About The Author - There's a Tremendous Power in the Union

James D. English

Author of There’s A Tremendous Power in the Union

James English traces his interest in the labor movement back to Gonzaga High School in Washington DC where he joined the debate team and learned about concepts of social justice and “the common good”. By his sophomore year he decided to become a labor lawyer. Pursuing this goal he graduated from Fordham University (BA 1963) and Georgetown Law School (LLB 1966). After a brief stint in the Organizing Department of the AFL-CIO, in 1968 he joined the Legal Department of the United Steelworkers of America and practiced in all areas of labor law, representing the union in federal and state courts at the trial and appellate level, the NLRB and OSHA, serving for a term as co-chair of the ABA Committee on Occupational Safety and Health Laws. He served as a legal adviser to the union in its major negotiations in the steel and aluminum industries until 1993.

When George Becker became president of USWA in 1994, English became his chief of staff and close confidant. During that time, he played a key role in the negotiation of its mergers with the 90,000-member United Rubber Workers Union and the 40,000-member Aluminum Brick and Glass Workers Union. In 2000, he served briefly as general counsel of the Union. In 2001 he became its elected international secretary-treasurer, the chief financial officer of the union. He also oversaw the union’s grassroots political mobilization program and its award-winning Rapid Response program, an in-plant member education and activist initiative. While serving as secretary-treasurer, he headed the negotiations that led to the union’s merger with the 210,000-member Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers union (PACE).

He retired from the union in 2009 and served as vice president and treasurer of Hekima Place, a charitable organization established to start and support an orphanage and school for severely disadvantaged girls in Kenya. He also served a term as a member of the secretary of labor’s ERISA Advisory Council. He continues to serve as a trustee on the National Integrated Group Pension Plan, a multi-employer multi-union pension fund established to provide pensions for small, unionized companies in the manufacturing sector. He is treasurer of the Blue Green Alliance, an organization of unions and environmental groups created to promote a clean environment and good union jobs.

He has been married for fifty-four years to Kathryn Raimer English, an organist with a PhD in Musicology from the University of Pittsburgh. They have five children and six grandchildren.