Saturday coffee.

Photo: Fred Klonsky. Ex-IEA President Ken Swanson speaks to the 2013 IEA RA.

I was originally going to go to today’s final session of the IEA Representative Assembly at the Conrad Hilton downtown.

I’m sitting here enjoying my coffee instead.

Nothing that will be decided there will have anything to do with what the leadership ends up doing. They now claim to make their decisions based on secret polling data rather than votes by delegates at the RA.

As I was driving home yesterday I was thinking about the kerfuffle over whether my press pass allowed me on the RA floor.

Here we are in the middle of a major pension battle and we are at the annual state convention of the largest public employee union in Illinois, and I’m the press in attendance. The only press in attendance. As if nobody cares what the IEA has to say.

And really, nobody does.

The IEA’s ex-President Ken Swanson briefly addressed the delegates yesterday.

Swanson’s legacy left to Illinois teachers is the two-tier pension system and Senate Bill 7.

Have things changed under the rule of President Cinda Klickna?

Swanson’s undemocratic practice was not to call on people at the mic if they didn’t agree with him.

You may remember the IEA RA that I had to wear an ugly orange sweater to the mic so that he couldn’t claim he didn’t see me.

My colleague Jerry caught Swanson sending emails to staff and others in leadership. Ken referred to Jerry with childish name calling. The email was sent by mistake to Jerry when Swanson hit the send-all button without removing Jerry’s name.

Okay, Ken was never the smartest guy in the room.

But Cinda?

She doesn’t even bother with ignoring me at the mic. I’m not a delegate. They couldn’t switch my membership from active to retired in time to get a nominating form.

Over three months?

“Oh, they do that all the time,” a retiree said to me with a shrug.

“All the time?” I said.

“Well. I mean it isn’t personal.”

But even a high level IEA staff member laughed and admitted to me that it was suspicious sounding to him.

And then there is the election of delegates to the NEA Representative Assembly this July in Atlanta.

All IEA locals run their own election. Not IEA Retired. Apparently we are too old and feeble to do this.

Some anonymous person at the IEA office in Springfield made me change how I described myself on the ballot from “blogger and pension advocate” to “blogger who writes about pension issues.”

There must be something in the election rules against describing yourself as a pension advocate.

But the real orange-sweater issue here is the election itself. IEA-Retired members are being disenfranchised by a bureaucracy that has undermined the integrity of the IEA Retired delegate election.

By the way, these elections are governed by state and federal labor law.

I was told that ballots were to be mailed out by March 22 and they are marked as having to be returned to IEA in Springfield by April 24th.

But amazingly the ballots were sent out bulk mail. The US Post Office makes no guarantee of when bulk mail will be delivered.

So the first week of April I began getting calls and emails from IEA retirees who had not received their ballots.

I contacted Janet Kilgus, IEA Retired Chair. She told me that she is not allowed any control over the election of the group she chairs. But that if members did not receive a ballot by April 12th, they should contact a staff person in the Edwards Street offices of the IEA in Springfield.

April 12th was Friday. All staff are at the RA at the Hilton in Chicago. Those who are contacting the staff person in Springfield are not getting an answer. The earliest their ballots will be sent out will be Monday. They will have ten days to receive a duplicate, fill it out and have it received back in Springfield.

IEA Chair Janet Kilgus wrote me:

Fred, Debbie has been working at the RA and will be back in the office on Monday.  I have spoken to her regarding the concerns about ballots while here in Chicago.  My husband has not yet received either of his, so the frustration is personal as well as for you and others.  I have no control over this, but have carried our concerns to the proper persons.  It is not something I am allowed to have a role in as the Chair.  Debbie will be looking into this and getting back to us regarding future elections.  Kim is also prohibited from being involved in elections, so she is not the preson to contact regarding ballots. As I have indicated before, Debbie Knox debbie.knox@ieanea.org or Debbie Kraft debbie.kraft@ieanea.org should be contacted.  Or call 1-800-252-8076 and ask for either one.    Doing what I can and will continue to do so. Janet Kilgus

Her own husband hasn’t received a ballot? The husband of the Chair of IEA Retired hasn’t received a ballot for the IEA Retired delegate election?

Janet, to her credit, says she will be looking into this for future elections.

But it is this election that has been compromised.

And I have every intention of pursuing it.

The spirit of the orange sweater.