OEA Lobby Day March 25th

 

The 2013 Legislative Session has begun! 2013 Legislature Convenes Budgets and PERS Dominate Agenda On Monday, February 4, 2013 the 77th Oregon Legislative Assembly officially began. Over the next six months, the 60 members of the House of Representatives and 30 members of the Oregon Senate will grapple with budgets for education, health care, public safety and will debate policy issues from the Public Employee Retirement System to paid sick leave. Throughout the session, we encourage educators from around the state to join together and tell their stories. It's critical that you use your on-the-ground experience in your classrooms and work sites to advocate for your students and your profession. Be sure to Save the Date (or better yet, register today!) for OEA's Lobby Day, on March 25. Stay informed by visiting OEA's 2013 Legislative webpage. Don't forget to check out OEA's Bill Tracking tool. You can monitor the progress of any bill before the Oregon Legislature. Get Involved. Make a Difference. Are you interested in helping build your local association's political strength? Would you like to work with coalitions, fellow members and elected officials to better our schools? Apply to be an OEA Political Cadre! As a cadre, you can assist your local union with anything from volunteer recruitment and training, communicating with members and the public, to coordinating local actions and organizing events. You can fill out a cadre application here. Only a limited number of positions are available. Please return completed applications to OEA's Government Relations Department. For questions and a position description, please contact Ken Volante in OEA's Public Affairs Department. Stipends are provided to all political cadres. Educators know first hand that we're facing a crisis in our classrooms. Oregon now has the third largest class size in the country. Our failure to invest in our public schools is shortchanging our students and our future. With soaring class sizes, educators are finding it increasingly more challenging to give their students the individual attention they need to succeed. This is unacceptable. What can we do about it? Join OEA's Class Size Campaign! Tell Us Your Number. Tell Your Story! Test Out the PERS Calculator Do you know that the Governor's proposal on PERS could cost educators more than $100,000? Kitzhaber's idea would limit the amount of the Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA) paid to retirees to the first $24,000 per year of benefits. Go here to learn more about the proposal and use our simple, online tool to calculate how the Governor's proposal would impact you and your family. Copyright © 2013 Oregon Education Association, All rights reserved. unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences

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NEA Higher Education Conference in PORTLAND

http://www.nea.org/home/53608.htm

To register: http://www.cvent.com/events/2013-nea-higher-education-conference/event-summary-7e44977cbbda46fba767eca3540daa23.aspx

“FACULTY, STUDENTS, AND THE COMMON GOOD”
The 2013 NEA Higher Education conference will be held at the Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront, Portland, Oregon, from March 22-24, 2013.

Visit the conference website to register and see a more detailed agenda of speakers and workshops.

This year's theme, "Faculty, Students, and the Common Good," asks, "As our nation becomes increasingly partisan and polarized, especially between rich and poor, and as public education becomes increasingly underfunded and targeted by anti-egalitarian forces, what is the role of faculty, academic professionals, higher education support professionals and students in creating a more democratic, more decent society? What is the public good, and what does it mean to fight for it?"

In order to develop a conference that meets the needs of our members, we are seeking your input. Consider submitting a paper or suggesting a proposal (see below), or participating in a brief survey about conference proceedings. Thank you!

How to suggest a conference panel or session:
Workshop sessions can be submitted in the areas of organizing, member recruitment and engagement, local association best practices, social media, political action best practices, bargaining, policy, pedagogy, or any other topic in keeping with this year's conference theme. The purpose of these workshops is to provide a forum for exchanging opinions and presenting ideas.

Proposals should include:
• Workshop name
• A 150- to 200-word overview of the workshop.
• A two- to three-sentence descriptor or your workshop. This is the descriptor that will be used in the program if your workshop is selected.
• Please denote whether this workshop can be a 45-minute flash session, a 75-minute breakout session, a 90-minute breakout session, or all three.
Workshop proposals should be submitted no later than December 1, 2012 to Phadra L. Williams Tuitt at pwilliams@nea.org. Proposals will be reviewed and you will be contacted no later than January 3, 2013.

How to submit a paper:
For the first time, we will publish conference proceedings through the submission of conference-themed papers, which, if accepted, have the possibility of being published in an edited ebook or other NEA publication.
We invite you to submit in the following areas:
• Union organizing in higher education
• The role of faculty, students, academic professionals, and higher education support professionals in creating a more democratic society
• The role of unions in creating a more democratic society
• Women and their leadership roles in unions
• Minorities and leadership in unions
• The public good in higher education

Please submit your 350-word abstract with name, e-mail, phone number, and institutional affiliation, as well as two page vitae, to Mary Ellen Flannery at mflannery@nea.org by January 3, 2013. Selected conference presenters will be notified by the end of January with further conference details.

Any questions regarding the NEA Higher Education Conference and paper submissions can be sent to Phadra Williams Tuitt, Ed.D., Organizational Specialist, NEA Center For Organizing, at pwilliams@nea.org or Mary Ellen Flannery, NEA Thought & Action Editor, NEA Center For Communications, at mflannery@nea.org.

Pilot Locals Soar (new OEA initiative)

Pilot Locals Soar! As a key component of OEA's Strategic Action Plan, the Powerful Locals Pilot Program is off and running. In October, 16 local associations from all corners of the state (representing K-12 teachers, education support professionals and community college faculty) were selected to participate in the Pilot Locals program. The program, under the direction of OEA's Union School, is providing education, training and support to local leadership teams, and working with locals to identify, recruit, train and engage members in core union areas. All 16 locals in the program continue to have individual meetings and support from the Union School to assess where they are, what their strengths are and to identify opportunities to engage, organize and empower members. Recently, teams from all of the Pilot Locals gathered in Eugene for their first two-day Convocation. The gathering allowed members, leaders and staff to look at the political, economic and historical context of the labor movement, and have deep conversations on specific topics such as member organizing and community outreach. The goal of the premier Convocation was to start creating a foundation for each local's strategic planning process and to build relationships across these locals for sharing of ideas and mutual support.

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Window sign / please comment

Please go HERE

 

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bzbec1gMkMbzSmZZQjV5bnpJMWc/edit

 

to comment on the new window poster (1/2 sheet). Would you hang it in

 

 your office? Any changes you'd like to see? Can you make a better poster?

 

 

LERC conference on Feb 2nd in Portland)

http://pages.uoregon.edu/lerc/


47th Annual Pacific NW Labor History Association Conference
• Portland • May 3-5, 2013
LABOR UNDER ATTACK:
Learning from the Past and Preparing for the Future2013 marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, whose organizing in the northwest resulted in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia being one of the most strongly unionized regions of the US and Canada by the end of World War II. How will we preserve the gains of the CIO era, and build a new labor movement? What are the connections between the CIO and progressive political movements, and our own unions and popular movements like Occupy? The PNLHA Conference gives workers, unionists, scholars and community activists an opportunity to reflect on some of these themes and examine the prospects for a revitalized labor movement in our time.