Joseph (Joe) T. Hansen is one of today's most preeminent union leaders. His efforts are helping revitalize the labor movement to meet the challenges of the global economy. And his leadership is bringing new hope and opportunity for workers and their families to improve their living standards.

Hansen's union activism began shortly after he entered an apprenticeship program in 1962 and became a meat cutter at National Food in Milwaukee. Early in his 12-year career as a cutter, Hansen became a volunteer organizer for Local 73 of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America-a predecessor union of the UFCW-helping organize workers during his lunch hours.

He was elected to serve on the Local 73 executive board in the mid-60s, and in 1973, he put down the tools of his trade, and became an organizer for the Amalgamated Meat Cutters International Union. With the founding of the UFCW in 1979, Hansen took advantage of expanded opportunities to organize workers both in the retail and food processing industries. By 1985 he was appointed UFCW Northcentral Region Director in Minnesota. The following year, he was elected a UFCW International Vice President.

In 1990, he became UFCW Pacific Region Director in California, then went on to head the union's Food Processing, Packing and Manufacturing Division in 1994 where he compiled a remarkable record of organizing and bargaining victories. He led efforts to expand the unionized share of the packing and processing industries with aggressive organizing that brought improved work and living standards to tens of thousands of workers.

Hansen was elected UFCW International Secretary-Treasurer in 1997 and International President in 2004.

As a lifelong organizer, Hansen's focus is on strengthening local unions and activating and empowering UFCW members. He was one of the first union leaders to recognize the dramatic demographic changes that began occurring in the food processing industries beginning in the mid-90s. With women, African-Americans, and a new wave of immigrants transforming the workforce, Joe challenged the union movement to respond with multicultural and multilingual organizing programs-and to open the doors of union leadership to this new workforce.

Active in the global union movement since 1994, Hansen has been a leading advocate to confront the challenges of transnational corporations with global unionism. He was elected to serve as president of Union Network International (UNI)-an international labor organization representing 15 million workers in 900 unions in more than 100 countries-at its first World Congress in Berlin in 2001. He was reelected president at its second World Congress in Chicago in 2005.

In March 2005, Hansen was named to a 14-member Citizens' Health Care Working Group. He is the only union leader serving on the panel that includes esteemed health care providers and advocates, economists, and other leaders. The Working Group was created by Congress, and is charged with bringing the American people together to confront the health care crisis and facilitate the direct communication of their views and concerns to lawmakers so that Congress can initiate comprehensive, national health care reform.

Hansen is one of the founding architects of the new Change to Win federation that has set a new course for the labor movement-one that focuses on organizing workers industry wide. His commitment to building a worker movement is helping ignite the largest multi-union organizing effort in the last half century.

At the core of Hansen's leadership are the beliefs and resolve he demonstrated as a young volunteer organizer-that activated and engaged workers can build a better future for their families.