Sixth District International Representative and former Milwaukee Local 494 Business Manager Dean Warsh has been appointed Government Affairs Director, effective Feb. 1.

The move continues a career in which Warsh is credited with turning Local 494 into a force in Wisconsin politics during his eight-year tenure as business manager.

As an international representative, he assisted local unions throughout the Sixth District — which includes Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin — in finding ways to best take advantage of union-friendly legislation that aided domestic manufacturing and supported the American worker.

"I couldn't be happier for him," said Business Development International Representative John Bzdawka, who preceded Warsh as business manager and brought him onto the Local 494 staff. "He's worked hard his entire career and politics was always kind of his thing.

"He's ended up where he needs to be. I think he's going to do a great job for the IBEW," Bzdawka added.

It's a career path that Brother Warsh didn't expect when he began his apprenticeship and joined Local 494 in 1992.

Don Warsh, his father and a Korea War veteran, spent 40 years working with the tools as a Local 494 member. The elder Warsh never traveled more than 30 miles from home for work and comfortably provided for his wife and the couple's six children, his son said. He was active and attended union meetings but never held a position with the local.

"I thought I would just follow in his footsteps, working for 40 years and helping the local wherever I could," said Warsh, who later awarded his father a 55-year service pin while he served as business manager. "But then you get asked to do one thing, and that leads to another, and then another, and you end up getting some opportunities."

Warsh was elected to Local 494's executive board in 2001 and became the vice president in 2010. One year later, he got an up-close vision of the importance of politics.

Scott Walker, then Wisconsin's notoriously anti-union governor, enacted a series of measures with the help of a friendly legislature that crushed working families. Warsh and his wife, Kerri, who was then a union-represented teacher, were among the thousands who demonstrated at the state capitol.

The experience left a bitter taste, but Warsh vowed to make political involvement a priority.

"I saw with just the swipe of a pen, they could take away everything we had negotiated," he said.

He served as a Local 494 organizer before being appointed business manager in 2015 following Bzdawka's departure to become an international representative. He was re-elected three times during the next eight years, leaving the position to become an international representative in July 2023.

Among his hires as business manager was John Zapfel, whom he brought on as the local's political director.

Those two — along with the help of allies both inside and outside the IBEW — helped elect a union friendly governor in Tony Evers, pro-union officials to dozens of local offices, and flip the state Supreme Court to Democratic control. Wisconsin still has a right-to-work law but may be on the path to repealing it, just as neighboring Michigan did in 2023.

Zapfel now is a Government Affairs international representative and will again report to Warsh.

"I just appreciated his openness and willingness to take in new ideas," Zapfel said. "He was always looking for the best person for the job and to do the job right. When I came over, with Dean's willingness, we took Local 494 to a higher level."

The local also regularly reached out to traditionally underrepresented groups under Warsh's leadership.

It started printing materials in Spanish to better communicate with Milwaukee's growing Hispanic population. It worked with a prison minister and organizations that tried to connect inmates with a career in the trades upon release.

"I realized my local did not look like the community I live in," Warsh said. "It was important to reach out and show we are inclusive."

He is taking on his new role during an anxious time. The IBEW and unions had a strong relationship with former President Joe Biden and helped get many pro-working family measures enacted, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act and Chips and Science Acts, which provided federal funding for tens of thousands of IBEW jobs.

The relationship will be different with the Trump administration and a GOP-led Congress, but Warsh said he's optimistic.

"The most important thing for myself and everyone in the IBEW is to put our members to work," he said. "I'm looking forward to building alliances and friendships on both sides of the aisle, talking about common sense issues that our members care about.

"Don't get me wrong," Warsh added. "This will not be an easy task. We must work closely with our new and long-standing partners to ensure we preserve all the gains we achieved with the previous administration."

Bzdawka said his longtime friend and colleague is the person to do just that. "No one is going to outwork him, and he's a really good guy," he said. "Coming in with the new administration, there's a lot of uncertainty. But Dean has the moral compass to navigate whatever comes our way."

Warsh has been an active participant in several labor organizations in Wisconsin and currently serves as a member of Gov. Evers' Green Ribbon Commission on Clean Energy and Environmental Innovation. He has one daughter, Caitlyn Bieniak, a Marine Corps veteran. She is a journeyman wireman and member of Portland, Oregon, Local 48.

The officers and staff congratulate Brother Warsh on his appointment and wish him much success in his new position.

Retired Third District International Representative Dorothy Husted Geonie, whose senses of dignity and sympathy fueled a decades-long career that helped tens of thousands of working people find a better life through IBEW membership, died on Dec. 18. She was 103.

Geonie was born in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens, N.Y. While Geonie was still a toddler, her family moved to West Orange, N.J. There, she received an education that included two years at the Essex County Vocational School. She also developed a deep love of sports, playing basketball and softball in her free time and becoming a devoted fan of New York's professional teams.

In 1942, the 21-year-old Geonie joined the millions of women who entered the workforce during World War II, taking a job as a telephone equipment assembler at the massive Western Electric plant in Kearny, N.J., making 45 cents an hour. (Adjusting for inflation, that's about $8.60 an hour today.)

Sensitive to the low-pay plight of herself and her fellow workers while the company was raking in millions of dollars in profits, Geonie volunteered to work as an inside organizer for the IBEW at the plant. Her efforts were credited with helping the union win the right to organize the facility's nearly 30,000 workers, a major victory over six other unions that were competing for the privilege in the face of stiff Western Digital resistance.

Kearny Local 1470, once one of the East Coast's largest locals representing telephone manufacturing workers, was chartered in 1948. Geonie was initiated into the IBEW the following year, and she quickly became active with Local 1470, serving terms as its recording secretary and chair of the executive board. Geonie also served on the local's grievance, entertainment and blood bank committees, and she was the editor of the local's newspaper.

At the same time, organizing leaders from the IBEW's International Office were using Geonie's unionizing talents on campaigns at Westinghouse, RCA and other Western Electric plants, dispatching her to work on numerous successful organizing fights in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota and Louisiana.

In 1953, Geonie became the first woman to serve as an international representative from the IBEW's Manufacturing branch, appointed by International President D.W. Tracy to service the 200-plus manufacturing locals in the union's Third District, which has jurisdiction over Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

Throughout her district tenure, while Geonie frequently led training sessions on grievance procedures, local union elections and shop steward duties, she never stopped organizing. Among her notable successes: her participation in a 1973 effort to bring more than 400 Northland Electric Motors workers into Watertown, N.Y., Local 2101, as well as an IBEW win in 1985 that welcomed nearly 1,100 Essex County, N.J., government office workers into Newark Local 1158.

In 1983, Geonie's many achievements were lauded by the YWCA's Academy of Women Achievers, which presented her an award for outstanding accomplishment.

"Dorothy, in her inspirational leadership role, sets an important example for all women," noted a biographical sketch of Geonie that was prepared for her award. "She is committed to continue opening previously closed doors so that others might follow where she had led."

After working for the Third District for nearly 42 years, Geonie retired in 1995 and later moved to Franklin Park, N.J. She was a member of the Italian Sons and Daughters of America, and she enjoyed playing golf and attending the theater and opera, before and after her retirement.

Lawrence F. Neidig Jr., a retired senior executive assistant to the international president and international secretary-treasurer, fondly remembered serving with Geonie — whom he called "Dottie" — after he was appointed as a Third District international representative in 1992.

"She worked very hard and serviced the local unions very well," Neidig said. "She was a very strong individual."

He added that Geonie stayed sharp and enjoyed herself well into her 90s. "She was always looking for a card game," he said.

The two of them became close friends after Geonie retired, said Neidig, noting that they had had lunch together in the past year.

John W. Varricchio, a retired international representative who came on staff in the Third District in 1989, remembered Geonie as a fun-loving gambler, as well. "She liked to play cards, and she liked to go to the casinos," he said.

"We had a lunch group, and we would meet three or four times a year, coming from all directions," added Varricchio's wife, Pat. "We stayed close for many, many years doing that."

Please join the officers and staff of the IBEW in sending sincerest condolences to Sister Geonie's family members and friends.