SEPTA union leader: You need a thick skin

Here's what makes being a union leader different from being a leader in other businesses. You can be voted out. Imagine being able to vote out your boss! Interesting, right? That's what happened to Willie Brown, head of the union that represents SEPTA's bus drivers, cashiers, mechanics, trolley and subway operators. He's now on his second stint as president, after having been voted out of office in 2010. In our Leadership Agenda interview, published in Monday's Philadelphia Inquirer, Brown told me what that was like.

"Number one, you have to have thick skin," said Brown, who heads Local 234 of the Transport Workers Union. "You can take a group of people and tell them, `I have the cure for cancer' and you would think that everybody would applaud you. But as union president, someone is going to say, `Well, what about diabetes?' So you have to have a thick skin to be able to deal with that.

Q: After the last strike, you lost your election in 2010. Did you think it was a referendum on your behavior during the strike?

A: That's the beauty of democracy.

Q: What else did you take from your loss? How did you interpret it?

A: Maybe they wanted to try a different way, but more than the loss, it's not how many times you fall, it's how many times you get up. What I took from the loss, I take more from the win.

Q: Explain more.

A: If I thought the membership was punishing me because we went on strike, well, right before the contract they put me back in office. So maybe they just wanted a change for a minute. That's the beauty of democracy. That's the way it goes.

Q: After the last time you lost, you went back to driving a trolley. How was that?

A: That's not a hard transition for me to go back because I'm a people person. That's what I do. I'm a glorified trolley operator. That's what I am. I know I'm not nailed to this [president's] seat. I know that every three years you are going to have an election and there's a possibility you could be unseated. I know this. So that's not a real strong issue with me. As I said, that's my second favorite job. I still consider myself to be blessed to go back to the trolley.

Q: Did you learn anything on the trolley that helps you be a better president this time?

A: When you are away from a job for awhile, sometimes you do forget just how hard it is, just how stressful it is for a particular job. 

Q: Why do you think the members brought you back?

A: I think people looked at the contract our members received the last time and they saw, that at that point, they did pretty good.

Q: Any other lesson?

A: I might have taken some things for granted.

Q: Like what?

A: That the members understood the contract and the politics.

Source: Philly.com