Thank you, Joel. What you said makes a lot of sense! The Executive Board needs to stay out of Council operations and let the Council do its thing. The Council sets policy and the EB implements it.
As you know, per our governing documents, the SPEEA Executive Board oversees the operations of the Union. Over the last several months that I have served as your Vice President, I have experienced the difficulty that the EB has in receiving ALL the info we need to do our job. I am seeing a lack of transparency of union operations and I am working to get that changed, not only for this EB, but for all the EB’s in the future.
For example, your elected EB Treasurer does not have full access to all SPEEA financial records. He needs to ask for specific data and give reasons why he wants it. This is ridiculous.
Your elected EB Secretary is supposed to control the EB minutes and SPEEA communication, but he has very little actual control.
Our latest EB meetings have been 5, 6 and even 7 hours long. They consist mostly of challenging the status quo. I call it the rubber stampers versus those that challenge the status quo.
Now I can see how it would be easy to be a rubber stamper, just agree to anything the Exec Director or SPEEA president wants. That would be an easy route and some current and former EB members have done just that. But I cannot.
Now the Exec Director does an excellent job negotiating for us, recommending courses of action for the Union, and is bigger than life, representing us in the global arena…hats off to him!
However, the EB is supposed to oversee the operations of the Union. We are elected by the members. We represent the members. We need access to all SPEEA information and data so that we can more fully execute the job we were elected to do.
Now I am not saying we don’t get any data. But it is a never-ending battle and it is harder than heck sometimes.
Many of you remember the series of appeals that I went through last year. It would have been easy to give up. But I had many trusted, long-term SPEEA members encouraging me to continue. I felt in my heart that I needed to continue so that I could have an influence, to make sure that our Union is run ethically, to the highest standards. And that is what I have done over the last several months as your Vice President.
Therefore, I am asking for your vote for vice president and I am asking for your help to vote in a slate of candidates, Joel, myself and Mike, so that we can have unity on the Board, to ensure that our Union is run ethically and to the highest standards, and to ensure that your Union dues are spent wisely and responsibly… as Mike will be discussing next.
Thank you.