Dear Local 88 Members,
Many of you have received emails from our Council 75 President, Fred Yungbluth, about a special convention in Seattle on Saturday, February 3rd, 2024.
For those of you who might not know, AFSCME Local 88 is an affiliate of the larger Council 75, the Oregon statewide organization. Which itself is a part of the Northwest region of the AFSCME International Union.
Council 75 is in the Northwest region (comprising Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho, and Montana) and this region gets 2 International Vice President (IVP) seats on the International Union (or AFSCME “IU”) Executive Board. The IVP from Oregon, Stacy Chamberlin, recently vacated this office. This is why this special convention has been called, and our local has been asked to send delegates to vote for a new regional IVP. Delegates will go up on Friday and stay the night in Seattle as the vote takes place on Saturday morning.
We sent out a meeting notice in the Northwest Labor Press to announce we will be taking nominations for this convention at the next Executive Board meeting on January 3rd, 2024. If you would like to attend, here is the link to sign up: registration link
For our local, this is an unbudgeted and unplanned convention and this convention only has one order of business which is to vote for a new IVP; there are no educational workshops, other business, or programming from the International. According to our local constitution, our 4 elected officers are automatic delegates. However, we still have to have a nomination process and a discussion to see how many delegates the local wants to send and pay for beyond the automatic delegates (we have up to 7 delegates total and can have up to 7 alternates). Council 75 will pay for one delegate. To cast our votes, we need to have at least one delegate (the amount of delegates we send does not change our amount of votes).
If we have more nominations than delegate/ alternate spots, then we will need to host an electronic election at the additional expense of $3,000. This would be in addition to the costs of travel, hotel, lost time and stipend for each delegate we choose to send. If needed, the election will take place 1/5/2024 at 9am through 1pm 1/10/2023 with electronic ballots emailed to your home email address.
At the January 3rd, Executive Board meeting, our plan is to have a conversation about the special convention, take nominations, determine if we need an election and make an emergency motion to pay for the delegates to attend and an election (if needed) since we have a short timeline to book hotel rooms that will need to be confirmed before the regular membership meeting and hold an election if needed.
Then at the membership meeting on January 17th, we will have a discussion about the convention and the candidates so members can decide how our delegates will cast our votes.
Whew, that’s a lot of information and I hope it is helpful!
Personally, I just wanted to say hello to all of you and share how excited your newly elected officers are to serve our union and engage with you, our union siblings. There is lots of work to do but also plenty of opportunities for connection and fun. We are learning our roles, getting access to technology/ equipment/ documents/ systems and hoping to have opportunities to engage with you all soon. We hope that however you celebrate this winter season that you will have opportunities to rest, recharge and do the things that bring you joy.
In solidarity, Jackie
Jackie Tate (she/her)
AFSCME Local 88 President
