Message from President Cordelia Anthony
Dear Members,
Here we are at the start of 2025. Like everyone else I’m grateful for the opportunity to get a chance to start a new year. We all need to kickstart the year as best we can and leverage our minds to grab some energy, motivation, and focus. It’s not always easy with 11 months ahead to make goal setting a priority. Usually implementing the steps to achieving goals can be complicated and have ups and downs. That doesn’t mean you should not try. If you don’t have major goals or you are just plain exhausted then just try and look at actionable ways to make yourself happy and achieve your small aspirations this year. I read a quote that simply said “Gentle reminder- as a human being you have the power and capacity to make other people’s lives easier and brighter”. In this half of the school year, let’s once again work on building relationships among members in our unit, looking out for one another, respecting one another and even actively engaging in making our day to day shared work experience better. Let’s leverage our strengths to overcome challenges we know will face us the rest of this academic year. One way to connect is by dropping by and joining us for Happy Hour on Friday, January 31st at LI McGrath’s in Farmingdale. This will be a combined social gathering with our colleagues from Massapequa and Plainedge.
The California Federation of Teachers need our help. ‘We’ve all watched in horror as fires have ripped through Los Angeles. Homes, schools, businesses and entire communities have been burned to the ground. As the fires continue to rage, AFT wants to begin helping displaced members and their families—our educators and school staff, pre-K through college, in Southern California”. Please help us raise money for people who have lost everything. Can you help by giving to the AFT Disaster Relief Fund today? Every penny that goes into our Disaster Relief Fund will go directly to our union siblings in the California Federation of Teachers fire victims and rebuilding, with no fees or overhead taken out’.
The start of the year brings some good news for labor
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents nearly two million workers in industries like home health care and janitorial services, said on Wednesday January 8th, that it would become part of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., an umbrella group of more than 50 unions that represent more than 12.5 million workers. Despite attempts to break unions, we are seeing a rise in union membership and job actions around the country. #strongertogether
