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Tom's plan is simple. Local 1040 needs to stop
hiring family and friends of Carolyn Wade. The Local has 6 Staff Reps, 1 Senior Staff Rep, 1 Principle Staf Rep,
1 "Assistant to the President (a title created and funded without the Executive Board's knowledge or approval), and
1 Executive Vice President (a total of 10 people) to service 7,200 members at over 50 worksites. Two of those individuals
only have 2 worksites each. The Executive Vice President has more than anyone there with 9 worksites. Everyone
else has 6-7 sites, inculding the sites that are the most labor intensive.
By adding more staff, we will
allow the current staff to have more time to devote to fewer worksites. This in turn will begin to fulfill our primary
obligation of representation (one of the three legs of the CWA triangle). If we are to grow this union, we will need
to grow our representation expertise first.
We need to regain our footing with the political leg of the triangle
as well. The Local has not had a fund raising COPE dinner/dance in several years, and our attendance at political fundraisers
has been lackluster on those VERY few occasions when it has occurred at all... and it SHOWS! We are getting slaughtered
by the politicians that used to be eating out of our hands when Tom and Fran Fiore handled them! Additionally, our members
are rarely given the opportunity to meet with politicians from their district and paying for tickets to fundraisers are an
excellent opportunity for the politicain to meet their constituents, and vice versa.
We need a privatization committee
once again. In fact, it should have never been dismatled. two years ago, Tom stated on this very site
that Governor Corzine was calling for the "monetization" of certain state services, and that was
simply a euphemism for privatization. We waited too long in 1994 to stop the privatization of prison health care.
Now we have Governor Chris Christie ready to begin privatization all over again! We should have been acting PROACTIVELY
and using the best minds that our Local had to offer, as Tom said 2 years ago, also.
Finally, the current
Local leadership is costing us greatly. One area where money has been wasted is training. Spending thousands
of dollars to train people to acquire certain skills, such as organizing or health and safety, only to drop them and retrain
new people wastes time, money, networking contacts and expertise. We need to choose who we want to train
more wisely and then stick with that decision.
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