Fix financial irregularities once and for all

As we gear up to celebrate the change of season, some are doing their best to distance us from the current financial irregularities. John Samuelsen with his TBOU have started a campaign to audit the previous administration’s ‘petty cash, travel and credit card expenses for officers and other employees for the period from January 1, 2008 through and including December 31, 2009.’ as tactic to confuse the membership.

Clearly John Samuelsen’s idea is to minimize his financial irregularities with the previous administration in the aim of throwing off the membership off his back - it is a defensive ploy that almost everyone of us would use. Imagine if you were pulled by the police for going thru a red light, your initial defensive instincts is to allege ‘officer the blue car in front of me went thru the same red light, why did you stop me?’. The implication here is clear inequality of law enforcement, however you know what the police man’s answer would be ‘tell it to the judge’. 

Once John Samuelsen realized that he was in a financial irregularity quagmire instead of standing up to show a little pride in where TWU Local 100 actually stands he is resorting to a web of trickery. How many lines of which maybe subject to fierce debate over many years to come - it is also clear his intent is to sling mud and sully the reputation of those members of the previous administration. We can anticipate Samuelsen’s response to be ‘this is our history we should be able to learn something or two - we say this is not how we learn archeology or how to identify, catalog and preserve items ranging from the mummies. We believe in the principle of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) to help with this financial irregularities situation.

We here in why did you join the union say fix the financial irregularities once and for all, everyone knows about it however we did not expect John Samuelsen’s distraction campaign of looking back. But that is his faulty leadership trying to demoralize TWU Local 100 membership - there are many examples in our daily life that we can learn from. Maybe Samuelsen missed this example - in the face of overwhelming evidence that numerous US detainees were tortured during the Bush years, President Barack Obama famously said he wants to ‘look forward, not back.’ He prohibited the use of torture and cruelty in one of his first executive acts, and he has consistently resisted efforts to hold accountable those who under prior administration authorized mistreatment. We wish Samuelsen would have used or copied President Barack Obama’s principle of not looking back. In addition President Obama used the yardstick of what is the interest of the country. Clearly here Samuelsen did not adhere to those principles of not looking back or what is in the interest of TWU Local 100.  

The real issue remains of financial irregularities - spending membership dues carelessly in TWU Local 100. It is also clear from John Samuelsen’s looking back craftiness that no one is motivated to fix the problem - it is obvious the membership is tired of his shenanigans. There is no question that every level of the finances in TWU Local 100 have failed. In addition from now onward our finance practices needs to change they should never be grisly or murky. 

We here in why did you join the union want our members to be proud and be able to retort ‘our TWU Local 100 is not a corrupt union’. We have zero tolerance of financial irregularities - once and for all we challenge John Samuelsen to pledge zero tolerance in financial irregularities in order to inspire the membership to learn and be vibrant participants of the TWU Local 100. It is time for TWU Local 100 to recommit by being a clean union organization to gain that status we would need knowledge without larger purpose that is our intention. We urge that we develop a sense of urgency that will motivate the membership to commit deeply to exploration of what it means to be a union member, to have aspirations of enhancing TWU Local 100. We all want to be proud of TWU Local 100, but more than anything our membership deserves better.