Posted:
September 4, 2008
By Tom Bethel
National President
At the Labor Day break, my office was planning the next round of AMO area membership meetings in ports along the East, Gulf and West Coasts. The ports and dates were set, but the specific locations and meeting times were not.
Our tour this time will take us to:
The schedule will also be distributed electronically to AMO members and AMO applicants at home and onboard their vessels. AMO members and applicants who do not have active e-mail addresses on file with AMO headquarters should provide this critical contact information to the Dispatch Department and request to receive AMO Currents by e-mail. This will help ensure the timely delivery of the meeting schedule and other important AMO and AMO Plans bulletins.
In addition, the meeting schedule will be published in the October, November and December issues of the AMO newspaper.
These informal but informative meetings — permanent policy on my watch as president of our union — allow for greater direct communication between seagoing AMO members and the AMO administration. They are especially helpful to AMO members who, for various reasons, cannot participate easily in the regularly scheduled official AMO membership meetings held each month at AMO headquarters in Dania Beach and in Toledo.
Participation in these area meetings is not limited to AMO members and applicants in the deep-sea sector. Anyone who sails the Great Lakes or inland waters with our union is welcome to attend and participate.
In each area meeting, other AMO officials and I will report on developments within AMO, within the industry and within the maritime labor community over the past year. Our subjects will include contracts and collective bargaining, government shipping charters, new employment opportunities, AMO finances, the potential impact of this year’s Presidential and Congressional elections and initiatives to make the administration of AMO more accessible, more responsive and more responsible — matters relating directly to job and benefit security for all AMO members and their families.
AMO Plans Executive Director Steve Nickerson and Smith Barney Vice President Larry Goldstock, who manages AMO 401(k) Plan and AMO Pension Plan Money Purchase Benefit investments, will also make detailed presentations.
Attorney Michael Reny will discuss the expanded AMO Coast Guard Legal Aid Program, and Michael Murphy — an AMO member who sailed as captain on a large, medium-speed roll-on/roll-off ship before joining our union’s Washington staff — will report on major regulatory developments affecting all American merchant mariners in lasting and significant ways.
But the agenda will be wide open in each meeting. There will be no time or topic constraints, and no one will be denied the opportunity to raise issues or ask questions from the floor. AMO officials and representatives and AMO Plans executives will be on hand at each meeting for as long as it takes to address specific concerns and answer all questions.
AMO members who want an accurate and comprehensive sense of what’s going on in our union should plan now to participate in one or more of these area meetings, and they should encourage their AMO friends and shipmates to do the same.
“Every dues-paying member of American Maritime Officers and every applicant for membership in AMO is entitled to speak his or her mind freely and comfortably,” I wrote in this space in August 2007. “We welcome dissenting views, professional criticisms and provocative questions because we believe everyone benefits from honest exchange.”
This belief stands today, and we hope to see a large turnout of AMO members and applicants in each port.
First Alert: AMO area meetings in East, West and Gulf Coast ports
By Tom Bethel
National President
At the Labor Day break, my office was planning the next round of AMO area membership meetings in ports along the East, Gulf and West Coasts. The ports and dates were set, but the specific locations and meeting times were not.
Our tour this time will take us to:
- Baltimore on October 22
- Portsmouth/Norfolk on October 23
- Portland, Maine, on October 29
- Tacoma on November 5
- Oakland/San Francisco on November 6
- Houston on December 10
- New Orleans on December 11
The schedule will also be distributed electronically to AMO members and AMO applicants at home and onboard their vessels. AMO members and applicants who do not have active e-mail addresses on file with AMO headquarters should provide this critical contact information to the Dispatch Department and request to receive AMO Currents by e-mail. This will help ensure the timely delivery of the meeting schedule and other important AMO and AMO Plans bulletins.
In addition, the meeting schedule will be published in the October, November and December issues of the AMO newspaper.
These informal but informative meetings — permanent policy on my watch as president of our union — allow for greater direct communication between seagoing AMO members and the AMO administration. They are especially helpful to AMO members who, for various reasons, cannot participate easily in the regularly scheduled official AMO membership meetings held each month at AMO headquarters in Dania Beach and in Toledo.
Participation in these area meetings is not limited to AMO members and applicants in the deep-sea sector. Anyone who sails the Great Lakes or inland waters with our union is welcome to attend and participate.
In each area meeting, other AMO officials and I will report on developments within AMO, within the industry and within the maritime labor community over the past year. Our subjects will include contracts and collective bargaining, government shipping charters, new employment opportunities, AMO finances, the potential impact of this year’s Presidential and Congressional elections and initiatives to make the administration of AMO more accessible, more responsive and more responsible — matters relating directly to job and benefit security for all AMO members and their families.
AMO Plans Executive Director Steve Nickerson and Smith Barney Vice President Larry Goldstock, who manages AMO 401(k) Plan and AMO Pension Plan Money Purchase Benefit investments, will also make detailed presentations.
Attorney Michael Reny will discuss the expanded AMO Coast Guard Legal Aid Program, and Michael Murphy — an AMO member who sailed as captain on a large, medium-speed roll-on/roll-off ship before joining our union’s Washington staff — will report on major regulatory developments affecting all American merchant mariners in lasting and significant ways.
But the agenda will be wide open in each meeting. There will be no time or topic constraints, and no one will be denied the opportunity to raise issues or ask questions from the floor. AMO officials and representatives and AMO Plans executives will be on hand at each meeting for as long as it takes to address specific concerns and answer all questions.
AMO members who want an accurate and comprehensive sense of what’s going on in our union should plan now to participate in one or more of these area meetings, and they should encourage their AMO friends and shipmates to do the same.
“Every dues-paying member of American Maritime Officers and every applicant for membership in AMO is entitled to speak his or her mind freely and comfortably,” I wrote in this space in August 2007. “We welcome dissenting views, professional criticisms and provocative questions because we believe everyone benefits from honest exchange.”
This belief stands today, and we hope to see a large turnout of AMO members and applicants in each port.