As you may have guessed by now, I did not attend. Looks like the general apathy that runs rampant through the local has finally caught up with me.

Anyway, I did hear there were 35 fitters and 10 welders on the bench. This is a big surprise because the month before they were talking about full employment being just around the corner. Did not hear the plumber report or how many apprentices were off.

The instructor training is going on this week in Michigan… not sure how many went.

The code updates are going on now. Pretty sure they will be having regular update classes for the next few months. Be sure and get signed up and get it over with.

What else? I think that’s all I got today.

There were 32 members that showed up. That included the officers.

Darren talked about Beth. He said the problem had been going on since 2004. $1755 total through all that time. He was able to trace receipts back to the beginning.

The .25 that we put into H&W… the new benefits took effect on the first of July, with the new contract. Now you can get glasses/contacts once a year instead of every two and dental has a higher annual amount that can be used.

Darren said that Rick needed a new truck, that caused a lively little discussion… then we voted to approve him getting a new truck. The funny part is, Darren doesn’t need a vote to buy a truck… he just asks as a courtesy.

32 members out of 1100 or so… I would call it unbelievable except that one week ago we had around 240 show up to vote on our new contract. 20-21% of our membership decided for the rest whether the current contract was acceptable… that is what is mind boggling.

For those that think going is pointless because everything is predecided… the vote was fairly close > 147-94. Roughly 50 votes from acceptance to non-acceptance. 50 votes, 50 more members to show up out of 1100. 4% more of the membership.

For the overwhelming majority of this membership, this is your livelihood- your life. You won’t be moving onto greener pastures. You’ll die or retire out of this local. It seems you would be interested in having a little more vested interest in what goes on down at the hall by taking an active role in regular meetings, or at least by showing up on the nights we vote on new contracts.

I’ve offered a couple of ideas to the current and former administrations on how to increase attendance… no action has ever been taken… so no way to know if my ideas would work. (to be fair, the previous administration ran out of time before being able to act on any of my ideas).

I guess you can chime in and let us know why going to meetings and participating holds zero interest for you.

We had a short discussion about the vacation fund way back in the early days of this site. There are quite a few more visitors coming around these days and the vacation fund came back up again… so I’ve decided to open up the discussion again. Here’s a link to the original discussion http://weare344.com/are-you-prepared-for-a-strike

Back in the day we had a vacation fund. $1 was held out of our check for every hour worked. The employers sent the money to the hall once a month and every 6 months the hall would deposit the money into a bank account for us… money sure came in handy for vacations, Christmas shopping etc, whatever.

Now as most of the older members remember, the vacation fund disappeared one summer, right before the regular deposit time, thanks to a former B/M. This left a sour taste in the mouth for a lot of members.

This is one of two reasons I don’t think this local will ever have another vacation fund. The other reason being I don’t think a majority would ever agree to taking money off the check to start a new fund, regardless of how safe it is made to be.

Now, here’s the deal… as a member of this local, you are also a member of Tinker Federal Credit Union. What that means is, whenever you work for a local contractor, you can choose to have money held out of your check and deposited into an account at TFCU. You choose the amount to be held out. You start it and stop it whenever you want. Nobody else handles the money, it goes straight from the contractor to your account once a month.

I’ve been doing this 3-4 years now… it’s working out great for me. If you’re wanting a vacation fund, this may be an easier path, rather than trying to convince a bunch of plumbers and fitters to take money out their pocket to start a fund that was horribly abused in the past.

Curious to know what you guys think… and gals.

The new contract was approved by the membership tonight. We’re getting $2 a year over three years. There’s more travel money- $45 a day for distances over 50 miles and $65 a day for distances over 100 miles.

There’s another part of the contract I didn’t like… the contractors when hiring out of the hall still take the name at the top of the list, but the next name, they can choose from anybody on the list… that one made me uneasy. In fact I didn’t even vote because I didn’t want to vote no, but knew if I voted it would have to be no, because of that clause.

Would like to hear your thoughts about the contract and this new list system.

We also voted on what to do with this years money. $1.70 on the check, .25 to H&W, supposed to get us better dental and vision and .05 in some kind of UA organizing fund. Sounds like something the UA rammed down our throat… supposedly we’re the last local to vote it in.

Let’s hear what y’all think.

Our special called meeting is tomorrow at 7:00. You need to be there. One- to find out what the offer is and two- to let the leadership know how you feel about the lack of info concerning the contract.

It would also be nice to know what happened to Beth from an official source

I had a request to add info about work in other locals to this site. I don’t know much about that kind of stuff, but here is a Yahoo group that is UA members only. It’s supposed to be a jobs board, although they can get a little chatty at times.

You have to sign up to see the message board, it’s ben so long since I signed up I can’t remember if they want your local number, or card number or what… but there is some kind of verification process before they let you in.

It’s a fairly busy board, they do talk alot about current jobs and upcoming jobs. Here’s the link:
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/roadtrash/

Here’s another site they use to have a message board as well, looks like it has been moved to Yahoo also. I didn’t sign up for it.
http://theroadsite.com/main.html

As far as I know we are still negotiating with the contractors. I have heard so many different rumors about what’s what I’m not going to list them all here. Just know that I have heard everything from 1, 2 and 3 year contracts to all kinds of different money scenarios. So as usual, there’s not much telling what’s really going on until the hall decides to tell us officially.

There is some big news I heard about this weekend that was supposedly confirmed by another source today. Beth got fired last week. One of the BA’s told somebody it was for misuse of funds. It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

Everybody get back on the site and bring a friend with you.

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Got a message from my contact today… I asked about clarification on the letter, could it maybe have to do with wildcat strikes etc, here’s the answer I got back:

“Have copy of that letter. Nothing about wildcat provisions. They speak glowingly about their partnership with WD Manor management”

Now I’m interested in knowing if he has backing of UA.

I’ve added the ability to subscribe to comments. Before you submit your comment, you should see a box you can tick that will subscribe you to the comment thread. What that means is, you’ll receive an email whenever new comments are made to the post you subscribed to.

Let me know what you think.