By JEFF KLATKE
Council 75 President
I am proud to issue this report as President of Oregon AFSCME for January 2016. Please share this report with the members of your local.
After a year end break for the month of December the executive committee met on Jan 30 in Portland. All members in good standing are invited to attend executive committee and executive board meetings. I strongly encourage members to attend to see their elected decision-makers make decisions on their behalf. I’d like to share with you a couple of highlights from the Jan 30 meeting.
First, our Fiscal Director, Jeneane Ramseier, who announced her retirement last Nov at the Board meeting, has a successor. Sally Wood will be joining Oregon AFSCME near the end of Feb and will be at the Feb 27 Board meeting to meet our Board members. Sally is a CPA who spent many years working in the office of the Oregon State Treasury.
Also, our Organizing Director, Sue Lee-Allen, announced at the executive committee meeting that she will retire near the end of April. Sue has led our Organizing department since the early 2000’s and Oregon AFSCME has grown tremendously under her leadership. In 2012 we set a goal for Sue and the Organizing department to increase our membership from its current 23,900 to over 25,000 by the end of 2015; a 4.6% increase. Even with the damaging Harris v. Quinn decision by the Supreme Court in2014 which caused a loss of child care members, at the end of 2015 our membership reached our visioning goal of 25,000 members. Thank you to Sue for helping us meet our goals and grow our membership.
We had some guest speakers during the meeting as well. First, some staff and members of the Portland Association of Teachers updated us on their signature gathering efforts for IP28, known as the “Better Oregon” ballot measure campaign. Oregon AFSCME endorsed IP28 last year and has also been gathering signatures for the ballot measure. “Better Oregon” is the ballot measure which will raise over $2 billion for education, senior services and health care by increasing the corporate minimum taxes on sales in Oregon in excess of $25 million; only the largest corporations are affected, not family owned businesses, partnerships, sole proprietorships or small businesses. More information about IP28 can be found at www.aBetterOregon.org
Also joining us was Kasia Rutledge, a member of Metro Public Defenders-AFSCME Local 3668, presenting her experiences and the experiences of her clients and colleagues with police profiling. The takeaways from Kasia’s presentation and the conversation among the executive committee that flowed out of Kasia’s presentation were that profiling is real, it exists in many of our institutions- it is not limited to law enforcement professionals, everyone commits and experiences profiling even though not everyone suffers equally from the effects of profiling-and that we need to work hard to shift our laws, our society, and our own behaviors and thoughts to eliminate the destructive effects of profiling. The executive committee had an engaging discussion about profiling with Kasia and we will build on that discussion over time as we continue to explore more diversity and equity conversations and look for our place in finding solutions to these complex issues.
The Board and the Political Action Committee will meet next on Saturday, Feb 27 in Salem. Among the major topics on the agenda will be the Oregon AFSCME candidate endorsements for the May 17 elections. There will also be a presentation by the Executive Director search committee about their progress and the remaining tasks as we approach the April 2 Board meeting which will be the Board vote about the next Executive Director of Oregon AFSCME to replace Ken Allen as he retires at the end of July.
Child care will be available for these Feb 27 meetings. If you would like to attend and reserve child care, please email Stephanie Swan and let her know how many children will need care and their ages. We added child care at our Nov 2015 Board meeting and it was a great success. We intend to provide child care at all Board meetings going forward.
I plan to send a president’s report like this every month to local presidents, members of the Oregon AFSCME board, and any member who requests it and gives the Council Secretary a home email address. And don’t forget, you can now access all monthly President’s Reports on the Oregon AFSCME website. If you are a local president or other local officer, please share this information with the members of your local.
If you ever have any questions or wish to send me a comment, you can reach me at president@OregonAFSCME.com.
Thank you for being active in your union.
Jeff Klatke, President of Oregon AFSCME.
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