Dennis Grilli, the executive director of Council 94, talks with reporters outside Superior Court last week. Council 94 members over- whelmingly rejected a contract proposal last month brokered with the state administration by Grilli, George Nee, of the AFL-CIO, and Robert Walsh, of the National Education Association.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

Drive up Charles Street into North Providence, past Lancellotta’s Banquet Restaurant, and you’re at the home of Council 94, the largest state employees union.

Look for an office whose bulletin board features a “Don’t blame me, I voted for Charlie” sticker, a “Retired U.S. Army” decal, and a “Privatization equals corruption” button.

Welcome to the lair of Dennis Grilli, the union’s 59-year-old executive director, a man at the center of a bitter battle that has roiled Council 94 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and pitted it against Republican Governor Carcieri.

You often see Grilli quoted, but who is he?

He’s from a large Italian family and was raised mostly on Federal Hill. His late father, Mario, operated a gas station, then was a supervisor for a plating manufacturer. His late mother, the former Helen Iannozzi, stayed home, then was a Shepard’s saleswoman and School Department housekeeper.

Grilli went to Mount Pleasant High but dropped out just short of graduation and joined the Army. In early 1968, not yet 19 years old, he was attached to a military mortuary in Vietnam.

He helped carry body bags, and he saw dead soldiers laid out on slabs. What was that like? “It was” — he pauses — “it’s an awakening.”

An awakening to what? “That a life is very important; you cherish every minute you have.”

A few weeks later, he was transferred to a depot where he processed the personal property — wallets, dog tags, savings bonds, toothbrushes — of fallen servicemen.

Might that be tougher than seeing the bodies themselves? “Sometimes it was.” He remembers the time the property came through of a friend he’d grown up with. “I was upset,” he says.

I asked Grilli what he learned about himself in Vietnam. “I grew up,” he said.

And what did the United States learn? Did we learn anything? “I don’t think we did, because we’re in a similar situation now with Iraq.”

Before Grilli left the Army, he got a high school equivalency degree. Back in Rhode Island, he held a variety of jobs, earned an associate’s degree and a bachelor’s degree from Johnson & Wales, and, in 1976, began an 11-year stint working in the forensic unit at the state Institute for Mental Health, now part of the Eleanor Slater Hospital.

The mentally ill residents had murdered, raped or committed other crimes. (Some people also were there while their competence to stand trial was being evaluated.)

Grilli says, “People were treated with medications, and they were subdued and not too rowdy, but, for the most part, you had to watch that they didn’t harm themselves and that they didn’t harm you or your co-workers.”

Soon after he went to work there, he became active in local union matters. By 1987, he was a Council 94 senior business agent. By 2004, he was acting executive director, in charge of the staff’s day-to-day operations, and he shed the “acting” designation in 2005 when Mike Downey, an ally, became president. Downey focuses more on working with the local unions.

Grilli’s salary is $102,000. He and his wife, the former Carol Brouillard, live in Smithfield.

I went to talk with Grilli on Tuesday because of the storm that broke around him on July 24 when it was disclosed that Council 94 members had overwhelmingly rejected a contract proposal brokered with the state administration by Grilli, George Nee of the AFL-CIO and Robert Walsh of the National Education Association. The offer included some $10 million in concessions that Carcieri and the Democratic General Assembly were counting on to balance the state budget.

The 2,870-to-196 thrashing of the proposal was a rebuke both to Carcieri and to Grilli & Co., and touched off a heated dispute between the governor and the union that quickly landed before the state Labor Relations Board and Superior Court. Carcieri has refused to negotiate a new agreement and has been trying unilaterally to force Council 94 members to pay the higher health insurance rates included in the defeated proposal.

The higher rates particularly infuriated such low-paid Council 94 members as secretaries, janitors and laborers. (The union also includes such better-paid workers as computer programmers, environmental biologists and food inspectors.) The deal provided no cost-of-living wage increases but did have raises over the last three years of the four-year pact. In view of the state’s fiscal crunch, Grilli’s attitude was that this was the best deal labor could get.

President Downey, not part of the talks, opposed the agreement.

What I wanted to know was how Grilli could possibly be so out of touch with his members, who clobbered the proposal.

“I didn’t think I was out of touch,” Grilli said. “I thought this was the best we could do under the circumstances.”

Did the vote shake him? “This job is full of surprises,” he said. “I felt I did the best I could. I was disappointed. I thought it would be much closer.”

Here’s something else I wondered: How could it be that Grilli and Downey took opposite stands? You don’t see President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney clashing in public like that.

Grilli said he felt obliged to put the offer before the members because they might be upset if other unions accepted similar terms and they didn’t have a chance to get them themselves. That didn’t sound right to me. After all, I said, virtually no one in Council 94 wanted the proposal. “Until you let them vote, you don’t know,” he said.

Grilli insisted that he and Downey are still allies, and he said he does not see his job in jeopardy. He serves at the pleasure of the executive board.

In a separate interview, Downey, whose office is next to Grilli’s, also told me that the two men get along fine, although he said they are not close friends and don’t socialize together. Indeed, he said he and Grilli had never discussed Grilli’s service in Vietnam.

As for how the two leaders could have publicly disagreed about moving ahead with the contract proposal, Downey said, “This is a union. It’s not politics, it really isn’t. The members elect me. Grilli gets appointed by the executive board, and I’m a rank and file who has a local [at the University of Rhode Island], and I hear the people, I think, maybe, a little more than Dennis Grilli. … I actually think it’s healthy in an organization not to be on the same page every time.”

Depending on the circumstances, such as who happens to be available at any particular moment, you might see Downey as the council spokesman or you might see Grilli, and Downey is apt to be more voluble.

Downey says, “I would consider him to be laid back. It takes a lot to get him excited.”

At a rally in June, Downey said of Carcieri, “I don’t like the governor and I don’t care if he likes me. What he’s done to the people I represent is wrong.”

When I asked Grilli last week what he thinks of Carcieri, his tone was less defiant but the substance of his message was hardly more complimentary. “He’s opposed to the state employees,” Grilli said. “I think he doesn’t appreciate what they do.” He asserted that Carcieri wants to dismantle much of the benefit-and-wage structure that labor has managed to win during the course of 30 years. He said Carcieri’s attitude comes through during his appearances on radio talk shows with “the other two governors, [John] DePetro and [Dan] Yorke.”

Carcieri tells me, “I like Dennis and I like Mike Downey.” And, the governor says, he does not dislike state employees. But he says of Grilli, “He’s got a job to do, I have a job to do. We’ve got no money, we’ve got a huge problem.”

I was glad I went to see Grilli. We shot the breeze about the 2006 election, in which Carcieri edged out Democratic challenger Charlie Fogarty.

We talked about Hillary Clinton; Grilli’s bulletin board includes a photo of him with Chelsea, who stopped by during the presidential primary. The office also has an old picture of Grilli and his wife with the legendary farm worker leader Cesar Chavez, who was appearing in Massachusetts.

Grilli said, “This guy just stuck to it. He had his beliefs. … He fought hard. They tried to crush him. He was able to survive all the adversity that came his way. He was a strong, strong man.”

Grilli added, “Things aren’t good all the time, and you have to go through the tough times as well as the good times, and I’ve learned that in life. And right now we’re going through a bad time here in Rhode Island. I understand that. But hopefully things will change.”

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com