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BACKGROUND THE REMOVAL MY APPEAL THE ELECTION THE AFTERMATH
When I was first elected, I felt like the dog who has been chasing cars, and finally catches one - ‘Now what do I do?”, I asked myself. I had no clue what I was supposed to do, because there isn’t anyone to tell you what to do. I’m not sure if AFGE had a Local Officers Resource Guide back then, because I didn’t even know enough to look for one on their website. When a new Local officer is elected, nobody calls them to congratulate them and make sure they get off on the right foot. The National Office conducts Local President’s training now, but they didn’t back then. My Local was established in 1968, and all their records only barely filled six file cabinet drawers. There were no grievance files, no manuals, no guidebooks, no resources of any use at all in the union office, except a phone and a computer. I was in over my head from the beginning.
In fairness, I have to admit that, during my first year in office, the Vice-president took over some of the Treasurer’s duties, such as paying the bills and balancing the checkbook. He also made all the arrangements for training - lodging, travel, per diem, etc. The Workman’s Comp Coordinator doubled as the Political Activities/Legislative Action Coordinator, and with her doing the leg work and me pressuring management, I was able to realize a long-time goal of removing the pay cap for a majority of our FWS employees - for the first time in the history of the Federal Wage System.
But the majority of the work still fell on me, as the majority of the officers and stewards were reluctant to pitch in and help, on the excuse that they didn’t know what to do - like I did! People (wrongly) assumed that I knew what I was doing, and I had all the answers. Of course, I didn’t, but I did have the wherewithal to look things up on the internet, and I wasn’t timid about calling some of our sister locals, confessing my ignorance and pleading for help - and I put in countless hours, sometimes sleeping on the floor in the office because I worked until I was too exhausted to drive home. In the job I held with my Agency, I worked swing shift, so I wasn’t home in the evenings, anyway. I was usually still asleep when my son got up to go to school, and I sometimes saw my husband in passing at shift change, so I told myself that there wasn‘t that much difference between my not being at home because of the union versus my job. And what did it matter if I slept at the office, since everyone at home was asleep, anyway?
I didn’t expect anyone to put in as many hours as I did, but it would have been nice if some of them had put in a few more hours, tried a little harder, showed a little more initiative. I did arrange for the Chief Steward and Vice-president to attend formal training, with the understanding that they would conduct training for the stewards when they returned, but of course, they never did. In fact, they never even used the training they got at the Union’s expense - I sent them both to arbitration training, but by the time we took a grievance to arbitration almost three years later, the Chief Steward resigned shortly after being elected Secretary, and the Vice-president refused to help me with the arbitration - which was over the two-day suspension of our NAF Vice-president. I have never had any formal training in arbitrations, but I am the one that got to represent the NAF VP in the arbitration - and I won it, too.
In 2001, the membership voted to adopt the AFGE Standard Local Constitution, and re-wrote the bylaws. The offices of Secretary and Treasurer were split into two separate offices on the theory that the reason we could not attract anyone to fill the position of Secretary/Treasurer was because there were too many duties. The office of Chief Steward became an elected office so we would have an odd number on the Executive Board (Five, including the President and Vice-president). The offices of NAF VP, DeCA VP, AAFES VP and Fire Department VP were created. In the 2002 elections, all five of the Executive Board positions were filled by acclamation, and the offices of Fire Department VP and NAF VP were also filled. For the first time in two years, I thought I would finally have some help running the union. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and I was optimistic about the future.
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