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John Sladkus

John began as an international organizer for SEIU in 1987. At a time when personal computers and databases were in their infancy, he saw their potential to help coordinate and win organizing campaigns.  John set up and managed organizing databases nationwide.

After his SEIU organizing years, John taught and conducted research as an Education and Policy Specialist at the University of California Center for Labor Research and Education. He also has taught “Computer Skills for Labor and Community Activists” as part-time faculty at City College of San Francisco and is a guest lecturer at the George Meany Center. He’s a graduate of both Cornell University’s School of Industrial Relations and the Graduate School of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley.

John founded New Union Work Systems, Inc. in 1994 and is dedicated to building an organization that will help unions not only survive, but thrive in the future.

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Matt Burry

Matt Burry has been developing database software for membership organizations for the past ten years. He wrote the first Microsoft Access version of the Organizer’s Toolbox that has been used for a variety of union campaigns including the SEIU Catholic Healthcare West and LA Nursing Home campaign in Los Angeles.

One of Matt’s greatest strengths is his ability to understand a client’s needs and design a software application that fulfills those needs. He has a strong focus on the end user, making sure that the data model is not only sound, but the application is easy to use.

Matt has created databases to manage contacts and campaigns for a variety of clients including SEIU, California Labor Federation, United Farm Workers, HKH Foundation, Green Info, Rainforest Action Network and the Alameda County Labor Council.

From 1991-1995, Matt also served as a grassroots organizer for several advocacy organizations and labor-supported electoral initiatives including California’s Prop 186 (Health Security Initiative) and Proposition 208 (the campaign to raise the minimum wage). Matt graduated from Yale University Cum Laude.

Matt lives with his wife, Tamar, and his two children, Eli and Tali, in Oakland, California.

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Garner Chung

Garner Chung was born in the Midwest but was raised in southern California. He attended college at the University of California at Berkeley where he studied Film. Since then he has spent over five years working in the San Francisco Bay Area as a software developer. In addition to his formal education and career-related activities, Garner has learned a great deal from the strong Asian and Pacific Islander community in the San Francisco Bay Area. Garner is currently on the board of the Korean American Mentorship Program.

In 2002, he, along with the Korean Community Center of the East Bay and various other local activists, helped organize a youth conference commemorating the tenth anniversary of the LA uprising following the Rodney King trial. He has also tutored at Oakland Asian Student Educational Services and chaperoned two youth leadership retreats organized by Asian Immigrant Women Advocates. His past involvement with organizations such as Locus, an API arts venue in San Francisco, CA, Asians and Pacific Islanders for Community Empowerment, an organization advocating for the API community in Oakland, CA, and Korea Solidarity Committee, a group of scholars and activists interested in building ties with social justice activists in South Korea, has exposed him to the complexity of the community to which he belongs. However, more than that, he cherishes the many friends he has made through these organizations.

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Julia Malczynski

Julia Malczynski joined NUWS in 2005 as a Customer Software Support Representative, responsible for providing training and consulting expertise to organizers around the world.

Raised in a union family, Julia organized for SEIU Local 888 in Boston for a year and a half, before starting at NUWS.  At the local she served as both the Organizer’s Representative to the Joint Labor Management Council and was also Co-chair of the local’s staff union. During this time she became the Organizer’s Toolbox “go to” person.  We believe her experience on “the other side” of the phone/email makes her an excellent advocate and trainer for Toolbox users.

Julia is a Saint Mary’s College alumna with a Bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in sociology/women’s studies. She is also a world traveler who taught health as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Republic of Moldova and was a public health educator at the Hertford-Gates Health Agency in rural North Carolina.

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Eric Montague

Eric Montague grew up in a small town just outside
of Baltimore Maryland, and graduated from Antioch College
in 1975, with a BA in History. He moved to the Bay Area in 1976.
Eric joined NUWS in April 2006, bringing with him over 20 years
of experience in software development. Before coming to NUWS Eric worked
at Wells Fargo, Pacific Bell, and Macromedia, as well as a some smaller
companies. He was an adjunct faculty member at Golden Gate University in
San Francisco, where he taught software development classes from 1999 to 2005.

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Erik Haunold

Erik started work in the labor movement in 1998 as an intern with the Western Council of Industrial Workers while finishing a degree in U.S. History at the University of Oregon. After graduating from U of O, he moved to New Orleans to work as a Strategic Research Analyst for the AFL-CIO on an ambitious multi-union organizing project to organize Gulf Coast Mariners working in the oil fields in the Gulf Coast states. Two years later Erik went to work with the ILWU on a series of contract campaigns in Hawaii.  Afterward, he returned to Oregon where he worked for three years as a Healthcare Organizer for SEIU Local 49. Before joining NUWS in 2008, he was the IT Systems Administrator for three years at Local 49 where he managed several databases including the Organizer’s Toolbox and kept the network running and email streaming.

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