Moving with the times
By Ruby Newbold
The way we work as paraprofessionals and school-related personnel changes over the years. Think of the changes our retirees have seen over the course of their working lives. Just the technology alone — think of those changes.
Our most senior member, Roberta Wilson from Chicago, is celebrating her 90th birthday, and she’s still coming to the PSRP conference, still working, still dancing at Solidarity Night. In her adult life, she’s lived through segregation not only in the schools but everywhere. She’s also lived and worked through the space race, the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement and the rise of technology.
At our annual conference last month, seniors like her staffed tables welcoming members to Detroit. You could visit the hospitality tables manned by retirees from AFT Michigan, which included members from both of our PSRP locals in Detroit, the Detroit Association of Educational Office Employees and the Detroit Federation of Paraprofessionals. DFP President Donna Jackson and I believe wholeheartedly that these are the people who set the foundation for our locals. We included them in this conference because they’re here at home and they still want to be a part of it. They were elated. They said, “I can do this, and I can do it for this many hours.” So when you’d go by those tables, you’d know that most of them, the majority of them, were retirees from our locals.
One of the things that I’ve found in communicating with members: We went from a mailed newsletter to an email blast, after we got about 75 percent of our members’ email addresses. Then we found out that we had members who did not have emails but had cell phones. Many of them said they couldn’t afford the internet. I told them, “Go to gmail.com. It’s free. You’ll have an email address.”
Adapting to new technology was like that in our local, too. For our members who were secretaries, we had to move them from the manual typewriter to the word processor to the computer. Those ladies didn’t want to give up their manual typewriters. A manager called me to ask, “Ms. Newbold, can you come by the office?” I said, “I usually come by when my members ask me to. What’s the problem?” She said, “They won’t give up their typewriters. I bought new word processors, and they’re still typing on the manuals.”
I said, “Oh, that’s no problem.” She had called me at 5:30 in the evening. I asked, “You still in your office?” She said yes. I said, “Take the manuals off their desks. Set up the word processors.”
She said, “We’ve been trying to figure out …” I said, “Take them off tonight. Take them off and set up the word processors. When they get in there tomorrow, they’ve got to use the word processors!”
You know, we’ve got to move with the times. My granddaughter knows about this mess more than I do. She’s been fussing at me about not being on Facebook. My thing is: You put too much on Facebook. But I talk to my communications specialist and he says, “Ruby, this is where we’ve got to go with our local unions: online and on social media.” So this is where we’re going.
Ruby Newbold is president of the Detroit Association of Educational Office Employees, chair of the AFT PSRP program and policy council, and an AFT vice president.
