Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Just Say NO...
I assume there are many fine, upstanding, dues-paying SPEEA members here in the Midwest who didn't expect to see a "Ballot Enclosed" SPEEA evelope arrive in their home postal mail. And I can only imagine their confused surprise when they find the ballot asks whether or not we need to throw SPEEA Treasurer Bob Wilkerson and SPEEA Secretary Dave Baine out of office immediately, rather than waiting for the scheduled Board Officer election in six months. So, for those joining late, here's my version of Our Story Thus Far:
Last Spring, the members elected a Board of Directors that is more, uh, "conservative" than Executive Boards past. The newly-elected Board majority had campaigned for more fiscal responsibility, greater information transparency, and increased member input to SPEEA decision-making and they attempted to implement these campaign promises once they took active office in March.
On July 10, after months of continuing internal disagreements over the scope of elected leadership's participation and authority in decisions driving SPEEA's directions and actions – and Thursday night Board meetings finishing up sometime on Friday -- the Board decided to terminate our employment relationship with the long-standing Executive Director, Charles Bofferding, by exercising the "Severance Agreement" clause in his contract with the Board.
Needless to say, there was then a great wailing and gnashing of teeth from a few in SPEEA's leadership who had come to rely on Charlie's friendship and direction and who seemed to believe his absence would bring great calamity to our union. Which, of course, it hasn't because our union's strength lies in the unity of our entire membership and not any single individual. Charlie's been gone for three months now and we're still negotiating contracts (BAE-Irving) and still successfully working member issues with the employer every day. So the sky hasn't yet fallen, despite what some might have you believe.
So, that's where we are now. The petitions were reviewed and, save a few apparently minor irregularities, detemined to contain the required 10% member signatures. Both sides composed the "Pro/Con" statements, formatted to differentiate between "fact" and "opinion" and those statements and a ballot were sent out to all members.
Which brings us up to the "Ballot Enclosed" envelope that I and every other dues-paying member in Wichita likely got today and the end of Our Story Thus Far.
So, you might ask, what the bloody hell am I supposed to do now? But even if ya don't ask, I'm gonna tell ya.
Open up the Pro/Con statement flyer, grab a wide-point Sharpie and blacken out all the italicized text in both statements; this is merely the opinion of the statements' anonymous authors, who are admittedly partisan. You'll be left with the "plain" font text, which are the only "facts" of the case; read those facts.
Then, if the facts, alone, aren't persuasive enough and you still feel compelled to vote for the recall, I'd ask you to reconsider for other reasons.
First, if you think recalling my fellow Board members will bring Charlie Bofferding right back as our Executive Director... well, that's just not gonna happen. I just got done sitting on an 18-member committee of a large cross-section of SPEEA leaders and activists who came up with criteria for hiring Charlie's replacement: one of the key "skills" is an ability to bring divisive groups together, which Charlie already had five years to work, but failed. Not to mention the fact that everyone in leadership knows (or damn well should know) how much baggage he'd bring back to the union at this point in time. There may be a point in the future when current events are bygones but, right now, I'd suggest that "Charlie" is far too divisive an issue to willingly bring back into play.
But more importantly for our union, I'd suggest that this specific recall sets a dangerously expensive precedent. We've had recalls of elected officials in the past, but those were for charges of violating our union's rules. But this recall is nothing more than a small, minority of members pouting, sitting on the floor, banging their fists on the carpet, whining "we didn't like the outcome of the last election and we wanna have another one NOWWWWW!!!!" If you let them do it this time, you're just opening the door to let any small group demand another election anytime they want, for whatever reason they want. At well over $25K a pop.
So, please, for whatever reason – that the facts don't support the charges or it's not going to bring Charlie back or "don't be wastin' my dues money on this kinda bullsiht" – please take the time to vote AGAINST the recalls.
-- Bill, whose offers his ballot as illustrated instruction, above...
