No union? No problem
Peter Zschiesche founded and runs a center that helps workers
Many entrepreneurs fail to make a lot of money. Peter Zschiesche is among the small group who never made money a goal.
The director of San Diego's Employee Rights Center could perhaps be characterized as a nonprofit entrepreneur. The center he created in 1999 has turned into a catchall agency helping nonunion workers with a host of issues, including unemployment claims, wage disputes and proceedings at the National Labor Relations Board.
It's much like a labor union office – for workers without a union.
Hundreds of workers each year come through the door of the center's modest offices at Fairmount and El Cajon in San Diego. Many more raise inquiries over the phone.
“Peter is a great advocate for the working person,” said Gregory Knoll, executive director of the Legal Aid Society of San Diego, which makes many referrals to the center.
It was Zschiesche (pronounced zee-she) who identified the need for such a program and pulled together the resources to get it going.
After years of working as a shipyard machinist, labor activist and elected union leader – not to mention weathering a decade of labor wars at the NASSCO shipyard – Zschiesche left his post as an elected business agent of the International Association of Machinists in 1995.
The labor leader had been chief negotiator for the council of seven unions seeking new contracts with shipyard management and felt frustrated with the lack of progress and the erosion of labor unity at the time.
“I didn't want to do it anymore,” Zschiesche said.
In his early 50s, armed with substantial experience as a labor negotiator and an MBA from the University of Michigan, not to mention his service as an Army officer, Zschiesche was well-positioned for a move to the other side of the negotiating table and making some serious money.
Zschiesche had all he needed for a move into management – except the desire.
“I really didn't want to leave the labor movement,” he said.
He traces it back to his experiences in the Army, which he entered after getting his master's degree in 1966. He had been in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps during college and graduate school.
To hear Zschiesche tell it, he had all the white-collar experience he'd ever want during his tour in Korea. Tapping his business-school skills, the U.S. military assigned him to work with the Korean army as a financial adviser, overseeing a hefty budget for that nation's signal corps.
“It was as close to a cushy life as you could get, and I was using my MBA,” Zschiesche said. “I used cost accounting and did budget analysis, and I got to see the contrast between operations and finance.”
Late in his tour, Zschiesche volunteered for duty in Vietnam, although he was opposed to the war.
“I wanted to see it for myself,” he said.
Returning to the United States, Zschiesche was startled to see a nation transformed by the anti-war movement and the emerging counterculture.
“I knew people who were afraid to come from Asia because they heard about the riots here,” he recalled.
Scouting for job prospects, Zschiesche, a native of New York state, was offered what seemed like a dream job as a brand manager for a California wine company. He was also offered a job with an anti-poverty program in a gritty Detroit neighborhood.
Call it a delayed reaction to the 1960s – which Zschiesche feels he missed in the military – but he took the job in Detroit.
After a year there – a period when he met his wife, Pam, who was working as a VISTA volunteer in the area – he moved to San Diego, where he worked temporary jobs and took graduate classes at San Diego State University.
It was a period of sorting out, Zschiesche said, and answering a persistent question from his father.
“ 'When are you going to use that MBA you got?' he would ask,” Zschiesche said.
Not for a while, it would turn out.
“I wasn't ready to settle into that life,” he said. “I had a taste of that in the military.”
He rebuilt truck tires and then worked at a machine shop in Spring Valley before finding his way to a pipefitters' training program at NASSCO. After a brief move to Chicago, Zschiesche returned to San Diego and got back into the shipyard.
He worked his way up from activist to local president and later to business representative – which brought him a surprise.
“I got into the office – the previous agent just left everything – and saw these piles of documents. It wasn't a friendly turnover. That's when I finally started to use my MBA training. And I called my father.”
A decade later, as NASSCO fell onto hard times, and labor relations worsened, Zschiesche would leave. But not until he had amassed much experience doing arbitration and handling the administrative proceedings generated by a large industrial employer.
He had also won the respect of his adversaries at the yard.
“He is one of the most intelligent, articulate labor leaders I have had to deal with,” said Richard Vortmann, a former chief executive of NASSCO.
“He is tough, but he is fair and straightforward and a man of his word. A lot of people run up against the wall when they have a problem. Peter exemplifies the type of person who steps back and figures out a way around it.”
Out of the shipyard, Zschiesche did consulting with the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council. Later, tapping his experience in crafting shipyard apprenticeship programs, he worked for a company training blue-collar workers in computer skills.
He was also representing workers dealing with contested claims for unemployment insurance when the idea of developing a center for nonunion employees arose through conversations with labor attorneys.
“This was Peter's brainchild and it fit perfectly with the labor council's goals,” said Jerry Butkiewicz, who heads the labor group.
“The rap on the labor movement is that it doesn't care about anybody who doesn't pay dues. We know that's not true, but with the Employee Rights Center we can prove it.”
Law students help
With support from the labor council, along with some private grants, Zschiesche launched the center. He quickly tapped what would become one of the center's key resources – students from the region's law schools.
“I realized I could train students to become advocates,” said Zschiesche, who began an internship program for the lawyers in training.
“I turned them on to the practical side of being an advocate and how to present before an administrative law judge (who adjudicates unemployment claims and similar proceedings). I give them the opportunity to work with clients they would not get in a law firm.”
Ruben Garcia, an associate professor of law at California Western School of Law, said that feedback from students has been “uniformly positive.”
“Whatever students are planning to do with their law careers, there will be some element of employment law,” Garcia said. “And Peter is an activist who attempts to come up with win-win solutions.”
Alor Calderón made the transition from intern at the center to assistant director.
“Peter is a great teacher and supporter who recognized in me what I recognized in him – the need to work in the community,” said Calderón, who graduated from California Western School of Law. “And working with Peter brings an organizational richness because he knows everybody.”
Beyond his work at the center, Zschiesche has won two elections as a trustee of the San Diego Community College District, whose president says the labor activist has brought an important perspective.
Everyone benefits
“He is very tied into work-force training and has been able to connect the community college district with NASSCO and other major employers,” said Marty Block, the district president. “It benefits the college district, the employers and certainly benefits the employees.”
Zschiesche, meanwhile, says his work with the center has brought revelations, despite years of work with labor unions.
“I had no idea this many workers got cheated out of wages,” said Zschiesche, who reports the problem as among the top complaints of the center's clients.
Zschiesche emphasizes that he considers himself an entrepreneur and believes in bringing at least some business-world disciplines into the labor movement.
For example, the center charges workers for representing them at unemployment hearings. The cost: $100 if the worker loses, or one week's benefit check if the claim is won.
“If we give value, people should be willing to pay for it,” Zschiesche said. “When they pay, they can demand good service from us. It's not a handout.
“Even for do-gooders, nothing is free.”
Zschiesche says he long ago abandoned any interest in making big money in business, however.
“I made that choice after the Army,” he said. “It goes back to the 1960s idea that you had to choose sides. I like being on this side. I like helping working people get justice. People need it, and I feel very comfortable doing it.”
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Craig Rose: (619) 293-1814; craig.rose@uniontrib.com
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