General Meeting and Special Meetings

I wrote a post this morning, published it and thanks to the miracle of online programs, whoosh, it disappeared, so I'll try again.

If you missed last night's General Meeting then you missed my first attempt at chairing a General meeting. With the President away at President's Council and the Chairman of the Standing Committee (Travis) fairly new as a table officer, the gavel fell to yours truly.

And, apart from some fumbling of a motion from the floor at the end of the meeting, I think it went fairly well. However, I am not really interested in doing it full time. I much prefer sitting up there and just taking the minutes and telling the chairman when he's doing something wrong.....

For those of you wondering about that notice of motion on the newsprint trigger bonus, when it came up for discussion the original mover of the motion moved to table it. This was passed by the membership. What that means, in my opinion, is that it would require a notice of motion to untable it again so that the membership would have an opportunity to come to the meeting to discuss it. However, most tabled motions seldom see the light of day again.

I'll also take this opportunity to remind you of the two special meetings on Wednesday, February 21st at 2:00 and 7:00. The purpose of these meetings is to provide information on what the company is looking for in exchange for packages and to show you what Local 76 in Powell River agreed to. The wage delegates will also be seeking support from the membership to proceed with trying to work out a deal with the company. This support is sought primarily because of the way the talks went last fall. If the membership gives us the okay then any agreement reached will, of course, come back to the membership for ratification.

In my opinion, the talks we have had thus far have a different tone to them than the ones last fall. The opportunity may be there to find a way to provide some buyouts and keep most, if not all, of the remaining brothers and sisters working. Of course, I regularly waffle between optimism and pessimism so who knows what will happen. I do hope that you will give us the go ahead to try and find an acceptable agreement. It could make the future a bit brighter, certainly for those facing layoff.

So, I hope to see you tomorrow.

In solidarity,

Tim