John August

John August has been a union steward, local union president, and international union leader  with the Teamsters, AFT, and SEIU where he helped lead  organizing, large scale bargaining and strategy since 1973.  He has extensive union experience in manufacturing, transportation, public services, social services, and all phases of the health care industry. From 2006-2013, he led the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions and co-chaired the Labor-Management Partnership at Kaiser Permanente. Experts in the field regard this labor Management Partnership as the largest, most complex, and most successful in US history.  While with the Coalition he led  successful negotiations of 3 national contracts covering nearly 100,000 workers .  Through the labor-management partnership, the workforce has been mobilized into more than 3,500 unit based teams, an important contributor  for performance improvement in the nation's largest not-for-profit health plan.  Since September, 2013, John has been serving as Associate Director of the Healthcare Transformation Project of the Cornell University NY State School of Industrial and Labor Relations.