Term Limits

When one has been in office for a long, long time, one gets to form close friendships.
Its simply a human trait. You excuse each others foibles, cover up each others faults
and tend to treat outsiders, even constituents as the enemy. Its commonly seen even inter-departmentally, in the same organization.
Sometimes but rarely an us-versus-them attitude develops, prevails and is carried on generationally, by successive new leaders.
Hence the tragedy of bright young leadership
becoming tarnished by defending outdated ideas.

I have long advocated a proper system, indeed culture/practice of training and equipping alternate office-holders for the job they may have to step into in case of emergency.
Indeed I practiced it on committees I chaired. I always had two or three people trained and ready to go if I got hit by a bus on my way home.

My practice of having trained alternates and my preaching of it, did not make me many friends, especially among those who believed such behaviour was arrant nonsense.

For years I have been advising the President of our Local and the various chairpeople of my unit to appoint an alternate to one of our reps. who provided a critical service. Its a tough job, a heavy load for one person to be carrying.

My reasoning for this was that if anything happened to this rep, all the valuable knowledge gained through these last 16 plus years would be lost.
This is needed knowledge that belongs to the collective that created the position.
The leadership of our local has always claimed personality differences as an early excuse to duck making a decision or the fact that they were happy with things as they were and no change to the status-quo was going to be considered.

On Dec./19th/2005 I had a meeting with the Chair again and mentioned that given the tone of the previous Sundays meeting, a decision had to be made regarding alternates. He agreed, that Monday morning.

In July I had conversations with the Big 2 individually and indicated my interest in chairing a local standing committee.
Once again I was told that the original reasons stand. Folks are just happy, happy, happy with current arrangements.
Well.........an emergency has occurred and a program that is contractually guaranteed has come to a crashing halt.....unfortunately....just as I had predicted.
The position has remained vacant for going on 3 weeks now, because everyone was caught unaware as is usually the case with emergencies.
People, insanely busy themselves, are being called in to help in case they are needed.
This takes away from their current responsibilities and has a ripple effect through the organization.
This at a time when the corporation is looking for jobs to eliminate.

As for the people who need help....well... ??...!!

The usual complaints against unions take the form of"Failure to represent"
Our Local seems to be coming up with new and innovative ways to misrepresent the membership.
In the case of this service they have created ........."The Refusal to Represent".

If left unchecked and unchallenged, loyalty to pals override duty to the membership.
This also, rarely but sometimes happens and serves as the very justification for term limits.
Term limits in these cases tend to liberate an organization, bring new ideas to the fore and free the membership from decisions made a long long time ago.

Last December we had a raucous and rowdy Union meeting that served as further justification for term limits. In fact that where the idea of Term Limits first became an option in my thinking about my Local.
Once again it pitted ol' pals sticking together to oust a young new leader-But the membership spoke loudly that day and our new young leaders job was saved.
The current leadership group should face reality that its no longer business as usual. The membership has spoken loud and clear.
In our Local the time for Term Limits has come.