Something Amazing
Sunday, 18 October 2009 09:54 | Written by glen coleman | 
Hang on to your hat everybody, and move over just a bit so I can sit down and tell you something amazing. Oklahoma Corrections Professionals membership has broken through the 2000 member mark and is actually over the top. It is absolutely amazing... Oklahoma Corrections Professionals is now, finally, an organization that qualifies for payroll deduction of member dues. We have attained a membership of over two thousand and, despite the odds, have proven finally that we can be the largest representative of Oklahoma Corrections Employees in the state. We have done it, you have done it. We knew we could do it all along. No matter the road blocks thrown by naysayers the deed was gonna get done.
The next thing is we need to get busy doing the work that matters so much. This year, more than most, is turning out to be really hard on all of us and some of us are already suffering the pinch. Pardon and Parole members are already having furlough days. The Department of Corrections is doing everything in it's power to avoid them and, thanks to the dedication of our senior administration leadership, we have thus far been successful. But if revenues continue to fall and cuts keep coming we won't be able to avoid it forever. We need to get to work.
So this is what's next... First is the application for payroll deduction. You absolutely wouldn't believe how hard that can really be. We expect it will take about three weeks to prepare the application and submit it to OPM. Once there they have one month to respond as outlined in their policy. We are hopeful that we can submit in such a way to cause them to not need the entire month.
While we are doing all that we need to finish some of our work on statements of purpose and start generating corrections specific message and getting that out to the folks that can make the most difference the fastest. We need to also decide on staff. At least one person needs to be available to work on our behalf day in and day out. This, plus things like telephone numbers and addresses and letter head and printing and... well you can see that we are truly just starting. We must work diligently because, as stated above, some of our fellow professionals are already suffering in this lean budget crunch. There is no time like now to jump in and work our butts off to educate others to our situation.
It's also important that we not lose sight of some ongoing road blocks. OPEA remains adamant that we answer them in a lawsuit they filed to prevent the birth of OCP. They have made claims that remain unsubstantiated and are causing some of our founding members real and personal hardship. The newest legal angle is that they, through their lawyers, request all our membership rosters. The name, address, and telephone number, of every person who has ever been contacted concerning OCP and all of our financial information and tons of other stuff that is considered proprietary to our organization.
Worse, they ask the same of several of our founding members and those guys have to pay a lawyer (from their own pocket not from OCP funds, as if OCP had any funds yet, as accused by OPEA in a public letter sent to their members) to defend themselves from this madness. It should be obvious to everybody that they have no intention of stopping their maddening attacks on our organization and our members. We will have to continue to defend ourselves and our organization from these legal maneuvers to stop our good work. We will be stronger when we finally finish with this legal harassment just like we are stronger because they forced us to reach the two thousand member mark. But going through it is certainly no fun for those members suffering personally and financially each day.
Also, we can't quit just yet. We must recruit continuously to keep our membership up and we must plan and prepare for the future. It's not over. Our organization will always need us to feed it information and ideas to be the best at what we do. Politically we are stronger when we have 4700 than when we have 2000 so let's go to work and not stop till every single employee thinks it's important to be a member of Oklahoma Corrections Professionals.
Celebrate the day, enjoy the win. Nobody but nobody can tell us "no" when we set our mind to it. But when the celebration is concluded let's get back to work doing what we do best. Striving to protect the public and working to protect each other.
Last Updated (Monday, 30 November 2009 18:01)