ASEA Local 52 Executive Board Meeting Sunday May 20, 2005

Women’s Issues Committee has the following to report:

Recently, our chairperson Hettie Hume did retire from state service. Through Hettie’s diligence, vision, and support the Women’s Issues Committee was endorsed by the Executive Board and has found its way to serve the needs of the ASEA membership. Hettie will be dearly missed and we wish her success in her new endeavor.

We have had other membership changes this year, and wish to welcome our newest member, Laura Ghormley, representing the Central Region. 

Our Secretary, Nadine Lefebvre, has agreed to act as interim chairperson until the Executive Board appoints a new chairperson. We also await news of potential new members to serve on this committee.

Our monthly teleconferences have been on the last Wednesday of the month at noon. I will ask the current members if this continues to be the most convenient time to meet.

The committee has prepared its second survey to be posted onto the PINK LINK and awaits word on the approval status of such action. You will find that document attached here as well.

Committee members were working together preparing power point presenta-tions to be posted on the Pink Link for all ASEA members to access at appropriate times to learn from the material. These power points will not have any music or video embedded in them, so there will be no data stream that would require any additional band width to view them.

We are still working towards putting together a training program in the Spring 2005 with the funds provided by the Executive Board and the donation from the Midnight Sun Chapter in the amount of $1,000.00. Additional support has been offered by the Juneau Chapter for such training. Optimally, we would hope for each chapter to participate. They could help to pay for participants to travel to a training location. Or, if they have a large number of participants they could pay to have the AFSCME trainer come to their location. Training content and dates have not been established.

We hope to have an article available for each Solidarity Update. Barbara Brandt has submitted an article for the next edition. Her topic is the origins of Women’s History Month in America.

We are hoping to network with other Women Committees in the lower 48.

Sincerely yours, in solidarity, the Women’s Issues Committee