Thursday, June 09, 2005
Apathy Is the Membership's Common Bond
The Driver's Room Forum - AVOID A MAJOR 'WEDGIE' -- GET INVOLVED!:
It continues to amaze me that there is no input from the membership here. I'm not alone in my thinking:
I got the idea for this web site from another driver and thought, "Wow, that could really be something great!" I started it wondering how I could get the word out, advertising on Google, making flyers and surrepticiously surfing to the site using the computers in the driver's rooms at each yard and simply leaving the front page on screen and walking away to let others discover it on their own. It has not been entirely ignored; several people at VTA read it regularly, as my server logs indicate, and it has been quoted and linked to from other sites.
But the original vision--supplying a place for drivers to sound off and stay updated on issues important to all drivers--has not materialized. Perhaps Richard is right. Maybe the membership has sunk into a deep hibernation. What will it take to rouse them from their slumber? I'm unsure if I can supply the right kind of smelling salts to wake them.
Perhaps it will take a direct threat to their individual jobs to motivate them to band together in any real way. Maybe not even then.
It continues to amaze me that there is no input from the membership here. I'm not alone in my thinking:
"Where is everybody?
Without the official Union newsletter as an avenue for any member's opinions and questions, one would think this Website would be HUMMING with activity. Many kudos to Penguiniator for slugging it out alone, doing the research, probably paying the fee(s) for this Website, etc. I know exactly what it's like, having sometimes supplied every word that appeared in some issues of Route 265 years ago.
I fear I am seeing the membership sinking into a deep hibernation, while its leadership confines its activities to reaction (grievance-handling) instead of proaction. It is conceivable that the Union will eventually be seen as irrelevant to the majority of its members. That's when VTA management might try to drive a fatal wedge you-know-where; i.e., try to get the union decertified. Then what?
Hello? Hello-o-o-o-o? Anyone there?"
Richard Lofsted Badge 291
I got the idea for this web site from another driver and thought, "Wow, that could really be something great!" I started it wondering how I could get the word out, advertising on Google, making flyers and surrepticiously surfing to the site using the computers in the driver's rooms at each yard and simply leaving the front page on screen and walking away to let others discover it on their own. It has not been entirely ignored; several people at VTA read it regularly, as my server logs indicate, and it has been quoted and linked to from other sites.
But the original vision--supplying a place for drivers to sound off and stay updated on issues important to all drivers--has not materialized. Perhaps Richard is right. Maybe the membership has sunk into a deep hibernation. What will it take to rouse them from their slumber? I'm unsure if I can supply the right kind of smelling salts to wake them.
Perhaps it will take a direct threat to their individual jobs to motivate them to band together in any real way. Maybe not even then.
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