(Read at July Membership meeting)
717 Union Newsletter - August 2001

Delegates Report

2001 IUE-CWA Conference & Convention

by Jim Martin Jr

Before I give you my report, I want to thank everyone who put their trust in me and voted to send me to the IUE-CWA Conbention. I also want to review and add to some of the things that Doug had to say regarding the Convention. The most important thing I want everyone to know is that me and the other delegates took the Convention agenda very seriously. We knew that at the Convention we would be voting on the adoption of the IUE-CWA Division Rules. Even though there were many changes to the Constitution that we couldn't undo because of the Merger Rules, we still got together several times before leaving for the Convention and had many discussions. We also had two pribate meetings with President Ed fire and presented him with two pages full of questions that we had prepared prior to. I can't over state this enough: this was a big deal and we took the responsibility very seriously. AS a group, we had two sticking points: the retirees eligibility to vote and run for local office, and the many appointments that will be available to the division president. I think I can speak for all of us by saying that we were undecided right up until the day the vote of the floor. One thing that may surprise you is that, we as delegates, DID NOT get to cast a personal individual vote. The Conbention as a body voted to support the motion to adopt the proposed rules. The chair called for a yea or nay vote from the floor, and the delegation passed the motion overwhelmingly. When we talked on the morning of that day, we agreed that there were many more good things in the rules than bad things, and that the bad things had already been carved in stone back in October of last year, when the merger was voted for. I did have some last minute second thoughts, some of my concerns were reinforced when a gentlemen from antoher IUE local shared his position at the microphone, but prior to that we were all on the same page in unity supporting the adoption of the rules. I voted NAY with hope to send the motion back forcing the constitution committee to ammend the rules. I had a big problem with the many appoinments. Moving forward, our Local Constitution Committte will meet this week and draft our Local Constitution Committee will meet this week and draft our Local Constitution based on these rules. We hope you will stand behind us and each of our decisions.

Also, as the Co-Chairman of the Legislative Committee I did want to share with you some of the legislative issues that were discussed at the Convention. With the IUE merged with CWA there is a total of 740,000 members in the CWA. CWA already leads the union movement in legislative activity. This just gives us more power and a stronger voice in the legislative arena. The IUE-CWA is designating the month of September for a COPE RALLY. Make sure to contact the hall or your represetative to sign up or increase your COPE contribution. A big issue that was also discussed was FAST TRACK and FTAA. Free Trade of the Americas Agreement. For those of you that don't know what FTAA IS, it is a agreement that if pased will expand NAFTA and open our borders to include even more countries. FTAA would also eliminate many worker protection standards. If FTAA passes, workers subject to this agreement can say goodbye to safety standards, sanitation standards, and say so long to environmental standards. FTAA will eliminate the 25% duty or impoort tases that countries such as Canada now pay when they import goods across our border. I want to ask everybody in here to contact their House Represetative and ask them to bote NO on Fast Track and FTAA. Let's not give Corporate America any more avenues to FED EX our jobs our of our country. The number to reach your House Rep is 1-800-393-1082.