He is also a member of management's bargaining committee.
As an executive, he was on the bargaining committee during the lockout.
By 1966 he was chairman of the local bargaining committee.
The bargaining committee has the right to call a strike, he said.
He was elected to Local 687's collective bargaining committee in 1955, and became the local's president in 1956.
First, however, two union committees - including the bargaining committee - must approve the agreement.
A few members of the bargaining committees will meet at what can be informally described as the subcommittee level, without their leaders present.
Gartner, a member of the bargaining committee that is threatening a players' strike on March 30, was playing in his 1,000th.
It took the players' bargaining committee less than three hours to reject what they considered an ultimatum.
Stern has been pressing the union's bargaining committee to do just that, but until yesterday it had refused.