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genius and dedicated detective who retired on June 30 after 50 years of service and having done more to affect the well-being of members than perhaps anybody in the history of the NJ State PBA.
“ George is a man of few words, but when he talks, the information is right on the money,” praises NJ State PBA Executive Vice President Marc Kovar, who worked alongside O’ Brien as chair of the collective bargaining committee for eight years.“ He knew all the tricks of the trade.”
Perhaps the greatest tribute to George is the who’ s who of PBA leaders who learned so much about running a union by serving as collective bargaining chair – a group that also includes Past President Tony Wieners.
“ He has an endless wealth of knowledge when it comes to contracts, negotiations and the way
George“ knew all the tricks of the trade,” says PBA Executive President Marc Kovar( right), thanking O’ Brien for the PBA does business,” proclaims his service with PBA President Pat Colligan at the state meeting on June 26.
John Cernek, who succeeded Kovar as chair and retired as Lacey Township Local 238 State Delegate in February.“ There probably isn’ t a Local in the state that hasn’ t gone to George at some point for guidance.”
The greatness of King George might best be ascertained through the perspective of the member who is taking on the challenge of following O’ Brien as the PBA Collective Bargaining Coordinator.
“ Hey, somebody had to follow Michael Jordan,” declares Michael Freeman, the Summit Local 55 State Delegate who assumed George’ s position at the end of June.
He was born with it
Freeman recalls one of his first collective bargaining committee meetings about 12 years ago. One of those marathon sessions to dissect contracts had just begun when Freeman asked for a clarification on charting first-year salary and whether that meant Academy salary.
“ He said,‘ Walking in the door,’” Freeman says with a chuckle.“ He was very direct. I realized he knew what he wanted. We didn’ t deviate from that.”
Extrapolate that over hundreds of contracts for hundreds of Locals serving tens of thousands of members, and not deviating from what George says has probably led to millions of dollars in increased salaries and benefits for PBA members. Even when he was working as a detective in Clifton – and before he served as Local 36 State Delegate from 1986 until 1994 – O’ Brien devoted much of his time and energy to gathering information about contracts.
“ He was born with it. You can’ t learn that really. You have to be born with it,” Kovar professes.“ He was born with that desire. He was always a union leader. He just took that to another level.”
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O’ Brien started his career with Clifton on July 1, 1968, spending seven years on patrol before moving to the detective bureau. He might have stayed on longer, but in 1994 PBA President Frank Genesi asked him to come on to the State PBA.
The PBA was
“ There probably isn’ t a Local in the state that hasn’ t gone
morphing from to George at some point for some point of guidance,” a fraternal organization to a 238 State Delegate who served four years as chair of the
comments John Cernek, the retired Lacey Township Local collective bargaining agen- collective bargaining committee.
cy at the time. George already had been assisting several Locals with their contracts as part of his role as chair of the collective bargaining committee and becoming the union’ s first Collective Bargaining Coordinator proved to be the role he was born for.
“ Frankly, from Day One when we were given the right to negotiate contracts, we embraced it and we’ ve never let go of that need,” George reasons.“ It was the only way we could move forward. I’ ve always said knowledge is power, so hopefully we gave the power to the people.”
Beyond his amazing wife Dorothy and his family, the greatest love of his life was seeing a collective bargaining agreement move to completion. George’ s consulting for Locals, especially those that have to take their contracts to arbitration, has probably saved thousands upon thousands of dollars because they had access to the encyclopedia of collective bargaining who was the first one to arrive every day at the PBA office in Woodbridge.
As Freeman has watched George over the years, he has seen the output of all the information scrolling through a brain gifted with total recall. PERC law, grievance arbitration, contract trends – part of his collective greatness was never reaching a point of having to tell a member who asked him a question,“ I’ ll get back to you.”
“ George just knew it,” Freeman continues.“ I liken him to a football coach. There’ s so many moving pieces, yet he knows where they need to be. He knows how to set up everything to get that play or that game plan in effect.”
A great detective
The pages of George’ s playbook feature those esteemed spreadsheets. Viewing these documents should require a high-level security clearance; the information contained within should be classified because it gives any Local in contract negotiation a decided edge.
O’ Brien started gathering information for the spreadsheets when he became the Local 36 State Delegate in 1986. He collected collective bargaining data like kids collected baseball cards. He had a simple mission.
“ I wanted to display that data so that it would be readable to anybody who was not familiar with collective bargaining,” George explains.“ They took on a life of their own. I was always looking for new ways to find new data that would be useful in the spreadsheets.”