Improvement Chart Break Down
Jim Martin Jr
Because I know there will be selective reading and recollection, let me say again that my improvements and initiatives are dependant upon the president and chairman’s cooperation.
• Push for encouragement of All Reps to provide leaflets, material and information consistently. Whether it be plant bulletins about SUB and Holiday pay, or yard signs; union reps sometimes generate animosity by providing materials to one group of people in one plant one shift, while other areas do not receive the same materials. Sometimes it’s an issue of one area or shift getting information or materials later than other areas. We’re competing with each other. There should be some consistency so that everyone is getting the same material information, within reason.
• *717 Website will be updated and maintained as needed during critical times. Weekly info leaflets or pre-recorded information phone message made available for those without computers. Although we do get the newsletter free of charge, it is limited with respect to the timeliness of current events. During contract times and times of crisis, it simply isn’t frequent enough. The union member – union leader relationship is no different t than other relationships in that there needs to be somewhat of a connection. Our jobs, along with God, blood, and money fall into the very important things category for most of us. If you can’t give us hard information it is your responsibility as a leader to make us understand why exactly we have to wait for the information we believe we deserve. Owning a website subscription cost $7.00/month and recording a prerecorded informational phone message is free.
• Encourage participation in committees and activities. Open to all members. Give members sense of belonging. Sometimes our members are sheltered from the activities and mechanisms of the union. To eliminate the Us and Them phenomena and make everyone feel apart of “The Union” we need to reach out and bring people in. The last thing we want to do is push away eager members because of the behavior of a few insincere people. Yes, there are those that abuse union activities to just get out of work, but we shouldn’t over generalize. We should be running front page adds for committee participation and make announcements at meetings. We can’t have this click shield around the Union Hall because it repels people that might otherwise be interested in getting active. Without the effort, the message WE ARE THE UNION is just letters on a T shirt.
• New pavilion committee will be formed. * UNITE 717: Member Get-togethers at union hall. Union gatherings: Meet your sister unions. Annual local Vs local softball games, fish frys, field trips, and concerts. Pavilion committee non-existent. No discussions about pavilion or events. Very little comradary or synergy. I believe that get-togethers will help us get together. Strength in numbers. Our members and our leaders need to share a level of confidence that will allow us to draw a line in the sand and stand behind it when the time comes. Once again, if we’re going to do this Union thing.. let’s do it right.
• Survey membership opinion about alternating union meeting times.ie.7pm one month, 12noon or 1pm every other. Push for better programs to encourage meeting attendance. What I’ve experienced in the past, and what has pushed me to this point of chronic criticism is the tendency of a few people to find flaw in one little bird seed and discount a good idea by throwing out the whole sack. I don’t care if I present the idea to power the Union Hall by installing underground solar panels; every member’s idea should be heard and appreciated. With regard to membership meeting participation we’re doing something wrong. I really believe that there is a correlation between communication, membership morale, and member participation and activism.
The Convention Controversy
• Push for the recommendation to send at least 1 non-automatic floor delegate to IUE-CWA Conventions. Over the last 2 YEARS, out of 8 elected delegates, not 8,7,6,5,4,3,2, OR EVEN 1 Floor DELEGATE has been recommended to attend. It's not only important to send a mix of delegates to Conventions, but it's important to send the right delegates. Watch this and tell me if you disagree. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUB6NckSOoo
Even when I wasn’t a top delegate this was a troubling issue. We have a membership that for the most part doesn’t understand how the union functions, or how the leadership is structured up to the international. Members sometimes don’t trust their leaders because they don’t KNOW their leaders. The delegates serve as couriers and vouchers so to speak. They interact with all of our leaders at the Conventions and absorb information about our jobs like worker bees. Delegates are functional because they bring this information back home; back to the hive. We weren’t in bankruptcy in 2004 or July of 2005, and I spoke out at the Executive Board Meetings about the importance outlined above. I thought that my message would stick and carry over to inspire some different consideration for 2006. It may have, but many members feel pressured to echo their appointers. The recommendation to only send Don and Gary was passed. This is what I call dysfunction. “Oh come on, everyone knows that those conventions are just a free vacation.” I spoke to a leader name Troy from Mississippi who had been coming to conventions since 1978, and I asked him what he thought about people that have the opinion that conventions are just a free trip. He said to me: “it sounds to me like that’s coming from someone who really isn’t interested in resolving anything.”
• I’ve recognized the same cynical sentiment with regard to union leadership school. Some people will discount and tear down everything about unionism just to win an election. My response is.. why do we bother then? These people are nothing more than TV evangelists. Insincerely singing the union song and playing the role to get a bigger paycheck. If this is where we’re headed let’s just call it like it is. I don’t believe we’re all headed this direction, but I will say to those that are: just call the union a service agency. We’ll pay a fee for a specific service. I mean if the heart and spirits not there, why masquerade? Union reps are just agents for hire. My answer is: we’re not heading this way. These people are just ultra-cynical, and their position is what the conventional garden variety person would regard as … wrong.
• Offer periodic education classes on interpreting agreements, the constitution, and union leadership structure. The primary rationale that I hear between the lines, when someone is justifying their unwillingness to share information, is that the members just don’t understand. We can’t be trusted to differentiate between tentative unofficial information Vs final official facts. For example: we better not spend money to send anyone to the convention, because we just got done moving elections down to the hall. Our members won’t understand. They don’t’ know what’s best. Maybe we need to push a bit harder to educate our members. I’m sure there are plenty of leaders that would speak for an hour or participate in a union education workshop. Most of our governing documents could be broken down by our own local leadership or explained in the union newsletter.
Annual Open House day at Union Hall.
• Tour the Union Hall and see how it operates. Again, this falls under education and understanding. I think you would be surprised about how a one hour tour coupled with an explanation of what exactly our union hall representatives do could change the opinion of members on the floor. Even if it’s only a handful, those handful of folks go back to the floor and share or circulate their experience.
• Push for a mandatory 24 hour return call policy for Union Hall Representatives. A select Rep would be designated to at least return calls to assist Benefit and Pension Reps. This improvement is closely related to the suggestion above. All I wanted to express with this suggestion is that people are unaware of how overwhelming the calls for representation can be. The criticism was misdirected, in that I believe the problem wasn’t about 1 pension rep’s inability to service 2000 potential retirees but the failure to plan ahead with anticipation that we had over 1500 folks that were retirement eligible. We should have exercised foresight especially considering that the UAW had already been through the buyout program. Because there weren’t enough reps trained to handle the call load, the calls stacked up for weeks. This was evident after hearing people at the top of the book complaining about having a call in for two weeks. UPS uses a rule of thumb for their service training model based on years of surveys and studies. They tell their new workers that they cannot even allow one package to be misrouted, because that one person that was disappointed will tell 10 people, and those people will 5 people. My criticism was laid out on the table so that we won’t ever have a situation again where members get so disgruntled that they promise to never join a union again. Unionism doesn’t need any help fading away. I hope Frank Murray will accept my apology for not being specific about my criticism.
• Mentorship program: Explore the need for more constitutional requirements for representatives to ensure orientation of new representatives. I’ve heard the stories about 55 year old grievances found crumpled up in the pockets of ex-zone reps and ex-shop chairman deserting the chairman’s office without handing over information. Need I say more? To chairman Arbogast’s credit, he did successfully pass some constitutional amendments that should address some of these concerns.
• Push for the Union hall to be utilized to the fullest. Hall rental fees and more importantly utility costs will be re-evaluated and advertised. Explore the need for committee to manage advertisement of union hall and office rentals to help offset dues reduction and pay utilities. It has been suggested that the cost of toilet paper and running the furnace for one day is almost more than the rental fee itself. I think this alone warrants some double checking. We may need to look at a separate fees to address the issue of higher utility costs in the winter. We can also looking at sharing the responsibility of turning on the furnace an hour before event start times. There’s no need to run the furnace all night Friday and Saturday. We also have a few offices that have been vacant for far too long. Time is money.
• All Benefit reps will receive adequate pension or 401k retirement training. In time of high demand, one pension rep isn’t capable of thoroughly answering 100’s of pension calls. Benefit reps should be trained all year round so that when we’re presented with a crisis, there isn’t a hurry up crash course issue. It’s just a matter of foresight. The entire division was told by management that benefit reps will be available to answer questions, but the benefit reps weren’t all trained. I was thrown out on the floor with very little training and then criticized for giving out inaccurate information. (???) Well, first of all, I did not retire anybody. Any person that I provided pension info to knew that I was in training and that they would need to see a pension rep down the hall eventually. It looks great on someone’s leaflet to say that I was some loose cannon giving wrong answers out to people on their last day of work and walking them to the door out to retirement, but that’s just not the case. Other than Frank Murray eventually giving me some back-alley pension training on his own time, I wasn’t trained at all. It’s my well confirmed belief that someone didn’t want me having pension knowledge because it would add a notch to my "electability" belt.
• Survey membership opinion about alternating union meeting times.ie.7pm one month, 12, or 1pm every other. Many people are already home and comfortable at 7pm on Sundays. It would be a nice alternative to explore, to allow people to come to union meetings after church or lunch, when they’re already out and about.
• Explore avenues to reform the Executive Board make-up with regard to board members also being appointed reps. I’m not saying that there is any direct pressure put on appointed reps to echo the positions of their bosses, I just see it happening sometimes. I’m an appointed rep and have not been threatened to be de-appointed. My boss, in particular, has been respectful in that regard. I’m just experiencing the delayed ramifications of occasionally differing. It has a little something to do with the noses of select cronies reflecting light in an earthy tone.
• Explore avenues to reform the guidelines for the election of delegates; specifically the guidelines that force E. Board members to vote for the recommendation to send themselves. If you read the constitution you will understand that, just like any other officer, executive board members are expected to do their job: direct the affairs of the union and make recommendations to the membership via voting. Well, if I hypothetically was the number one delegate and made the determination that it’s only sensible and financially responsible to send one delegate; Jim Martin Jr would have to raise his hand and make a motion to send Jim Martin Jr to Las Vegas, for example. Damned if you do damned if you don’t. If I make a motion to send all 8 or even 4 delegates at “$2200.00 per delegate,” I’m a reckless treasurer blowing the union’s money. If I make a motion to send 1 delegate, who happens to be me, I’m selfish. These provisions are flawed and demonstrate a recipe for conflict.
Is he running for Vice President or Delegate? I can’t believe we’re talking about trips to Vegas when our jobs are on the line. What does the delegates guidelines have to do with being vice president? I can hear it and see it now. There are people licking their lips to throw their bullets at me about the convention controversy. Once again, the coy innocent hat isn’t fitting.
I might ask the question, why is Donna Williams filling in as acting president? With respect to the administrative ranks, the treasurer is the next highest officer behind the financial secretary.
As a courtesy to my opposition, I will gladly fill in the blanks, and provide any missing information that is purposely accidentally left out of any campaign publications. If someone wants to just talk about the icing of an issue, I’ll be more than happy to talk about the cake; especially those creamy layers hidden in the middle. I know what you’re thinking: First the guy concedes to his opponent’s strengths, and now he’s helping her out with expected crap propaganda. This guy’s as dumb as a box of rocks.
Let me just say that .. I’m a giving person. I’m just glad to help anyone.. even my opponent.
The English language can be very vague. Let me be absolutely clear. I’m just trying to nicely say that it won’t be fair to write about pieces of a story without telling the whole story. Actually, to be forthright here on the spot, I’m so exhausted from all this fighting that I’ll probably just let it go. It would benefit me but not the union. There’s an abundance of criticism of my reactions but nobody seems to apply the same criticism to their action, which influenced my reaction.
Using the word “rhetoric” inappropriately is actually rhetoric in and of itself. However it’s a great way to discount someone’s opinion.
Strategies I’m expecting
• The age or kid angle. Jimmy’s a nice kid, but... (but..I’m 38)
• Cherry pick my comments and put them together to make me sound ridiculous. Yeah, if the 717 had fish frys and field trips we wouldn’t be in bankruptcy.
• Appeal to the Cynics and Pessimists. Oh come on… what’s he smoking? He’s not going to do all those things. Nobody really wants to get together.
• Issue X – I don’t know what “the kitchen sink” will be, but it’s coming. I’m truly running against Donna, two guys on deck to retire who don’t like me and have nothing to lose, and a few others that didn’t get their way one Sunday night in May.
I’d like to make sure that everyone on PM is aware that we no longer have two benefit reps sharing the division. As a result of the core job placement and buyouts, we have regrettably lost Tim Larricia. I’m doing the best I can to get to everyone in a timely mannor. This is a challenge sometimes because I do not start work until 3:30pm. This only gives me about an hour to call the benefit center and make my faxes. I do not have the luxury of taking my time to write neat notes on your bills and polish each fax cover page. It’s beat the clock and I can only focus on taking care of my work load and getting it done as fast as I can.
I want to site an example of playing ball with the team. Why is it that Don Torno has to wait one year for his charges to be processed because nobody will prosecute the charges, but Mike O’donald files charges and within weeks the request for a prosecutor was extended to the membership? This is also an abuse of control.
So Jim, you post all these opinions and criticism on a website, but why don't you confront these people? I have. I have a personal policy that says essentially, once I give a person the fair opportunity to listen to my complaint, address it, and then they ignore me; I don't allow that person's disrespect to take me out of my comfort zone and get me worked up. I just do what's convenient. I've been getting blown off for too long and I'm done wasting my time arguing with people that choose to be right and don't have the courtesy to talk to me.
Jim Martin Jr
Because I know there will be selective reading and recollection, let me say again that my improvements and initiatives are dependant upon the president and chairman’s cooperation.
• Push for encouragement of All Reps to provide leaflets, material and information consistently. Whether it be plant bulletins about SUB and Holiday pay, or yard signs; union reps sometimes generate animosity by providing materials to one group of people in one plant one shift, while other areas do not receive the same materials. Sometimes it’s an issue of one area or shift getting information or materials later than other areas. We’re competing with each other. There should be some consistency so that everyone is getting the same material information, within reason.
• *717 Website will be updated and maintained as needed during critical times. Weekly info leaflets or pre-recorded information phone message made available for those without computers. Although we do get the newsletter free of charge, it is limited with respect to the timeliness of current events. During contract times and times of crisis, it simply isn’t frequent enough. The union member – union leader relationship is no different t than other relationships in that there needs to be somewhat of a connection. Our jobs, along with God, blood, and money fall into the very important things category for most of us. If you can’t give us hard information it is your responsibility as a leader to make us understand why exactly we have to wait for the information we believe we deserve. Owning a website subscription cost $7.00/month and recording a prerecorded informational phone message is free.
• Encourage participation in committees and activities. Open to all members. Give members sense of belonging. Sometimes our members are sheltered from the activities and mechanisms of the union. To eliminate the Us and Them phenomena and make everyone feel apart of “The Union” we need to reach out and bring people in. The last thing we want to do is push away eager members because of the behavior of a few insincere people. Yes, there are those that abuse union activities to just get out of work, but we shouldn’t over generalize. We should be running front page adds for committee participation and make announcements at meetings. We can’t have this click shield around the Union Hall because it repels people that might otherwise be interested in getting active. Without the effort, the message WE ARE THE UNION is just letters on a T shirt.
• New pavilion committee will be formed. * UNITE 717: Member Get-togethers at union hall. Union gatherings: Meet your sister unions. Annual local Vs local softball games, fish frys, field trips, and concerts. Pavilion committee non-existent. No discussions about pavilion or events. Very little comradary or synergy. I believe that get-togethers will help us get together. Strength in numbers. Our members and our leaders need to share a level of confidence that will allow us to draw a line in the sand and stand behind it when the time comes. Once again, if we’re going to do this Union thing.. let’s do it right.
• Survey membership opinion about alternating union meeting times.ie.7pm one month, 12noon or 1pm every other. Push for better programs to encourage meeting attendance. What I’ve experienced in the past, and what has pushed me to this point of chronic criticism is the tendency of a few people to find flaw in one little bird seed and discount a good idea by throwing out the whole sack. I don’t care if I present the idea to power the Union Hall by installing underground solar panels; every member’s idea should be heard and appreciated. With regard to membership meeting participation we’re doing something wrong. I really believe that there is a correlation between communication, membership morale, and member participation and activism.
The Convention Controversy
• Push for the recommendation to send at least 1 non-automatic floor delegate to IUE-CWA Conventions. Over the last 2 YEARS, out of 8 elected delegates, not 8,7,6,5,4,3,2, OR EVEN 1 Floor DELEGATE has been recommended to attend. It's not only important to send a mix of delegates to Conventions, but it's important to send the right delegates. Watch this and tell me if you disagree. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUB6NckSOoo
Even when I wasn’t a top delegate this was a troubling issue. We have a membership that for the most part doesn’t understand how the union functions, or how the leadership is structured up to the international. Members sometimes don’t trust their leaders because they don’t KNOW their leaders. The delegates serve as couriers and vouchers so to speak. They interact with all of our leaders at the Conventions and absorb information about our jobs like worker bees. Delegates are functional because they bring this information back home; back to the hive. We weren’t in bankruptcy in 2004 or July of 2005, and I spoke out at the Executive Board Meetings about the importance outlined above. I thought that my message would stick and carry over to inspire some different consideration for 2006. It may have, but many members feel pressured to echo their appointers. The recommendation to only send Don and Gary was passed. This is what I call dysfunction. “Oh come on, everyone knows that those conventions are just a free vacation.” I spoke to a leader name Troy from Mississippi who had been coming to conventions since 1978, and I asked him what he thought about people that have the opinion that conventions are just a free trip. He said to me: “it sounds to me like that’s coming from someone who really isn’t interested in resolving anything.”
• I’ve recognized the same cynical sentiment with regard to union leadership school. Some people will discount and tear down everything about unionism just to win an election. My response is.. why do we bother then? These people are nothing more than TV evangelists. Insincerely singing the union song and playing the role to get a bigger paycheck. If this is where we’re headed let’s just call it like it is. I don’t believe we’re all headed this direction, but I will say to those that are: just call the union a service agency. We’ll pay a fee for a specific service. I mean if the heart and spirits not there, why masquerade? Union reps are just agents for hire. My answer is: we’re not heading this way. These people are just ultra-cynical, and their position is what the conventional garden variety person would regard as … wrong.
• Offer periodic education classes on interpreting agreements, the constitution, and union leadership structure. The primary rationale that I hear between the lines, when someone is justifying their unwillingness to share information, is that the members just don’t understand. We can’t be trusted to differentiate between tentative unofficial information Vs final official facts. For example: we better not spend money to send anyone to the convention, because we just got done moving elections down to the hall. Our members won’t understand. They don’t’ know what’s best. Maybe we need to push a bit harder to educate our members. I’m sure there are plenty of leaders that would speak for an hour or participate in a union education workshop. Most of our governing documents could be broken down by our own local leadership or explained in the union newsletter.
Annual Open House day at Union Hall.
• Tour the Union Hall and see how it operates. Again, this falls under education and understanding. I think you would be surprised about how a one hour tour coupled with an explanation of what exactly our union hall representatives do could change the opinion of members on the floor. Even if it’s only a handful, those handful of folks go back to the floor and share or circulate their experience.
• Push for a mandatory 24 hour return call policy for Union Hall Representatives. A select Rep would be designated to at least return calls to assist Benefit and Pension Reps. This improvement is closely related to the suggestion above. All I wanted to express with this suggestion is that people are unaware of how overwhelming the calls for representation can be. The criticism was misdirected, in that I believe the problem wasn’t about 1 pension rep’s inability to service 2000 potential retirees but the failure to plan ahead with anticipation that we had over 1500 folks that were retirement eligible. We should have exercised foresight especially considering that the UAW had already been through the buyout program. Because there weren’t enough reps trained to handle the call load, the calls stacked up for weeks. This was evident after hearing people at the top of the book complaining about having a call in for two weeks. UPS uses a rule of thumb for their service training model based on years of surveys and studies. They tell their new workers that they cannot even allow one package to be misrouted, because that one person that was disappointed will tell 10 people, and those people will 5 people. My criticism was laid out on the table so that we won’t ever have a situation again where members get so disgruntled that they promise to never join a union again. Unionism doesn’t need any help fading away. I hope Frank Murray will accept my apology for not being specific about my criticism.
• Mentorship program: Explore the need for more constitutional requirements for representatives to ensure orientation of new representatives. I’ve heard the stories about 55 year old grievances found crumpled up in the pockets of ex-zone reps and ex-shop chairman deserting the chairman’s office without handing over information. Need I say more? To chairman Arbogast’s credit, he did successfully pass some constitutional amendments that should address some of these concerns.
• Push for the Union hall to be utilized to the fullest. Hall rental fees and more importantly utility costs will be re-evaluated and advertised. Explore the need for committee to manage advertisement of union hall and office rentals to help offset dues reduction and pay utilities. It has been suggested that the cost of toilet paper and running the furnace for one day is almost more than the rental fee itself. I think this alone warrants some double checking. We may need to look at a separate fees to address the issue of higher utility costs in the winter. We can also looking at sharing the responsibility of turning on the furnace an hour before event start times. There’s no need to run the furnace all night Friday and Saturday. We also have a few offices that have been vacant for far too long. Time is money.
• All Benefit reps will receive adequate pension or 401k retirement training. In time of high demand, one pension rep isn’t capable of thoroughly answering 100’s of pension calls. Benefit reps should be trained all year round so that when we’re presented with a crisis, there isn’t a hurry up crash course issue. It’s just a matter of foresight. The entire division was told by management that benefit reps will be available to answer questions, but the benefit reps weren’t all trained. I was thrown out on the floor with very little training and then criticized for giving out inaccurate information. (???) Well, first of all, I did not retire anybody. Any person that I provided pension info to knew that I was in training and that they would need to see a pension rep down the hall eventually. It looks great on someone’s leaflet to say that I was some loose cannon giving wrong answers out to people on their last day of work and walking them to the door out to retirement, but that’s just not the case. Other than Frank Murray eventually giving me some back-alley pension training on his own time, I wasn’t trained at all. It’s my well confirmed belief that someone didn’t want me having pension knowledge because it would add a notch to my "electability" belt.
• Survey membership opinion about alternating union meeting times.ie.7pm one month, 12, or 1pm every other. Many people are already home and comfortable at 7pm on Sundays. It would be a nice alternative to explore, to allow people to come to union meetings after church or lunch, when they’re already out and about.
• Explore avenues to reform the Executive Board make-up with regard to board members also being appointed reps. I’m not saying that there is any direct pressure put on appointed reps to echo the positions of their bosses, I just see it happening sometimes. I’m an appointed rep and have not been threatened to be de-appointed. My boss, in particular, has been respectful in that regard. I’m just experiencing the delayed ramifications of occasionally differing. It has a little something to do with the noses of select cronies reflecting light in an earthy tone.
• Explore avenues to reform the guidelines for the election of delegates; specifically the guidelines that force E. Board members to vote for the recommendation to send themselves. If you read the constitution you will understand that, just like any other officer, executive board members are expected to do their job: direct the affairs of the union and make recommendations to the membership via voting. Well, if I hypothetically was the number one delegate and made the determination that it’s only sensible and financially responsible to send one delegate; Jim Martin Jr would have to raise his hand and make a motion to send Jim Martin Jr to Las Vegas, for example. Damned if you do damned if you don’t. If I make a motion to send all 8 or even 4 delegates at “$2200.00 per delegate,” I’m a reckless treasurer blowing the union’s money. If I make a motion to send 1 delegate, who happens to be me, I’m selfish. These provisions are flawed and demonstrate a recipe for conflict.
Is he running for Vice President or Delegate? I can’t believe we’re talking about trips to Vegas when our jobs are on the line. What does the delegates guidelines have to do with being vice president? I can hear it and see it now. There are people licking their lips to throw their bullets at me about the convention controversy. Once again, the coy innocent hat isn’t fitting.
I might ask the question, why is Donna Williams filling in as acting president? With respect to the administrative ranks, the treasurer is the next highest officer behind the financial secretary.
As a courtesy to my opposition, I will gladly fill in the blanks, and provide any missing information that is purposely accidentally left out of any campaign publications. If someone wants to just talk about the icing of an issue, I’ll be more than happy to talk about the cake; especially those creamy layers hidden in the middle. I know what you’re thinking: First the guy concedes to his opponent’s strengths, and now he’s helping her out with expected crap propaganda. This guy’s as dumb as a box of rocks.
Let me just say that .. I’m a giving person. I’m just glad to help anyone.. even my opponent.
The English language can be very vague. Let me be absolutely clear. I’m just trying to nicely say that it won’t be fair to write about pieces of a story without telling the whole story. Actually, to be forthright here on the spot, I’m so exhausted from all this fighting that I’ll probably just let it go. It would benefit me but not the union. There’s an abundance of criticism of my reactions but nobody seems to apply the same criticism to their action, which influenced my reaction.
Using the word “rhetoric” inappropriately is actually rhetoric in and of itself. However it’s a great way to discount someone’s opinion.
Strategies I’m expecting
• The age or kid angle. Jimmy’s a nice kid, but... (but..I’m 38)
• Cherry pick my comments and put them together to make me sound ridiculous. Yeah, if the 717 had fish frys and field trips we wouldn’t be in bankruptcy.
• Appeal to the Cynics and Pessimists. Oh come on… what’s he smoking? He’s not going to do all those things. Nobody really wants to get together.
• Issue X – I don’t know what “the kitchen sink” will be, but it’s coming. I’m truly running against Donna, two guys on deck to retire who don’t like me and have nothing to lose, and a few others that didn’t get their way one Sunday night in May.
I’d like to make sure that everyone on PM is aware that we no longer have two benefit reps sharing the division. As a result of the core job placement and buyouts, we have regrettably lost Tim Larricia. I’m doing the best I can to get to everyone in a timely mannor. This is a challenge sometimes because I do not start work until 3:30pm. This only gives me about an hour to call the benefit center and make my faxes. I do not have the luxury of taking my time to write neat notes on your bills and polish each fax cover page. It’s beat the clock and I can only focus on taking care of my work load and getting it done as fast as I can.
I want to site an example of playing ball with the team. Why is it that Don Torno has to wait one year for his charges to be processed because nobody will prosecute the charges, but Mike O’donald files charges and within weeks the request for a prosecutor was extended to the membership? This is also an abuse of control.
So Jim, you post all these opinions and criticism on a website, but why don't you confront these people? I have. I have a personal policy that says essentially, once I give a person the fair opportunity to listen to my complaint, address it, and then they ignore me; I don't allow that person's disrespect to take me out of my comfort zone and get me worked up. I just do what's convenient. I've been getting blown off for too long and I'm done wasting my time arguing with people that choose to be right and don't have the courtesy to talk to me.
posted by JimMartinJr at 10:21 PM
1 comments
