AFT, Local 212

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A Message From Local 212 President Michael Rosen:

April 28, 2006

To Local 212 Members:
We want to thank all of you who voted in Wednesday’s election. We also want to thank the people who ran for office, whether you were successful or not. We hope you continue to be involved with Local 212 as we move forward.

The turnout for this election broke all previous records. In that past, a turnout of 500 people was excellent. The fact that 693 members of Local 212 voted in this election demonstrates how important the future of MATC is to you and how committed you are to a democratic and active union. The stakes were high, the future of our college was on the line, and the professional educators responded!

Personally, we are extremely appreciative that so many of you voted and that over 80% of you had enough confidence in our leadership to re-elect us for another term.

But even more important, the margin of a victory was an affirmation that the membership of Local 212 wants strong leadership that will continue aggressively representing our members and working to build the best technical-vocational college in the country.

Our opponents framed this election as a vote on our approach to Dr. Cole and the administration. They blamed problems in contract negotiations on Local 212 leadership rather than the Cole Administration.

Furthermore, Dr. Cole has repeatedly claimed – even after the faculty and staff gave him a D on his performance -- that the faculty backed him and his only opposition came from Rosen, Dee and a small group of others.

These unambiguous election results should put those notions to rest.

The election was also a repudiation of negative politics. We had to put up with a barrage of accusations, half-truths, innuendo and inaccuracies from a handful of people during the course of this campaign. For those of you who know us personally, you know we had a difficult time remaining silent!

But we made a decision early on that we would not participate in a global email war, either to attack or to answer attacks on us. The reason was simple: we are in tough negotiations with an administration that would like to destroy this union, and we did not want to do anything to weaken the unity of Local 212.

We are proud that we stuck to the issues and did not go into the gutter, and we’re even prouder that the members of Local 212 rewarded us for that.

With the election over and the mandate clear, we sincerely hope the Cole Administration will change its approach to bargaining. We stand ready to work together to resolve sincere differences, to focus on quality education for our students, to develop innovative solutions to health care costs, to lobby legislators jointly.

But we must have a partner to work with who is willing to collaborate and who respects our members and our students. And we will not sacrifice our Child Care Centers, the integrity of hiring committees, our technical college mission or any other crucial part of this college for the sake of accommodation.

Thanks again for your support. Let's complete this semester as we always do, nurturing success in our students so that they can achieve their dreams.