Saturday coffee. (Correction)
At 3:30 yesterday afternoon I drove home after a long two weeks of three twelve-hour days because of parent conferences, battles with administration as well as with my state union leadership.
The Friday afternoon commute on the weekend before Thanksgiving week is brutal. Walking in the front door at 4:30, I let Ulysses out, poured myself a glass of Lillet on the rocks with a twist of lemon (the first of several), put Silvio Rodriquez and Santana on the CD player, lit the fireplace, put my feet up and sat there fairly comatose for almost two hours until Anne came home.
Since posting over the course of several days about the cave-in by our present union leadership over issues of a pension tax, tenure and seniority, I have received calls and emails from around the state by members who are confused, concerned or outraged.
We have until the March RA to get clear and turn our outrage into doing something. Legislative action may come before that and don’t count on the IEA Government relations office to put up much of a fight to protect us on any of Ken Swanson’s three Challenging Issues, which are (once again) the pension tax, tenure and seniority.
Swanson is done as IEA President next year and the two announced candidates to replace him so far are VP Bob Blade and Secretary Cinda Klickna.
When IEA retiree, former Region Chair, and former IEA and NEA Board of Director Chris Turney posted on Facebook her concerns about the leadership cave-in on the Three Issues, Klickna wrote her a snide comment about Chris not wanting to protect members’ rights. Up is down. Black is white. Day is night in the minds of IEA leadership
What crap. Klickna is running for president clearly standing by the plans to cave on the Three Issues.
Bob Blade appears to be running away from Swanson, acting as if he knew nothing about it.
Writing to my colleague, Jerry Mulvihill, Blades said, “I certainly understand the concerns that Ken’s Critical Issues (sic) conversations is causing among members. For me to make personal comments about them using IEA equipment would be inappropriate since I am a candidate for IEA Presidency. I have forwarded your email to my personal email address, which is arblade@rr1.net, and will send you my response. I do ask that you give me some time to formalize my thinking and responses. Please feel free to contact me at that email address if you have any other questions.”
Give him time to formalize his thinking? Where has he been? Did the IEA VP not read the Board of Directors agenda? Was he not at the meeting? Was hearing from Jerry the first time he heard about taxing retiree pensions?
What is happening on Edwards Street in Springfield?
Jerry tried to find out. He called the IEA Springfield headquarters to talk to someone in Government Relations.
The secretary told him nobody was there. She said all the lobbyists were in Florida.
Of course. Where else would they be?
Jerry told me that it was like talking to a customer service representative at Comcast.
I can’t think of anything worse.
Later he received a voicemail from Ken Swanson. “I’ve been at this a long time,” Swanson warned Jerry. “You won’t get anywhere with me when you’re rude.”
Correction: In the interest of accuracy, Jerry called me to say that Ken’s voicemail was miscommunicated.
This is what Swanson said: “The timing of your phone call is excellent because lobbyists who are currently out of town [in Florida] and have worked with these things [?] a long time and are working on these issues this very moment on the national level and will be able to give you a better idea of that these issues are not just hypothetical.
Being rude with the office staff and people who answer the phones will not necessarily advance your
cause [pension taxation, tenure and seniority. Apparently not Swanson’s cause) and is not fair to the staff who are here to serve all the members.”
If only Swanson was as concerned with currently active and retired members as he is with the Springfield office staff.
While I don’t think anyone should be rude to IEA office staff, you know what is really rude? Screwing retired teachers.
