DC 37 Needs Leaders

To the Editor:

District Council 37 along with its parent union is descending into hell. On May 9 Local 384 held its second union meeting as prescribed by its constitution. After calling for a vote on the minutes of the previous meeting, the next item on the agenda was a discussion of the treasurer's report. Rather than providing the March and April reports, all union officials gave us was February's statement. We were told that that was all there was.

The next item on the agenda was the proposed changes to the local's constitution. Not only did the president, Sandy Tucker, expect that her changes would be the only changes, but she assumed that they would go into effect. Discussion was at a minimum and I was called out of order when I attempted to challenge many of the proposed amendments. Ms. Tucker's clear message was to exclude the members' input as much as conceivably possible.

For instance: Article IX Section 5 states that "It shall be the duty of each officer to attend, in their entirety, all regular scheduled and special executive board meetings and general membership meetings. It shall be the duty of each officer to hold monthly chapter meetings. Each monthly chapter meeting shall take place not later than two weeks after each executive board meeting. The purpose of the monthly meeting shall be to disseminate information to the chapter membership. Each officer shall perform such other duties as the president or executive board of the local may require."

This is pretty reasonable, and in my opinion should be kept, but Ms. Tucker would like to replace this section with: "Failure of any executive board members to attend a minimum of three (3) consecutive board meetings, and/or two (2) consecutive general membership meetings per year without being excused, shall cause his/her office to be immediately vacated. Board members whose positions are vacated in this manner forfeit entitlement to any stipend which is due payment. Vacancies created by this action shall be filled for the remainder of the unexpired term by a majority vote of the executive board."

If I'm reading this right, not only does President Tucker wish to eliminate membership meetings at the campuses, but she wishes to completely control the board by appointing her own lackeys in the place of those she and the board have personally removed. This tactic eliminates messy union meetings.

At the same meeting I brought up the fact that management is, with the help of the union leadership, undermining any lasting vestiges of union strength. Management at the City University has declared that certain positions that were previously filled by union members will no longer be union jobs. And while we were told that this provision was in the contract, not only was that a lie, but management is removing people in all capacities, not just confidential positions.

Moreover, these jobs are equivalent to upgraded civil service positions but they are not being filled with people who have been waiting for years on promotional lists. When I asked President Tucker where in the contract this was agreed to, she responded that she wanted to see my information and denied that she said anything about it.

Her response was so convoluted that nobody knew what she was talking about. It was a pretty good tactic for getting the heat off of her and yet I was called out of order. When Myra James (York College) asked her to answer my question, she too was called out of order, the mike was snatched away and President Tucker's response was, "I said no." Consequently, the meeting broke up.

This situation is very grave. In order to weaken workers' rights, management understands that it needs to eliminate civil service, and is unfortunately getting its way. This is being accomplished with the complicity of the union.

Workers should be fearful of what is happening because the DC 37 leadership will hang us out to dry. We will be even more vulnerable than we are now. The employers smell blood, and unfortunately our leaders concern themselves only with their short-term material rewards as opposed to looking at the tragedy that is in store for us. There are more and more people who are working full time and are homeless. What does this say about our contracts? We need a new leadership, especially in DC 37. We need a leadership that is not corrupted by pieces of gold, a leadership that sees management as its adversary and a leadership that will unite not only all of the members in one big effective union as opposed to 56 ineffective locals, but with all other unions that will take on the challenges posed by the bosses and not back down.

To this end I have created a yahoo group for any union who wishes to discuss these or any other issues. The address is: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/CUNY384 .

CAROL LANG, Local 384