Members of the City Union of Baltimore, their families and friends enjoyed AFL-CIO Night at Camden Yards. Our Orioles lost to the Toronto Blue Jays and there was a rain delay, but all in all, it was a fun time.

The cost of tickets was $6.00, $1.00 of which was donated to the AFL-CIO food bank. Ticket sales produced $26,000 in donations to the food bank.

Thanks to everyone who voted for me; I am honored that you have entrusted me to serve a second term as secretary for the City Union of Baltimore. Since being installed in October, I have served on the negotiation team that aggressively strives to secure a contract that will benefit our members.

I want to express my sincerest gratitude to each and every one of you for electing and entrusting me to fulfill the duties of treasurer of the City Union of Baltimore, Local 800. My name is Antoinette M. Ryan-Johnson, I am a seventeen-year employee of the City of Baltimore, the mother of one college-aged son and the god-mother of three younger children. I am also a licensed realtor in the state of Maryland.

I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself as the newly elected executive vice president. Also as the Committee on Political Education (COPE) Chairman, I continue attending sessions at the General Assembly in Annapolis; participated in the submission of bills to the Baltimore City Council; served on the interview panel for candidates seeking endorsements from labor; member of the Legislative Committee for AFT-Maryland.

It has been my privilege to be president for about a year and a half. I have taken this position to do my best to continue our growth with your help. My vision is to improve communication with our members, as well as stakeholders, and to protect the rights and benefits of our members.

                                                     Maryland Association of Counties

The Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans (WIARA) will be holding a series of Town Hall Meetings around the state.  The topic will be "Protecting and Strengthening Retirement for All".  Meetings are scheduled for Appleton, Sheboygan, Manitowoc, Platteville, Richland Center, Kaukauna, Neenah, Mineral Point, Reedsburg and Sturgeon Bay.

To see the schedule with locations, click here.

Thanks to a partnership with AFT and First Book, we gave away over 300 new books on Saturday, August 23, at the first-ever Hilltop Street Fair located in Tacoma's inner city.

This past Spring, UFAS members visited over a dozen departments in the College of Arts and Sciences to solicit feedback and concerns regarding how pay and working conditions at UW-Eau Claire can best be improved. Although volunteers were unable to meet with members of every department, and because we were unable to include the other colleges and administrative units in our canvassing, the information we received is clearly not representative of the campus as a whole. However, the results were somewhat illuminating.

In April, members of the United Faculty and Academic Staff of UW-Eau Claire approved a resolution at the spring General Membership Meeting asking the administration to improve its budget transparency and to address long-standing inequities in salary for faculty and academic staff.