Full Plates

James Cavanaugh: In the Strike Zone

James Cavanaugh’s corner office in the single-story headquarters of the Austin-based Hormel Foods sits past a maze of 1980s-era cubicles that leave a visitor with the impression that not much changes around here. It’s precisely that stability that attracted Cavanaugh to the company in 1982.

As one of six in-house attorneys at Hormel, Cavanaugh began his job thinking he would focus on tax and pension matters. Six months after he started, however, a senior attorney who was a labor and employment specialist left the company.

“The general counsel at the time asked me if I had ever done a labor arbitration and I said, ‘What’s a labor arbitration?’ He said, ‘You’ve got one in two weeks.’ It was a turning point in my career,” says Cavanaugh.

That’s an understatement.

In August 1985, Hormel workers went on strike. Products were boycotted and families and friendships were torn apart, leaving scars that remain today. The strike was chronicled years later in Barbara Kopple’s Oscar-winning documentary American Dream.

“In 1984, we saw everything on the horizon and we were gearing up, doing the things that you do in terms of due diligence prior to an event that you try to stop, but can’t,” Cavanaugh says. “In a year and a half, I experienced elements in this arena that some labor attorneys don’t get in 20 or 25 years.”

After six months, a significant number of replacement workers crossed the picket line along with some who had been picketing. In January 1986, Gov. Rudy Perpich called in the National Guard to protect replacement workers. Within the year, the national union ousted the local union leadership and ended the strike.

“It was a very difficult time for our community and a very difficult time for our employees,” Cavanaugh says. “That was an aberration in Hormel’s long history of having a really solid relationship with our union.

“At the time, we were putting in really long hours. I went from one mini-crisis to the next, but I learned a tremendous amount about labor and employment law in a very concentrated time.”

Cavanaugh credits his early bosses and mentors at Hormel for “seeing something in my character or personality that they thought might work.” Amazingly, even as Hormel grew during the past two and a half decades into an international conglomerate, reporting $6.2 billion in sales last year, the company continued to make do with six in-house attorneys (adding a seventh only earlier this year) and four paralegals. “By anybody’s standards, that’s a small department,” says Cavanaugh.

Hormel attorneys work on everything from mergers and acquisitions to real estate transactions, vendor contracts, food law, SEC, antitrust and patent cases, and, of course, labor law and workers’ compensation.

Besides heading the legal team, Cavanaugh serves as the company’s senior vice president of external affairs, which means being involved in public relations and strategic business planning. He confers with his team of attorneys regularly, but admits—with some sadness—that he isn’t as involved with cases as he used to be.

“I was really good at what I did. Can I say that?” he says with slight embarrassment. “I miss the hearing work, where you’re on your feet and making decisions on the fly. There is an adrenaline that accompanies that. You never knew what was going to come through that door. I found it satisfying to help managers who are not lawyers. They came to you with a problem and it was gratifying to see a change in their face as you put them at ease.”

Hormel’s worldwide reach keeps him on his toes. “We live in a small town, but our practice is international,” he says. “I know I can find the level of education and experience for a position; what I need to make sure of is that the person who comes here is going to fit into the culture we’ve created. I’d rather find the right personality and train for special needs.”

Part of that culture is hard work. “I was the son of a man who worked through the Depression. It was inculcated in me from the time I could read that you needed to work hard. You didn’t have to like your job, but if you didn’t, that was tough because you had a job. Younger generations do a better job of focusing on that balance and making sure that they’re not only adding value to their job, but to their lives outside of work as well.”

Cavanaugh understands that life can’t be Spam all the time. “Lawyers, in general, burn the candle at both ends. It’s not healthy and, ultimately, it’s counterproductive,” says Cavanaugh, who has six children who keep him hopping outside the office. “You can’t work at a high level all of the time. If you don’t recharge your batteries, then you’re doing a disservice to us and yourself.”

Steven Euller: Around the Globe With Cargill

Assuming the general counsel position of Cargill in 2000 meant not only an office in the company’s tony “Lake Office” HQ in Wayzata, but a significant reduction of, if not end to, Steven Euller’s globetrotting ways. Not that he was complaining.

Today, Euller is more manager than lawyer. “My job is to make sure that the legal team helps the company carry out its business strategies successfully—that we confront the legal issues and the opportunities effectively,” he says.

Visitors to his office follow a winding private drive through tall iron gates to a large country home, built circa 1931, that originally was the residence of Minnegasco founder Rufus Rand before Cargill purchased it—and the 275 acres of land it sits on—in 1944 for its executive offices. On the day we visited late last winter, a fire crackled in the reception area’s large stone fireplace. A public relations assistant led us up a spiral staircase (imported from Italy with hand-hewn timbers in the turret) to Euller’s second-floor office.

Euller started at Cargill in 1979, straight out of Harvard Law School. Assignments for the company have taken him to Geneva, Singapore (twice) and London. He says he doesn’t miss the hectic schedule of a young corporate lawyer on the way up.

“When I was in Asia, I traveled to Japan for a week, to Australia for a week, to India and Pakistan. And it was the same thing working from London, covering everything from Moscow to Africa to Turkey.”

Euller supervises nearly 200 full-time attorneys, many of whom work half a world away and practice in all manner of legal areas. Creating a system in which the team can work together—as well as with Cargill scientists and business managers—has demanded much of his attention since becoming general counsel. With the joint ventures in which Cargill routinely enters, it’s not unusual for attorneys stationed in the Twin Cities to work on a project with attorneys in Shanghai, Sao Paulo or London.

“I think we have a global reach as a law department that most law firms would find hard to match,” he says. “We are aware that we come from different cultures and different legal systems and we want to leverage those differences. We spend a lot of time making sure that we’re not talking past each other.”

Studies show that nearly 80 percent of associates leave large law firms within the first five years. Euller says turnover at Cargill is a fraction of that. “If you want to continually learn new things and have a variety of new challenges, this is the place to be,” he says. “We offer cutting-edge work and a high level of intellectual challenge.

“I’ve never had any regrets,” Euller says. “I can’t imagine that I could have had a more exciting or interesting career.”