AFT 6157-R Convention Report March 17-19, 2023

By Kathy Jasper

When Paul Fong was unable to attend the California Federation of Teacher’s convention in San Francisco this spring, I was lucky to be selected to represent our local.  I got to hear about the many ways the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) is working with their retirement community.

On Friday, March 17th, I attended the Health Care, Retirement and Benefits Committee.  The task of this committee is to go over the resolutions and prioritize them to be discussed on the floor.

Some of the priorities we chose were:

    1. Stop the privatization of Traditional Medicare — Abolish ACO REACH
    2. Ease the Separation from Service Requirements for Retired Educators and Classified Professionals
    3. Enhancing Retirement Education and Sick Leave Advocacy for Part-time Workers.

Following this meeting, I attended the Council of Retired Members

The President spoke of the accomplishments of the Division:

    1. Added three new Retiree Chapters
    2. Enhanced Recruitment materials, packets, and When You Retired revision.
    3. Developed Chapter-building online Forums.
    4. Continued Chapter Development at key CFT Events
    5. Democratized Council of Retired Members (CRM) Constitution
    6. Shared CARA activities
    7. Engaged with National WEP/GPO Repeal Task Force
    8. Created a WEP/GPO online toolkit.

We elected new Council of Retirees officers. Dennis Kelly of San Francisco’s AFT 2121 will serve as our president for two years.   Following this meeting, I enjoyed a great dinner with members of our local.