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CSEA
CONNECTION by Saodat Aziskhanova, CSEA President |
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What’s the CALIFORNIA SCHOOL EMPLOYEES ASSOCIATION? Every year in the fall, the Academic Senate, Guild, CSEA President and Governance Office Coordinator, Frankie Strong, conduct a workshop about governance here at the college. Each of us gives presentations about our constituent group. At our workshop in September this year, I was asked by a faculty member what CSEA signifies. I was surprised, but the more I thought about this, the more it made sense to me. I decided that this article would be informational, because I am positive that some of our classified employees do not know what CSEA denotes. CSEA stands for California School Employees Association. Currently, the organization has a membership of over 230,000 school employees, and it is the largest classified school employees union in the United States. In 1927, a group of Oakland school custodians, nine men and one woman, met to discuss and secure their retirement benefits. This small group established a framework for our union 81 years ago. At that time, classified employees were known as the non-certificated, non-teaching employees; today we are an essential part of the California public education community. CSEA representation is unmatched. CSEA field staff can answer their members’ questions about the Education Code, classified contracts, or health and retirement benefits. Unlike other unions that contract with outside legal firms, CSEA has a staff of nine attorneys who are available full-time to counsel members. The CSEA Board of Directors consists of five officers and 10 area directors, each of whom is elected by CSEA members. All Board members are volunteers who work regular classified jobs. Only the Association President, currently Rob Feckner, is granted full release time from his classified job.
CSEA is a
member-run union with 750 local chapters throughout California. In
2001, members voted to become an independently chartered union of
the AFL-CIO.
In Unity, Visit us on the web! www.glendale.edu/csea |
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