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A calling and a cause
Longtime area labor representative has union worker in her blood
By Karl Henkel
AUSTINTOWN
Janet Bernard can recall the first time she met Jack Welch — former General Electric Co. president and CEO — like it happened yesterday.
The meeting, in Cleveland back in 2000, brought together the minds of GE’s lighting division and was the first time Bernard, then-union president of Austintown Products Plant, was invited to the annual gathering.
“I kind of stayed in the background because I knew this guy [Welch] was the CEO of the company, and I really didn’t know how to take him,” she said.
When it came time for the meeting, Bernard was the last one in the room and found only one open seat at the table: right next to Welch.
“Across the table are all of my union brothers and sisters looking at me like, ‘Ah ha, there you are with the company,’” Bernard said.
While surprised, she wasn’t intimidated, and wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to speak candidly with the company’s chief executive.
Bernard bluntly asked Welch, leader of GE since the early 1980s, if Austintown Products was inside the circle, or safe, as Welch used to term it, or outside, on the chopping block.
Welch smiled and said the facility was fine — for the time being.
A relieved Bernard, who lives Austintown with her husband, Ron (the two have three grown children: Melissa, Tina and Ron Jr.), could have used the opportunity to improve her own professional well- being, but that’s not how she is. She’s got union worker in her blood.
Her mother worked at GE for more than 40 years, and Bernard worked for 38 years before the Austintown plant closed in 2008, which left 130 people looking for new jobs.
Bernard said it was hard for many, some in their 50s, to look for new work, and many were forced to leave the area to find jobs.
“Every day she was really concerned,” said Sonny Morgan, a fellow union representative who has worked with Bernard on many projects. “She was constantly trying to ease the pain and get assistance for others whenever she could.”
Bernard was one who landed on her feet in 2004, when she joined the IUE-CWA Conference Board, the first woman in more than 70 years to serve as a sitting member.
“In this day in time, back in 2004, it was ridiculous that in all those years, with all the women involved in the union and General Electric, no woman was given an opportunity to serve on the conference board,” said Ed Fire, president of IUE-CWA from 1996 to 2003 and a Lowellville native, who selected Bernard for a board position.
“Janet impressed me as someone who sees the labor movement not as a job, but as a calling and as a cause,” Fire said. “Quite frankly, those are the kind of people who should have the opportunity to serve in high-leadership positions.”
It was always her intention to make a move, and she feels now that she can represent and fight for even more workers throughout the GE family.
Bernard, a Democrat to the core, again stood her ground when she met former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin outside a New York pizzeria in early June. Bernard was in New York for labor negotiations with GE.
Bernard had a few minutes to bring up the union battle between Republicans and Democrats (and later a few minutes with local New York television stations) and said she felt good about her conversation with Palin.
“She’s a strong woman and she’s assertive,” Fire said about Bernard. “She’s not going to sit back when she thinks something is wrong. She’s going to speak her piece.”
It’s one reason she proudly displays her anti-Senate Bill 5 button, and why on her desk sits a megaphone, for when she goes to rallies in support of union workers.
“I understand companies wanting to make money,” she said. “But it’s very disheartening for me ... that they cannot understand the value of the human being; that they put a dollar sign on them and not their human worth.”
It’s the human aspect of her job that drives Bernard. That’s one of the reasons that when she’s not working, she’s at Dorothy Day House of Hospitality in Youngstown, a facility that provides meals and help to people who are homeless or unemployed.
“I hate to hear them called homeless and I hate to hear them called lazy,” Bernard said. “They are amazing people.
“I walk away from there humbled. And I walk away from there knowing my blessings.”