I'm not anti-union one bit. I'm anti-corruption. I care about my union and its members. I can't say I will agree or disagree with them on every issue. I can't say we will even like each other, but that's okay!
I'm not looking for friends; I'm looking for a better quality of life. The later is a desire I believe we
all can agree on.
Education is the union's strongest muscle. Union's can be powerful entities if its leaders "beef up" in the library. You've got to have a library worth visiting though. Who wants to visit a gym with broken, disorganized equipment?
Our constitution is exactly that. It's broken, disorganized, and fit for the trash. There are no checks and balances. There is no balance of power. There is no protection for whistleblowers.
You'll read in
this article that:
The Labor–Management Reporting and Disclosure Act outlaws union corruption. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that the act’s protections apply only to rank-and-file members—not employees—of labor unions. A union president can legally fire employees for exposing corruption.
Even if union representatives/stewards smell something sour, they risk their neck for talking about it, or not reporting someone else who does. When the NSS (National Steward System) passed in 2010, it was another nail in the coffin for the rural craft. It turned the state boards into little more than party-planning committees. The
system is the failure, not necessarily the stewards.
I've been reading and researching as I can (we're all busy and have lives outside of delivering mail). I'm interested in presenting a substitution for the NRLCA constitution. Our current "piecemeal program for change" is ineffective. Excluding dues increases and increasing the salary or benefits of Association executives, what constitutional changes have directly impacted
you?
When (what is now) the USA relied on its first constitution (the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union), it was a first-run flop. I mean no disrespect to those of that period, or by analogy, the ones who put together the NRLCA constitution we use today.
The NRLCA Constitution is a sinking ship. Substituting the entire thing isn't a 2-day job though, especially when I doing it by my lonesome.
I could be wrong but, in my opinion, if the NRLCA Constitution remains the same, I fear we'll continue with the same sandbagging; the same shell-games; the same goalpost movement, gaslighting, and red-herrings we currently pay for... just with different bodies in the seats. "Government" is not an easy thing to take on, but is abuse the easier alternative?
I may take your advice and start a campaign on YouTube; hopefully aiding in the battle that PT has been hammering away at for years. I can't yet say I'll be nearly as effective, but Ruralinfo started somewhere too. Look how far it has come!
Okay. Time for me to get off the soapbox and pass the mic to Alex!
Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.
- Alexander Hamilton
