CONVENTION RESOLUTIONS
First off, I want to thank you for the opportunity to go to our TWU Convention this past September. Your support and trust mean a lot. There were varying topics of discussion each day. TWU INTL President John Samuelsen was re-elected. Alex Garcia was re-elected to INTL Executive Vice – President – Jerome Lafragola is INTL Secretary-Treasurer – Curtis Tate is INTL Administrative Vice President – Mike Mayes is INTL Administrative Vice President. Gary Peterson is our ATD Director along with being one of the INTL Vice Presidents Council and Dale Danker was re-elected as one of the INTL Vice Presidents on the Council. We have strong Leadership in place for the next 4 years. Together we build & fight stronger – We are TWU.
RESOLUTIONS
We had 24 Convention Resolutions to get through and discuss at the Convention. We did not make it through all of them but they will be looked at entirely by the INTL to complete.
What is a resolution?
A Convention Resolution is the vehicle used by groups of members to establish principles or policies for the guidance of union activities for the period between Conventions. There are two parts of a Convention Resolution (use simple, everyday language to draft one):
The first is what is called the ‘Whereas’ portion. In this part of the resolution, you can state what you think the problem is that you’d like the Convention to address.
The second is called the ‘Be It Resolved’ portion. In this section you make the suggestions for what the solution might be. Two Resolutions that stood out were from Local 100 and Local 556.
Resolution #10 – Local 100, Transit Local (our largest TWU local out of New York) presented one that discussed “robot” technology. Transit is strongly fighting against robots being placed in buses, trains and subways. It makes no sense to replace humans with mechanical robots that will fail. One of the strongest points made during this was when 9/11 was discussed. When 9/11 happened that horrible day 20 years ago, TWU members responded quickly right beside our firefighters. They cleared the way for them to get to the buildings and help look for any sign of life. At the same time this was going on…..TWU city bus drivers and TWU Subway drivers drove back and forth into NYC city to save human lives, ignoring the companies telling them to stop. Would a robot have done that? No. They would have been shut down. No human feelings, no more lives saved. When you see this fight to write your representative, please add your voice.
Resolution #22 – TWU Local 556 (Flight Attendants for Southwest) presented a Resolution on the violence our FAs face in the air with disorderly passengers and sometimes drunk, out of control passengers. This is why there is no alcohol served on flights. We have FAs being punched, scratched, spit-on, threatened with death, men touching FAs in inappropriate ways…..it was disgusting to hear the stories. Their resolution asked for TWU Union support in fighting against these unruly passengers. They are asking that the passengers that are found guilty be on a no-fly list for life.
There was a letter brought forward and read at Convention from Local 514, 591 and 567 shared a letter with TWU INTL – This letter was an ask to challenge the Association partnership. We would like to simply be, TWU. A copy of this letter is on our www.twu514.org site.
Obviously there were 22 more Resolutions, I just wanted to share these two so you could understand a little of how the Convention works and the challenges we take on as a union across this Nation. There was a lot of good work done. We began at 8:45AM and went to 5:00PM, longer if we were discussing issues and needed to finish. This is what you elect your Convention Delegates to do and your 514 Delegates did an outstanding job in representing Local 514.
In Solidarity,
Linda Dill