May 15th 2005 waking up my first thought was to get dressed and go down to Plymouth to walk a picket line. I walked the day shift for 2 or 3 days and found out the night shift had only 3 or 4 people on it so me, Ike Thomas and Mark
Magnet switched to the night shift. After a few days the weather turned, wind and rain, and there were 8 to 10 of us at any time on the night picket watch.

We as a union had one focus as one body Local 369 against NSTAR in the fight of our lives to try to maintain our benefits and wages. The company wanted many “take-a-ways”. Together we kept these and other hard earned benefits because we stood as one.

At this time in history, in fact, since the air traffic controllers were replaced by the President of the United States, unions everywhere have come under attack. At this time in our history when the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer by a greater margin than in the past, unionism is the first best answer to that trend. Andy Stern president of SEIU said it best on a TV interview “unions are the best anti-poverty program the United States has ever had”.

The point is this, we at Local 369 are fighting every day to maintain safe working conditions, and our benefits and wages. There have been some bumps in the road and some significant ones at that, this is a common byproduct of growth. Another byproduct is that we are much stronger and more focused if we work as one. We have some big issues in front of us to be addressed, including seniority. The displacing of brothers and sisters for more than 50 and 60 miles to travel to work is a major issue to overcome. Retaining work for Meter Readers and FST’s at the end of the AMR Project is another. There are and will be others. It’s the nature of our business and industry we all work in, and together we are equal to the task.

Being a union that has grown to more than 3100 members in a time when union numbers have been on the decline is a significant achievement. We should all be proud. This is rep-resentative of a lot of people working hard to strengthen our local. We, as members of a growing and thriving local do have responsibilities. Working together, in the same spirit of oneness we adopted during the 2005 strike goes a long way to our collective strength in the future.

We are now a family of 12 company’s with 16 contracts in Local 369. We are more diverse than ever before. That diversity is an asset in that it represents a wealth of experiences to draw from, for our collective benefit.

I look forward to continuing to work for you and working together to reach the most productive results possible going forward.