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MINUTES OF THE
TNG-CWA Human Rights and Equity Committee
May 22, 2010
PRESENT: Carl Younger, Chair; Sheila Lindsay, Chair SEC HRE
Committee, Yoko Kuramoto-Eidsmoe, Melissa Nelson, Bruce Nelson,
Natalie Hill
Absent: Matt Olson, Nestor Soto, Carol Rothman, Secretary
Treasurer TNG-CWA, TNG President Bernie Lunzer, Tiffany Heath,
Vernon Clark, Tiffany Heath, Vincent Proteau, Ka Yan Ng.
MINUTES PREPARED BY Carl Younger.
Called to order at 1:00 pm eastern time.
Carl thanked the committee and all who contributed to the
Cleveland workshop.
Then gave a brief overview of what happened at the conference.
Melissa informed the committee that a copy of the demographic
powerpoint used at the Cleveland workshop will be included in the
Guild’s Local Officers Report with the following.
The Guild’s Human Rights & Equity committee presented a workshop
during the Spring Multi-District Council meeting held in Cleveland
earlier this month. The program was titled Building Power Through
Diversity and focused on how Guild locals can increase power by
pulling in members from equity seeking groups. Several
presentations were done by members of the Equity committee who
also lead discussions and responded to questions from attendees.
Included in the materials provided to participants was a printed
copy of a
PowerPoint presentation that was developed from
demographic employment data supplied by a large metropolitan daily
in response to an information request made by Guild
representatives. The PowerPoint was created to graphically
illustrate changes in the specific newspaper’s employment
population over the last four years; the period of time when the
newspaper industry has seen dramatic reductions in the size and
diversity of its workforce. Guild local leaders and staff could do
similar research to document demographic changes within their own
workplaces. The link to the PowerPoint presentation is
whatever@whatever.com (an
electronic link will be inserted). Questions can be directed to
TNG staff member Melissa Nelson at
mnelson@cwa-union.org
Carl discussed what could be done better and pointed out that he
has applied to participate in a Toastmasters group to hopefully
improve his presentation skills.
Sheila informed us that she is a participant in a Toastmasters
group in her workplace.
Carl suggested that if there is a Toastmaster group available the
committee might want to take advantage of it.
Sheila said she would have liked to have had an evaluation form to
allow the audience to tell us what more they would have wanted out
of the work shop and give us an idea of how to structure future
workshops.
Melissa suggested that we might want to generate an evaluation
survey electronically and have have TNG send it out.
Bruce thought our program went very well, Bruce continued to say
the real question is not what we do in the next workshop but what
we do as a committee.
Bruce continued by saying he thinks we have laid the ground work
by creating the incentive and the how for Locals of being
sensitive to human rights and equity issues at our workshop but
beyond that it would be good to look at the “how to” in terms of
dealing with issues of equity seeking people in our locals. If
there is some way of gathering information it would seem to be a
logical progression.
Yoko said actual human rights initiatives that we could do for
bargaining to effect positive changes should be a goal. Yoko
suggested that a lot of information about human rights issues at
various locals could be gathered from TNG staff members.
Sheila agreed that we could use staff email list to ask questions
about current issues that locals are going through like childcare,
parental leave etc.
Bruce agreed that tapping staff and administrative officers is a
good idea.
Carl said he remembered that there was a push from the
international to have a human rights person in each local that
kind of fizzled out because of a lack of a specific direction and
if this could be somehow resuscitated they could be an important
source for gathering information on issues that are effecting
equity seeking people in locals.
Natalie agreed that having a human rights person in each local
without solid things to do has been a problem in many locals and
that positive requests and suggestions from us could be important.
Melissa suggested that everyone who participated in today’s
meeting send Carl a list of bullet points that he can use in a
memo to the rest of the committee on questions that we have
concerning Human rights and equity issues in locals.
It was suggested that our next meeting should be June 26th
1PM eastern time.
Meeting adjourned at 1:56 pm
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AVAILABLE IN ADOBE PDF BY CLICKING HERE
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