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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 a occurred at all. Additionally, our members are rarely
given the opportunity to meet with politicians from their district and these 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. Already, Governor Corzine is calling for the "monetization"
of certain state services. This is simply a euphemism for privatization. We waited too long in 1994 to stop the
privatization of prison health care. We should be acting PROACTIVELY now and using the best minds that our Local has
to offer.
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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