2015 Annual Meeting
Annual Conference And Meeting Schedule
Sunday, June 7 2015
1:30-4:30 p.m. Council/ Teachers Building
267 Chapel Street New Haven CT 06513
1:30-1:45 p.m. Gather, refreshments, opening song by Frank Panzarella; welcome and overview by Labor History Association President, Bill Berndtson and Archivist/ Director, Joan Cavanagh
1:45-2:30 p.m. Key note address by Professor Richard Wolff, “Building Worker Power in an Era of Anti-Union Assaults: Looking Back, Looking Forward.” Followed by discussion and questions & answers.
2:30-2:35 p.m. Music by Frank Panzarella
2:35-3:15 p.m. Augusta Lewis Troup Award presented posthumously to Michael Dennehy by Marc DeGregorio, accepted by Lorraine McMahon Dennehy and Michael and Ryan Dennehy; remarks by John Dirzius and Robert Johnson
3:15-3:30 p.m. Augusta Lewis Troup Award presented to Rick Wolff by Steve Kass, Vice President, Greater New Haven Labor History Association
3:30-3:45 p.m. Closing: Update on Year’s Work and Closing Song by Frank Panzarella
3:50-4:30 p.m. Business Meeting of All Current Members to Vote on Amended By-Laws and propose other changes. (Please see page 4 for a description of the proposed amendments.)
Note: all members with up to date memberships are admitted to the conference free.
If you are not a member, we urge you to join LHA. If you’re not a member and don’t choose to join at this time, please consider a $10 donation or whatever you can afford as an entry fee to the conference.
N.b: If you are not yet a member or if your membership fee is due in May, you will find a membership form and a pre-addressed envelope included in this mailing. You can join or renew by filling out the form, making a check out to GNHLHA and sending both via the enclosed envelope. Or, if you choose, you can join or renew at the door!
Revision of GNHLHA By-Laws Up For Member Vote at Meeting
By Bill Berndtson, President, Lula White and Mary Johnson, members of the Governance Committee of the Labor History Association Executive Board
The changes in our by-laws, described below, were proposed by the Labor History Association Governance Committee and approved by the full Executive Board in 2013. Members will have an opportunity to vote on changes at the business meeting following the Labor History Association Annual Conference on June 7. You will be provided with full copies of both versions for purposes of comparison prior to the vote.
The Greater New Haven Labor History Association By-Laws were written in 1987 before the Association was incorporated. Thus, the original wording, “At the time of Incorporation of the Greater New Haven Labor History Association, Executive Board members shall be chosen by its founding members and shall serve for two years” has been removed. We have been incorporated as a 501(c) 3 since 1992 and the selection and election of officers is covered in the update.
In the revision proposed in 2013, most of the original laws were retained but some were modified and some discarded. The following are the other proposed changes:
The Annual Meeting Date: Originally, the Annual Meeting was held in November or December, but after being snowed out for a couple of years, we decided to change the wording to “The Annual Meeting shall generally be held in May to celebrate Labor History Month. Other meetings shall be called through a majority vote of the Executive Board.”
Addition in Article V: f.: “Items tabled at Executive Board meetings shall be resolved at the next meeting.”
To discourage backlog, the following is added in Article VI: a: “President is empowered to take interim measures on behalf of the board. The President will report on these measures to the Board or the Membership at the next meeting.”
The word “alleviation” is placed between “to the” and, “of the” in the following sentence in Article VII: “ The Labor History Association shall annually present the Augusta Lewis Troup - Pass It On Award to an individual or individuals who have contributed to the alleviation of the struggles of working people in the Greater New Haven area and…” It no longer states that the Award will be given to those who have contributed “significantly” to the struggles of working people. Happily for our history, there are too many of them to be able to recognize them all individually!
Please remember that you must be a current LHA member in order to vote on these changes to the by-laws or propose additional amendments at the business meeting.
Labor History Association to Give Troup Awards to Rick Wolff, Mike Dennehy at June 7 Annual Conference and Meeting
The Labor History Association will hold its annual conference and meeting on Sunday, June 7, 2015 from 1:30 to 4:30 pm at the Council/Teachers Building, 267 Chapel Street, New Haven CT. The recipients of this year’s Augusta Lewis Troup Preservation Awards are Rick Wolff and the late Mike Dennehy.
Named by the New York Times Magazine as “America’s most prominent Marxist economist,” former long time New Haven resident, Rick Wolff, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts. Since his move to New York City, he has been an organizer of the Left Forum, broadcasts a program on WBAI (Pacifica Radio), and writes regularly for The Guardian and Truth-out.org. He has appeared on a number of high-profile TV interview programs including Bill Moyers, Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, Charlie Rose, and Glen Beck.
His books include:
Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What To Do About It (2009)
Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian (2012)
Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (2012)
Mike Dennehy, 55, passed away on April 22, 2014, while at an arbitration hearing for members of the Greater CT Area Local 237 of the American Postal Workers Union. He gave 34 years of service to the United States Postal Service and was a union member or officer for all that time. He held numerous offices in his union and labor organizations in CT, from President of the Bridgeport Area Local, Vice President of the CT AFL-CIO, long time Secretary of the Fairfield Labor Council, to his final positions as Vice President of the Greater CT Area Local and Director of the CT State APWU. He was a credit to labor and his profession but most of all to the many thousands of members that benefitted from his efforts to improve their working life! Labor History will be presenting his ALT award posthumously, to his wife Lorraine and their sons, Mike and Ryan.
Further details of the conference will follow.
For more information, contact joan@laborhistory.org.