Next Meeting

Next Executive Board meeting will be Friday, January 15 at 10:00 a.m. at the Fife Longshore Hall.

Our primary objectives will be to develop a budget, determine our response to the National ARA RFP for a part-time organizer/fund raiser, and to hear reports from our active committees.

We have decisions to make about NARA 's convention in Las Vegas, and our plans for the upcoming Legislative session.

We will need to work with our brothers and sisters in labor, the senior lobby, and the Statewide Poverty Action Network among others. Our concerns, as expressed in the convention include supporting tax increases to meet basic needs, calling for increases in the services to people which were drastically cut, and protecting those improvements that were passed last year. We also need to support our members in Retired Public Employees and Washington Education Association Retirees.

There will be time for good of the order and announcements. I anticipate calling for good of the order early in the meeting when we are all fresh and not as we are trying to leave.

If you need help with transportation, please call me at (206) 282-3363 or (206) 226-9902 or you can call JoAnne McGaw at (206) 528-0407

Ed Coyle to speak at State ARA meeting

Ed Coyle, executive director of the national Alliance for Retired Americans will be the featured speaker at the annual meeting and convention of the Washington State Alliance for Retired Americans.

The convention will be held from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Thursday, October 22, at the Affifi Shrine Temple, 815 South Vassault Street in Tacoma, where the parking is free and the catering is excellent. For driving directions or other convention information, call (206) 448-0859.

A workshop on legislative issues will be led by Kathy Wallentine, past president of the Washington Education Association – Retired.

Delegates will elect a president, secretary and treasurer. Art Boulton, State ARA president since the founding convention in 2003, has decided to step down. Mike Warren, a long-time activist both in the Alliance and in the Retired Public Employees, has announced he will be a candidate for president.

AFL-CIO Convention: Bold New Initiatives

By Rap Lewis

Riding the energy of its spirited 2009 convention, the AFL-CIO’s newly-elected leadership team quickly launched a cross-country tour to listen to the rank and file and to deliver the fighting message of the convention itself.

President Richard Trumka, Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker and Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler started in recession-ridden Ohio with rallies in Cleveland, Akron, Columbus and Dayton.

Later, Trumka nailed Wall Street greed at a press conference outside the New York Stock Exchange.

“Banks and other financial institutions must be held accountable for making this mess that required trillions of dollars of our money to clean up,” Trumka said. “They must be held accountable for the pain they’ve inflicted on the families who face financial ruin – unemployment, wiped out pensions, foreclosures and bankruptcy.”

Hold Baker, the first African American to hold a top AFL-CIO office, led a march from Philadelphia city hall to the world headquarters of CIGNA, the health insurance giant. The CIGNA rally was one of many across the U.S. with the theme: “Big Insurance: Sick of it!”

During the convention in Pittsburgh, the entire delegate body left the hall to conduct a mass march and rally for universal health care.
The convention was notable for its emphasis on achieving diversity at all levels of union leadership. Women, minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people constituted 43% of the delegates. All 55 affiliated unions were required to send delegations that reflected the composition of their membership.

The AFL-CIO conventions of yesteryear, dominated by delegations of older white men, are history. In a nation whose people are a living rainbow of diversity, the retooled labor movement is determined to welcome the participation of every working man and woman without exception.
Indeed, it’s a new day.