The framed photos that line the walls of Patrick Henning’s office in downtown Sacramento form a tapestry of his experiences in labor relations and law.

In one there’s an ambitious and young Henning talking to workers as a labor union representative in Pennsylvania in the 1970s.

In another, Henning stands next to former Gov. Jerry Brown in 1980 when he served as the state’s labor commissioner. Beside them are former Gov. Pat Brown and Patrick’s father John, the legendary labor activist and one-time appointee of President John F. Kennedy.

In another, Henning talks with Dolores Huerta, longtime United Farm Workers leader, and the children of Robert F. Kennedy, who were in Delano in 1988 during Cesar Chavez’s last hunger strike.

The photos tell just part of the story of Henning’s tireless dedication to securing just wages and working conditions for laborers during the past three-plus decades.

“Someone asked me the other day how many years I’d been a union member and I had to admit it was 34,” the 58-year-old Henning said in an interview. “I almost choked — that’s a long time.”

Now Henning faces perhaps the most complex challenge of his career. In November, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger named the Democrat and longtime labor leader to direct the state’s Economic Development Department.

The $10.6 billion agency is a complicated bureaucracy with 10,000 employees who handle unemployment, family leave, disability insurance, payroll tax collection and job training.

Henning, who was ordained to the permanent diaconate for the Diocese of Sacramento in 1992 and serves at St. Mel Parish in Fair Oaks, had worked as the legislative expert on the Assembly and Senate labor committees for the past 17 years. There he monitored thousands of pieces of legislation, frequently sorting out information from business lobbyists as well as labor groups.

In the 1980s, in addition to being state labor commissioner under Gov. Jerry Brown, Henning was a member of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, regulating labor relations during difficult battles between farmworker unions and then-Gov. George Deukemejian.

From 1970 to 1981, he was a union organizer and contract negotiator in various parts of the country for service employees, hotel and restaurant workers and operating engineers. In the 1970s he was also executive director of the Catholic Labor Institute of Southern California, an independent organization that promoted harmonious labor relations.

Despite his strong ties to labor, the California Chamber of Commerce and other influential business groups supported Henning’s recent appointment. He is viewed as “open, accessible, straightforward and fair,” as one chamber lobbyist told The Los Angeles Times.

Henning exudes a certain enthusiasm when talking about the challenge he faces in managing one of California’s largest departments and linking it to 900,000 businesses and 19 million workers statewide.

“The governor was looking for a bipartisan approach to make our state more creative when it comes to the workforce and employers,” he said. “For the first time in my career, I feel I have to tools here to do the job.

“I’ve had a reputation in my career of being straightforward on a lot of the issues that impact upon labor and the economy, especially in some of the more contentious areas — farm labor relations, minimum wage and equality in employment, Employers and unions view me as a person who likes to mediate disputes, has a broad view of the problems and treats them with fairness.”

Henning said he’s tried to set a tone of openness from his first day on the job. He told employees his key priorities are to lead a management team that “respects your professionalism and hard work,” and to “get you the resources you need to do the essential work that you are engaged in on a daily basis.”

On the morning he spoke to The Herald, he delivered a pep talk of sorts to managers of the unemployment insurance branch of the Employment Development Department.

“I’m going to hit on and set a tone about the fact that I want a diversified leadership and management team,” he noted. “We have great diversity in our rank and file employees, but not in supervision and management.”

Later that day he traveled south to Calexico to speak at a huge community event at 2:30 a.m., where more than 100 volunteers would serve breakfast to about 3,000 farmworkers before they go to work. The breakfast has been put on by the state agency for 20 years to demonstrate appreciation for farmworkers in that agricultural community.

“Growers will be at the breakfast and it’s an opportunity for some of our inspectors to talk with farmworkers about their working conditions and whether they’ve been paid properly,” Henning said.

“When harvest is over in the Central Valley — especially in the small towns — the whole town is unemployed,” he added. “That’s when our agency really ramps up. We’re quick to meet with workers and contractors to get them referrals to working on different crops. Or maybe some farmworkers are interested in upgrading their skills and branching out from agricultural work. We have to have an immediate response so people won’t be unemployed — whether it’s in agriculture, the timber industry or plant closures.”

Job training is one of his key priorities, Henning said, because the state faces a dearth of trained labor to replace millions of baby-boom generation workers who will be retiring in the next few decades. He hopes to form partnerships between business and labor on this issue, which would be vital to both sides.

He also plans to “attack the vast underground economy” in California with the help of state and local law enforcement agencies.

“Any company that doesn’t pay taxes is unfair competition to law-abiding businesses and has a horrible impact on workers, especially low-wage workers and women,” he said. He hopes to target any such abuses in agricultural labor and the garment industries in particular.

All of these goals mesh well with his ministry as a permanent deacon, Henning said, because he’s fulfilling one of the deacon’s primary missions — that of reaching out to all people who need assistance.

“This is about economic justice for workers as well as keeping businesses in the state economically viable,” he said. “I don’t believe in polarization politics. I have to work with everyone to get the resources to help out both working families and employers.”

The essence of his work, he said, “is common sense justice, dignity and the inherent rights of workers, as laid out so well in Catholic social teaching. I was certainly brought up in that culture and this job is a chance for me to put that teaching into practice.”

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