Neil and I attended our union local's annual general meeting this afternoon. As we expected, together we represented half of the TAs present. Most of those in attendance are part-time faculty and instructors from Dalhousie, St. Mary's, and Mount St. Vincent.
This was the first time that I had attended a meeting of this union local and was curious to see how things worked. For the most part things were much as I expected. We were told about how many grievances had been filed and arbitration outcomes as well as the general activities of the executive.
What surprised me most about the entire experience was that when addressing one another many members of the executive inserted either "brother" or "sister" before the person's first name. At first I thought this was a bit of a joke, but as the meeting went on it became clear that this is standard practice.
Assuming that all goes as planned, I guess I might try to attend the next meeting, which I presume will be sometime in the fall, though I don't think that a date has yet been set.
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