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knew that one day he would be the perfect guy for this job. He’s
very energetic, very smart and has a lot of creative ideas.”
Some of those ideas have contributed to reenergizing the
32nd annual PBA Collective Bargaining Seminar Feb. 5-7 at
Harrah’s in Atlantic City. The new Collective Bargaining Seminar
begins with the new collective bargaining coordinator, who em-
braces numbers like a warm Snuggie, whose splitting image will
bring an advantage to every Local negotiating a contract and
whose detective prowess will enrich the plethora of the PBA’s
voluminous collective bargaining database.
“Contracts, numbers – they just make sense to me,” Freeman
relates. “I like the order that is involved with having a contract
that lets members know what they can expect and that they can
hold an agency or employer to because they have negotiated for
what’s fair. That’s what drew me to the whole thing.”
New math
When Freeman became the Local 55 State Delegate in 2005
– after starting his executive board run appropriately as finan-
cial secretary – there was some changeover in the Union Coun-
ty Conference. A member was needed to represent the county
on the collective bargaining committee, and Freeman was as-
signed. He went right to work at the first meeting.
“I sat down and started doing some math,” he recalls.
When Kovar moved up to executive vice president, a new
committee chair was needed. Jackson Township Local 168 State
Delegate John Cernek took over as chair. He had a close working
relationship with Freeman and asked him to be co-chair.
When Cernek retired in February 2018, Freeman moved up
to committee chair. Along the way, he caught O’Brien’s eye as a
potential successor to be collective bargaining coordinator.
“At the meetings, I got to see who understands contracts and
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Mike was right at the fore,” O’Brien notes. “He stepped in there
and knew exactly how to dissect a contract. The tenor of his
work was excellent, and he showed great leadership capabili-
ties. When I went out on negotiations with him, he was right on
point. He just knows the business.”
Before signing on as collective bargaining coordinator,
Freeman needed to find out what the job entailed specifical-
ly. O’Brien had invented it and there was no manual; only the
volumes of spreadsheets he kept with information about every
contract negotiated.
Kovar and PBA President Pat Colligan asked Freeman to shad-
ow O’Brien for a couple of weeks. He learned that the phone
rings almost constantly, even more than it does for a State Del-
egate. He realized that the job was similar to police work and
appealed to his detective skills, specifically how having to make
a lot of calls to find witnesses is a lot like having to make a lot of
calls to get the latest clauses to make contracts successful.
And after those two weeks, he still wanted the job.
“It’s a lot more work than I’ve ever done before. Different
work, but unbelievably rewarding,” Freeman confirms. “Having
members come up to me and being able to answer their ques-
tions, and being able to help people who haven’t been doing it
as long and don’t have as much experience, is probably more
than I did as a police officer.”
Seminar moments
To provide the latest and greatest in everything related to
contracts, negotiating, benefits and the day-to-day business of
union responsibilities and opportunities, Freeman was imme-
diately charged with refreshing the PBA Collective Bargaining
Seminar. The request came not only from Colligan and Kovar,
but from O’Brien, who knew it was time.
Not such an easy task, considering that the first 31 seminars