Speeches

STATE WAC CONFERENCE
May 19 - 21, 2006
DEALING WITH LIFE’S UP AND DOWNS

Prepared Remarks of
ANDY DOUGLAS
OCSEA Executive Director

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As you know, the theme of this conference is “Dealing with Life’s Ups and Downs.” Given the events of the past couple of weeks in my life, it would seem to me that I am the perfect person to be one of your speakers. To put that matter to rest, I hope, just know I was sad to leave and happy to return.

In dealing with the ups and downs of life, it is important to remember that things aren’t always as they seem. To make this point, and introduce what I have to say to you, I am reminded:

Of a little girl, Laura, who was talking to her teacher about whales. The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though the whale is a very large mammal, its throat was very small.

Laura then told her teacher that couldn’t be because Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
Just a bit irritated, the teacher again stated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible.

Laura then said to the teacher, “When I get to heaven I’ll ask Jonah.” The teacher asked Laura, “What if Jonah went to hell?” Laura then replied, “Then you can ask him.”

Thus we see that things may not always be as they appear. Fortunately, we have good people in our Union who give us guidance – if we will only follow their leadership. In this regard I was struck by the prayer given to us by Angela Wallace at a recent WAC Conference. In part Angela prayed the Lord “to teach us to guide, without pushing. Speak without judging and listen without interrupting.” Then Angela implored the Almighty to “Bless the Leaders of OCSEA and the WAC Committee. Help us”, Angela said, “to have unity to build bridges to crossover for change, for the good of the Union.” Words of wisdom, Angela, indeed.

III.
SUBJECTS
            It is in this spirit, then, that I make my presentation to you. I want to cover two subjects in the short time remaining to me.

A.
REPORT AS DIRECTOR
First I want to take just a few minutes to give you a little history and talk about the future of our Union and the always important and ever increasing role of our women in that future.

When I was hired as your Director on March 1, 2004, I was presented by the Board with a full agenda. I was told:

1. There had to be staff accountability.
2. There had to be a plan to assure solvency for the Union.
3. Something had to be done to reestablish a connection with our membership. That is, we had to show why Union membership was important and relevant to members, and
4. The reorganization plan given to us by the International had to be implemented.

The reports given to us by the International portrayed a number of serious problems. The reports showed how we were losing 140 members per month, that we were facing a deficit of over $859,000 for the year 2004 and that we were on our way to bankruptcy. Clearly, these were “lows” in our history.

These diseases needed stronger medicine than just aspirin to cure. The measures I instituted, supported by most of the Board Members, was strong medicine. Obviously, when you make unpopular decisions it is inevitable that some folks will be unhappy with you. That, of course, is what happened.

But, I am happy to report, the travails have been worth it. Today, instead of losing 140 members per month, we have, since the date of my hire, over 500 more members than when I started. Instead of a deficit, we ended, under the prudent decisions of the majority of the Board, 2005 with about a million dollar surplus. Recently, under a lawsuit that I filed on behalf of OCSEA, we have returned 256 attorneys to our Union protection. At the current rate of pay, that means almost a quarter-of-a-million dollars more in income.

Thus, today we have better staff accountability, we have financial discipline and we have accomplished much of the reorganization and have, thereby, cut costs.

That was the first year of my three year plan. The second year I planned to devote a considerable amount of time to securing a good contract for our Members. I knew, and many of you made me aware, that the last contract was one of the real lows in the life of our Union. Thus, along with my other duties, I vowed to do, every day, some work on the state budget and our upcoming contract negotiations. That preparation paid off. We, OCSEA, had all of our agencies, except ODNR, fully funded. We then, with the financial planning and research we did, were able to get a contract which, I can tell you, is the envy of all of AFSCME across the county and, also, of many of our sister Unions across the State. This is rapidly becoming one of the “highs” of our history.

The third year of the three year plan, that I now, apparently, am going to be permitted to carry out, is to put in place a structure for the Board to implement a strategic plan for our Union for today, tomorrow and for five years from now.

It is no secret that the labor movement is being weakened every day. We cannot – we must not let that happen to OCSEA – and we will not let it happen.

Why can I be so confident? Because we have in our Union the best kind of power we could have – WOMAN POWER. With all of you as the backbone and spine of this organization, those who would try to thwart our resolve better beware. Every day I witness that resolve first hand, that power, that steady drive that our women bring to bear on moving us forward.

And I don’t just talk the talk. I walk the walk. Out of the eight people I have hired, five are women – and for those who might be counting, five out of the eight are African-American. We truly are a Union that practices what it preaches. You as women in the labor movement and, yea, all of us have rich traditions we must uphold and pass on to those who follow us, which leads me to my final subject.

B.
WOMEN IN LABOR HISTORY
      It should come as no surprise that it was women, through the vehicle of strikes, who led the way to make the cotton mills in Dover, New Hampshire come to terms. As early as 1828, 400 women went on strike for better working conditions. Just six years later, 1834, their numbers increased to 800 who struck in resistance to a cut in wages.

But our real hero was a lady by the name of Kate Mullaney. Born in Ireland around 1845 and immigrating to Troy, New York with her parents and her older sister Mary, Kate Mullaney could have hardly envisioned the twists and turns her life would take in America – the land of opportunity. As a young girl in America, safely shadowed from many of the mundane household chores by her older sister, Kate could spend much of her time enjoying her two younger sisters and her younger brother Frank. However, when her father died and with her mother in ill health it fell on Kate’s’ shoulders to become the breadwinner while sister Mary assumed the role of homemaker.

While Kate’s entrance into the workforce may have been an early hardship for an Irish girl still in her teens, it was a godsend for the working women of America. Thanks to the popularity of the detachable shirt collar so favored by men from middle-class families, Troy had become the manufacturing center of ninety percent of the collars, cuffs and the white starched shirts sold throughout America and the world. However, to keep this economic engine booming in Troy, the manufacturers and the many related businesses needed to hire over 3,000 women.

Kate’s venture into the workforce began quickly as she found employment in one of the commercial laundries. Working 12 to 14 hours a day with hands immersed in boiling water and such bleaching agents as chloride of soda and diluted sulfuric acid, (even in the 1860’s this was considered sweatshop conditions) and, as faster starching machines were introduced into the laundries, health and safety hazards increased as many of the girls were badly burned.

True to her Irish heritage Kate Mullaney could no longer stand idly by and watch her fellow workers be subjected to inhumane treatment. Knowing full well the benefits and conditions that the men of Troy who joined the Iron Moulders Union had won for the many area foundry workers, Kate set her mind to try and organize the laundry workers. In February of 1864, with almost 300 other women, Kate announced the formation of the Collar Laundry Union – the first female union in the country.

Before the ink was fully dry on the new union charter, Kate led a strike against the 14 commercial laundries in the city demanding wage increases and attention to the women’s concern of safety. Within a week the owners acceded to the Union demands and, a mere two years later in 1866, Collar Laundry Union members had increased their members’ wages to 14 dollars a week.

While this is a rich heritage and we have accomplished much since then, in my view we still have a ways to go. It is unfair, I say, that women often don’t receive equal pay for equal work. It is unfair, I say, that there is a glass ceiling that, for the most part, women are not permitted to crack.

And why in this latter day do we have to continually remind so many employers and even some of our male colleagues that the preamble of our beloved Federal Constitution says:

“We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Note, my friends, that it says “we, the people” not we the male citizens. Note that it means we, the “whole” people, female and male alike who formed the Union. And note that we formed the Union to secure the blessings of liberty – not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity –  but to all the people - women as well as men. It is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied equal rights in so many ways. (Here tell Sha story)

What is sad is that she even had to ask that question.

IV
CONCLUSION
I close with telling you a story from 1836. The cotton mills in Lowell, Massachusetts were lousy places to work. Even worse was the pay the women workers received.

Twenty-five hundred of the girls decided to strike. As they paraded through the streets of Lowell, they sang:

“Oh, isn’t it a pity that such
A pretty girl as I
Should be sent to the factory
To pine away and die?
Oh, I cannot be a slave,
For I’m so fond of liberty
That I cannot be a slave.”

And then they sang what we all should forever remember:

“As our fathers resisted into blood the lordly avarice of the British ministry, so we, their daughters never will wear the yoke which has been prepared for us.”

This then is our calling, Let OCSEA and our women continue to lead the way in being sure that the yoke is never again affixed, and that we vow to keep working to remove the remaining vestiges of any oppression.

I pledge to you to lead in that cause. Are you with me?

Thank you.

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