Process Vice-President Report for Western Regional Conference in Victoria November 20-24.

 

This years Western Regional conference was a little bit different this year, because we did not know what the workshops were going to be about until we arrived in Victoria.

The workshop ended up being more of a Strategic Planning session for the Western Region, The National, and the local unions.

Two days of brain storming from the 270 delegates present put together a package of priorities for the local, national, and western level.

 

The Goals for the locals were determined to be:

1. Increase member participation

2. Improve education

3. Improve communication

4. Increase organizing

 

The goals for the Regional/National were determined to be:

1. Increase organizing

2. Improve Fiscal responsibility

3.Improve education

4.Increase Political action/Lobbying

5. Raise Union’s profile

6. Improve Communication

 

Once these goals were established, we started to break each one down and work to finding some objectives to successfully meet our goals.  At this point the groups worked more on the National/Regional goals because each local is different, and have different situations.  I will now outline the objectives that were reached for the goals at the National/Regional level.  These objectives will be used at the western and national level to try and improve and grow our great union.

 

OBJECTIVES:

1. INCREASE ORGANIZING:

 

- Sufficient Resources for Organizers and Co-ordinate with the locals

- Set targets and organize Strategically

- Increase organizing ability through training

 

2. IMPROVE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY:

 

- Understandable financial reports

- balance budget - reduce unnecessary costs

- maximize service to locals at current due levels

 

 

3. IMPROVE EDUCATION:

 

- Update CEP courses content and delivery methods

- Post course list on the net

- Make courses more accessible

 

4.POLITICAL ACTION:

 

- Labour issues campaign

- improve communication with legislators

- support labour friendly politicians

 

5. RAISING UNION’S PROFILE:

 

- advertise CEP

- Encourage community involvement

- increase union’s visibility

 

6. COMMUNICATION:

 

- Consistent promotion of training courses

- improve National financial reports

- improve communication between national and members

 

This training session is a great tool in helping our national union to recognize were improvement needs to be made.  Action plans were also developed and presented to the western region executive, to help them in implementing some of the objectives.

 

 

The most important tool that we brought back from this conference is the ability to better run our own strategic planning session at local 594.

Local 594 will be having a planning session in the near future, and this Western regional conference will be a useful aid not only in running the session, but in having information from the members all over the western region.

 

In solidarity

Brother Bittman