We must all work together as partners, Burkhalter says

In an address Saturday (April 21, 2007) to the WEAC Representative Assembly, Executive Director Dan Burkhalter said WEAC should focus on three strategic principles:

• Ensuring a healthy organizational culture.
• Supporting and building strong locals.
• Leading, managing and creating the right power relationships.

"I am hopeful about our future," he said. "I am hopeful that working together we can figure out how to meet our mission. I’m hopeful because of the governance and staff leaders that I have met, because of the resources at our disposal and because of our will to prevail."

Burkhalter said that when he was hired two years ago there was a clear sentiment that changes needed to be made. He immediately focused on two priorities: listening and trying to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible and forming a partnership with President Stan Johnson, the governance leadership team and WEAC managers.

He said he learned that Wisconsin is filled with talented and friendly people, that our students attend great schools, and that "we are an independent lot, that we value autonomy and that our union is filled with strong-willed advocates."

As far as WEAC's history, he said, the organization rose to power through the 1970s and 1980s but "hit a wall" in 1993 when then-Governor Tommy Thompson and the Legislature passed the Qualified Economic Offer law and school district revenue controls and Wisconsin became the national leader for private school voucher programs.

"The last 15 years we have been under attack on the policy front," Burkhalter said. "Sometimes we held our own and sometimes we were pushed backwards. At the local level most of our locals held their own bargaining but over time the combination of costs outpacing incoming revenue has led to stagnant pay and intense challenges to our benefits."

An unfortunate byproduct of this environment, he said, has been, in some instances, our "turning against ourselves." But "we were not broken," he said. "We have survived. We live to advocate another day for our members."

Looking ahead, Burkhalter said:

• The president, officers and executive director need to continue to work as partners.
• We need to build a management team rather than having a group of department heads.
• We need to ensure that WEAC's Board of Directors is a successful decision-making body.
• We need to redefine the relationships between WEAC and the UniServs as partnerships.
• We need to empower members by helping to build strong and effective locals.
• Because every decision that impacts our members is a political one, we need to strengthen our relationship with Wisconsin's power actors.
• We need to be better at building coalitions.
• We need to aggressively engage opinion-makers in the media.

We need to do all this together, he said, and listen deeply to our members and understand their needs and interests when it comes to both improving their economic security and advocating for high standards and quality in their work.

"I believe that we all have to be willing to give up some individual power for the union to gain power," Burkhalter said. "We will be stronger together than any one of us. It is the coming together combining our individual strengths for a greater good that will lead to the success we seek."

Posted April 24, 2007