment, regardless of the industry, is all about relationships and leadership,” Sweet remarks. “First, people have to work together to identify the problems, and they must value each other's input. Solving the problems needs to happen by consensus, and they need to make solutions work with the support of the labor and management teams.

“That's why relationships and leadership are so important in all industries including the trade unions,” says Sweet. “If the CLMC and Building Advantage are going to be successful, we need to bridge every gap between labor and management. Together, we have the power of one and we [CLMC and Building Advantage] need to lead by example through leadership, communication and valuing all employees. This allows labor and management to determine if there is a problem, and then working as a team to figure out how to fix it.”

Commissioner Sweet has organized labor management councils throughout Wisconsin, including the CLMC of Madison, Southeast Wisconsin/Milwaukee and the State of Wisconsin, as well as many in-plant and organizational labor and management councils.

Sweet served as president of the Industrial Relations Research Association for 10 years and has served on their executive board since 1980. In a testament to his dedication to the CLMC and labor and management organizations across Wisconsin, Sweet also received the Melvin Lurie Labor-Management Prize for outstanding contributions in labor and management cooperation from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Ron spends several nights each semester visiting schools such as UW-Milwaukee, Marquette, Cardinal Stritch and others, talking to Labor Relations classes about the role of FMCS, collective bargaining, mediation and the “changes in process, not rights.” Sweet notes that it's easy to get caught up in the tension-filled world of collective bargaining, labor law and mediation.

“While those night classes come at the end of a long day, and I'm sometimes very tired, they give me the chance to connect with the future in the field, and bring me back to ground zero – the basics of collective bargaining, and labor and management relationships,” Sweet says.

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