MCI AFL-CIO said:
Rusty,
I dont agree with.........With AMFA there are term limits of four years for officials in your local. I believe this will fix the GOOD OLE BOY syndrome
It makes me question this, if your local has an officer, doing a great job for the members, and is successful, and never laid down on his responsibility, I would want him to be re elected as long as he wanted his office. Thats the responsibility of the members to decide to keep him/her or elect another.
If we are to limit all officers to 4 years, it wont take long in todays membership to quickly be without nominations?
Also, if there is a limit of 4 years, what would the officer have to work for? He could care less what he accomplished?
You stated your opinion and I gave mine, Thanks for posting Rusty
I agree with you on term limits MCI but not for the same reasons.
To me term limits are un-democratic. It denies the members the right to vote for who they want. If the person is doing the job OK then why should he be forced out if the majority want himm in? How does term limits help anyone? The high turnover rate on the local level makes the International more powerful and does nothing to enhance representation on the local level. If members allow unresponsive or incompetant leaders to stay in place because they fail to vote then they get the representation they deserve. A more effective measure would be that if 50% or more of the members do not vote at all that another election is started from scratch.In the meantime if the term is over then the incumbants would be limited to administrative functions only. No policies, or motions or any other functions could be voted on by them until an administration is duly elected. This would encourage the members to vote otherwise the Local would remain in limbo.
Tulsa's problem appears to be that the incumbants have an advantage because the union is so large, instead of term limits you should try to develop a system where challengers are given more opportunity to address the entire electorate than they have now.
The statement that if they cant get re-elected that they should care less I strongly dissagree with. The whole idea is a better served membership, and an officer that is going back to the floor stands to benifit if he did things the right way while he was in office.
One thing is that if you do not like this policy you could make a motion to have it changed, and instead of it getting buried and killed off in one of Sonny Halls "All for say Aye, all against say Aye , and I'll determine which Ayes have it" votes (actually happened) at the Convention with AMFA it comes back to you, the member for a vote.
Our TWU Conventions offer members absolutely zero accountability. Policies that you do not like you have no chance of changing as a member and very little as an officer. Not one resolution that the International opposed was passed at the last Convention, and even participants have no real way of knowing how many votes were cast one way or the other. When you get a chance ask your Local to let you see a copy of the 2001 Convention minutes. Term limits would mean that the only ones with prior experience at the Conventiuon would be the International.
Sonny Hall is a dictator. Like other dictators he uses forums such as the Convention to identify "opponents" to his regime, then he isolates, neutalizes or eliminates them. Since the Convention he aided the company through his inaction in the removal of Jack Sullivan who ran against his ticket, suspended me, who nominated Sullivan, put a friendly President in place in Local 234 and has worked to isolate the leadership of Local 100 from the rest of the Union. He suspended me for three years to prevent me from attending the next Convention. Other Presidents are too afraid of Sonny Hall to oppose him, plus many hope to get an appointed spot in the International.
Term limits on the local level would not fix these problems, if anything it would make it worse.
