I wish I had time to attend those however I was not able to.
Sorry for so long but I encourage the read to see if anyone else feels this way....
It bothers me to NO END that we are affiliated with MEA/NEA. I get the stupid MEA Voice newsletter at my house and as I look through that I struggle to find even a single that that is even remotely relevant to higher ed. Yes its like “Legal fee insurance” but here are a few of the things that are big on my hot list at the moment.
These are not going to be exact numbers as I don’t have the newsletter in front of me but you will get the point, look up the numbers if you want to know down to the penny. Ok so many years ago APA was in hot water with a few thousand in the bank and 50K in debt. At that point they affiliated with MEA and MEA covered the debt and started being a APA CYA. Which at that point made sense. This was 20 years ago...a completely different world. Several years ago APA had something like 750K in the bank at which point instead of raising dues they decided to start using that to subsidize the dues. Good idea right?
NO
What APA should have done is say, OK great we have some money now... And at that point disaffiliated with MEA/NEA, ridding the union of the expenses related to membership with MEA/NEA and LEAVE (yes LEAVE) the dues the same for 2 or 3 years allowing the union to rake in some cash and stash away 2-3 million bucks. THEN LOWER THE DUES to a reasonable amount to cover the operating expenses of the union plus a small percentage to still add a bit to the ‘reserves’. Then the 3-4 million in reserves should be smartly invested and managed to gain return and that money used to allow APA to ‘insure themselves’. Managed properly this is a no brainer, this is what most of the other unions do.
All that said now most of that 750K has been squandered away subsidizing dues, my belief is that this was partly done on purpose so that the union did NOT have as large of a reserve and so people could NOT say... HEY BUT WE HAVE THIS RESERVE DO WE REALLY NEED THEM?. Now the damage is done though and it is around a third of what is was (the actual number is in the newsletter) so doing what I said above would be much more difficult.
Which leads me to my next point... I have heard from several reliable sources that our chairpersons mother is a higher up at the MEA (conflict of interest if you ask me) and given that he is headed down the lawyership path would aspire to be a MEA Lawyer someday. Take this with a grain of salt because this is my opinion but thinking this really makes me wonder if our chairperson is even going to be ABLE to see what is best for the membership of APA, or what is best for HIM. Because clearly disaffiliating with MEA would not be best for him (my opinion again), but in the long run may be in the best interest of the APA as a whole.
I really wish the disaffiliation discussion would be had amongst the membership on a very serious level. I have been speaking with MANY APA members and not a one I have ever talked to has said “we should stay with MEA”, so why is no one making a stink and pushing the issue?
Everyone please feel free to Flame me or Pat me on the back, I can take both and would like to hear all the different angles. All I know is with the way expenses on everything are going up and true real Income is going down (even though we get raises) our union should be looking for new was to actually help its members make more with experience and years of service instead of yet again seeing my net income go down compared to the cost of living.
End Rant
/Ehren
On 10/7/08 3:16 PM, "Rachel Zakhem" <[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Just a reminder, there are informational sessions today about the dues
increases.
Akers Hall - room 133 - 4:00 pm to 4:45 pm and
Communication Arts - room 147 - 5:15 pm to 6 pm
Rachel A. Zakhem
Site License Coordinator
Michigan State University Computer Store
110 Computer Center
East Lansing, MI 48824
Tel: (517) 432-5367
On Oct 7, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Joe Besko wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Oct 2008, Steve Bogdanski wrote:
>
>> a.) That those who choose to not become a member pay a smaller
>> service
>> fee that would reflect the costs/benefits of collective bargaining on
>> their behalf without charging them for other services that are for
>> members only. This seems rather easy to implement without much
>> hassle.
>>
>> -or-
>>
>> b.) That those who choose not to be members do not benefit from any
>> collective agreements at all. So in the case of the recent APA raise
>> of 2.75%, those who had previously chosen not to be members would not
>> get the raise. As long as such things were made clear at time of
>> employment, so that individuals could make their own informed
>> decision,
>> I don't see what the problem is. Well let me rephrase that, I
>> don't see
>> where the problem is for employees, but the APA definitely wouldn't
>> like it if they started losing members (a.k.a. $$).
>
> Service fee paying members pay a substantial amount, but they don't
> have a
> voice in the contracts, they don't get to vote, they have to fill out
> paper work every year to continue their service fee status and are
> considered *non-members* to the APA/MEA, but they still pay a hefty
> sum.
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Joe Besko Phone: 517.432.5335
> Systems Programmer Fax: 517.353.9847
> Michigan State University E-mail: jbesko(a)msu.edu
> 313 Computer Center
> East Lansing, MI 48824-1042
>