I have been really good at prioritizing going to the local board meetings for my union. I believe there are 8 meetings a year, and the most recent one I went to was the 3rd one. I’m not sure if the year is by the calendar year or if the year starts after the election and the new board and officers have been elected. But either way, I’ve almost made it to half of the meetings for the year.
After being able to go to these meetings, I now realize how I should have been doing this in the past. It’s not as scary or intimidating as I thought it would be and it’s not a huge time commitment. And the meetings have not been during times I work for the last several years, so there was no reason for me not to go. But at least now I’m making up for lost time.
The first local board meeting of the year/election term had a lot of observers. So did the second meeting, and that meeting had to have an overflow room because there were so many observers. This meeting wasn’t as packed and I have a feeling that it might not be as full from now on. I think there were a lot of people who wanted to attend after the elections who aren’t as interested in attending anymore. I hope that there will be lots of union members who want to be involved and watch our local union government working, but I know that the interest might fade. For all I know, I might not be as interested in attending in a year or two. I hope that I will be, but I can’t predict it. The positive about people not attending is that there will be room for new people to go. I’m still trying to get friends who are in the union to come with me, but I haven’t been successful at that.
Even though this was only my 3rd meeting, I already knew what to expect for the evening. Getting checked in as an observer has paperwork we have to sign every time, there is a “snack” (I would consider pizza a meal and not a snack), and then we have a member going over the rules for everyone so we know what we are allowed to do and what can get us removed from the room. And I’ve been able to sit in the same section each time so even that is routine for me.
This meeting was a little different from the others that I attended because our local president was not able to be there. So one of the local vice presidents was in charge. Having someone else run the meeting didn’t change a lot of it, but there were some things discussed that were not voted on because they didn’t want to vote without the local president there. There also weren’t as many board members there, but I think that was because of work schedules or being closer to the holidays. But there were enough board members to have the meeting which is the most important thing.
Besides having someone else running the meeting, the rest of the meeting was similar to what I have gotten used to. There were discussions about the different local committees, policies to debate about and vote on, and making sure that different upcoming events were announced so they could be promoted to the rest of the membership. In a way, I get a bit of a preview about what is coming up by being at these meetings. But everything that is discussed that is ready to be announced does get shared with all members. If there is anything confidential discussed in the meetings, the observers have to leave the room so the board members have privacy. But that has only happened once and they moved that to the end of the meeting so we all just left at that point instead of waiting to be let back into the room.
And as always with union events, this was also some time to spend with my friends. I got to hang out with my friends who were observers when we were in the room where we waited after checking in before we were led into the boardroom. And I got some time to talk to my friends who are board members after the meeting concluded. It wasn’t as social as other events because there is work to be done, but it is always fun getting to see my friends and at least say a quick hello.
The next board meeting is in about a month and I already have it on my calendar so I save that time. And as soon as it is announced to all members that we can put in a request to be an observer, I’m going to do it so that it doesn’t fill up before I get my name on the list. And maybe I’ll have more luck next month by getting a friend to come with me to the meeting!
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