President's message

Our union needs your help to grow

Greetings CSEA siblings,

Spring is the time for growth and that includes growing our union. Our strength comes from our numbers and with more members comes a stronger voice at your school sites, your district board rooms, and all the way up to our state capitol and even Washington, D.C. We have field staff across this great state to serve you, our members, and to help recruit new members. Our best recruiters, however, are members just like you. Nobody knows better how our union helps defend and expand our rights, offers higher education opportunities to us and our families, and supports us when we face personal struggles. Any day is a great day to talk to your non-member colleagues about joining CSEA, and your regional representative (RR) and labor relations representative (LRR) can provide you with materials and talking points for these conversations. We also have "Blitz Days" every few weeks during the school year, where members and staff visit school sites to recruit new members. We are always looking for volunteers to join us, so ask your RR or LRR how and when you can help! Another way you can help ensure we have a strong voice across the state is by joining the non-partisan Victory Club. By pooling our resources through the Victory Club, we provide robust support for pro-labor candidates running for local, state and federal offices. If you need any proof of how important it is to elect CSEA-friendly officials, just look at our legislative victories from last year. All six of our CSEA-sponsored bills were signed into law, some of which created equal layoff notices for all school employees, universal transitional kindergarten and protections for our retired members who return to the workforce. We're swinging for the fences again this year with another six CSEA-sponsored bills currently working their way through the legislative process. You can read all about these bills in the "From the Capitol" section of this issue of Focus Magazine. Our huge and historic legislative victories are only possible because of the many lawmakers who support CSEA, and those victories can easily be undone if we don't maintain our support for these lawmakers. We often say we are one election away from losing our hard-earned rights and here we are in an election year. This November, we will be choosing school board members, COE board members, every Assembly and Congressional seat, 20 state senators, a U.S. senator and a Governor. The strength of our union is in our hands, and it's up to us to grow that strength by recruiting new members and supporting CSEA-endorsed candidates. I hope you'll join us in these efforts.

In Solidarity,

Matthew "Shane" Dishman, Association President