TO: All members of Local 749

FROM: John Ondusko, President

Let’s go back just a few weeks to December 1, 2009...

Imagine that you had just been elected as the new President of the Local for your union. You’ve been through two months of bungled election procedures which delayed a timely election result and have managed to survive and win.

Now, you are immediately faced with taking over all the responsibilities of this office and making sure that five regional VP elections, (which are now also a month late because your election was delayed,) are conducted by December 16^th!

During this time, your newly elected Secretary-Treasurer is getting acclimated at Local’s hall and diligently trying to get a complete and clear picture of the local’s financial situation. She, along with help from other officers and members, sort through and organize the Local’s financial records that were available in the hall. Your Secretary Treasurer runs the numbers and lets you know that Local has been spending more than it had been taking in. She also tells you that the parent union has notified us that required membership dues would be increased starting on the 1^st of the year. As a brand new President you think to yourself: “Just great, the first major item that I have to handle is raising dues! They’re just going to love me.”

So now it’s the 17^th, and you’re having the first Executive Board meeting at which all the newly elected Regional VP’s are installed. On the agenda is the dues increase. The motion to increase the dues is put forth; there is a complete discussion, and a resulting “yeah” vote.

How do you tell the members? The holidays are imminent. You don’t want to spoil it. You have heard it said that: “ignorance is bliss” and it’s your desire that the holidays stay as blissful as possible for the members. There would be no one available during the holiday time frame anyway to help get a mailing out, so the decision is made to do a notification mailing to let the members know about the dues increase as early as possible in January.

Well you can stop imagining now, because that mailing went out yesterday. If you haven’t received it by the time you are reading this and you would like to see the digital version of that mailing, “click here.” (The PDF should pop up)

Your new officers have hit the floor running. Our intention is to keep the members informed and involved per our campaign promise. It takes time to prepare and coordinate a mailing to 1500+ members especially during a holiday season.

Even if we could work on the Local's business full time, it still wouldn’t be quick enough for some. Each and every one of your officers works their regular state job and then devotes much of their own time to get the Union work done.  I ask that you be patient.

I will update this page and keep you informed as relevant issues arise. We also will be adding more pages containing useful information to this website shortly so remember to check back regularly.

Thank you for taking the time to be informed and for your understanding.

In service to the members,

John O.