Growing up, longtime Hennepin County chief labor negotiator Bill Peters worked three summers with his uncle at the now-closed Coca-Cola bottling plant in northeast Minneapolis.
The work was unremarkable. He did what needed to be done, lifting and loading and other factory work. What got his attention was his uncle's work as a shop steward for the union and the chatter among the workers.
"The breakroom was just on fire with what the employer was offering," Peters said of what he heard being discussed.
Peters, 64, exudes an Olympian calm and a poker face under his gray mustache, but even now, as he eases into retirement, he summons the same excited realization he felt as a youngster listening to those conversations.
"The dynamics of the whole process was unbelievably interesting," he said in an interview last week.
His career as a public-sector labor negotiator grew directly from those breakroom sessions as he first gravitated toward a bachelor's degree in business administration with a concentration in labor relations from the University of Minnesota.
He still speaks reverently of his first labor relations professor, Mario Bognanno, who further stoked his ambitions.
Many others speak with the same respect for Peters, who for the past 15 years has been Hennepin County's lead labor negotiator with 17 bargaining units that represent 5,400 employees and 11 umbrella unions, including the heart of the county's work in corrections, health, social work and law enforcement.