Siblings, we hope you are all doing well and looking forward to getting back to a semblance of normality. We have been busy working with various affiliates and elected officials to ensure that our Siblings are safe in their workplace, that eligible essential workers are being considered for vaccines and that in the case of our grocery workers, Hero pay.
We know that it will take a collaborative effort to deal with the economic impacts of COVID-19 and are attempting to open lines of communication in anticipation of negotiations in the future. We are still getting pushback from some elected officials who continue to refuse to meet with us at the advice of administrators who falsely state that it is illegal, unethical, or immoral to meet with their workers to hold listening sessions, ensuring all the facts are being presented to them before they vote on an issue or contract. We have delt with this for decades and through our endorsement and election processes have done a great job of educating our elected representatives on the value of a transparent process for information gathering during negotiations and will continue to set up meetings moving forward.
Speaking of our endorsement process, just when we thought we were done for a while we will be conducting interviews on March 15th for a Vacaville Council seat that is vacant after Mitch Mashburn took his seat on the Solano County Board of Supervisors. There are three candidates for the District 2 seat, Greg Ritchie, Curtis Hunt and Joe Desmarais. Only Mr. Hunt and Mr. Ritchie have agreed to interview, and we will begin at 10 am under our United Workers for Local Government Committee. The recommendation from this group will be presented to the delegate bodies of the Napa Solano Building Trades and Central Labor Council for official action at our meetings on the 17th. All labor Leaders are invited to participate in the Zoom interviews.
We are also very proud of the work being done at our Napa Working Families Coalition, which meets every Second Wednesday at 10 AM, and we recently formed the Napa Community Benefit Coalition where we bring stakeholders together with a simple mission:
To improve quality of life of our community by building public support, through collaborative partnerships, for projects that help make our communities inclusive, sustainable and economically vibrant with quality jobs and housing for all.
We hope you will consider attending these Zoom calls as well as our Delegates Meetings.
