Brothers and sisters, we have tabulated the results of the evaluations we received from NJC 2010 and this year’s meeting received the highest rating since we began asking for evaluations several years ago. Eighty-six participants returned evaluation forms rating everything from the plenary sessions, to the workshops, to the food, to the overall quality of the meeting, on a 1 to 5 scale. (1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good, 4 = very good, 5 = excellent.) One hundred and seventy-seven written comments were also submitted.

Overall, the NJC was rated between “Very Good” and “Excellent”, with several workshops receiving near perfect-5 ratings. The highest rated plenary session was Tuesday’s session on Human Trafficking. Many delegates commented that they were deeply moved by Bill Hillar’s presentation. All of the fifteen workshops received from Very Good to Excellent ratings, but the top five were the workshops on Human Trafficking, Multi-Media Presentation, American Labor History, Mock Bargaining, and Unit Finances.

An innovation at this year’s NJC was the introduction of successive exercises in “Mock Bargaining” and “Mock Grievance Handling”. These were designed to simulate real bargaining and grievance situations, and those who participated strongly recommended that these workshops be offered again, and even expanded.

The American Labor History workshop had been scheduled for one workshop session, but proved to be so popular that many requested that it be offered a second time at the conference. Unfortunately, the schedule did not permit a repeat of the workshop, but it is clear that we’ll need to offer that as a plenary session next time, or at least to offer it as a workshop twice.

Among the comments we received were:

I really enjoyed myself. Very informative. Everything was great!

This was my first conference, and I learned so much about our union. It was also great to meet other members across the country. I now feel like I have a lot more resources and friends.

The interaction in Mock Bargaining is fantastic! Enjoyed all the information given. Very useful.

Areas needing improvement, identified by some members, included:

No bagpipes after banquet. Before would be fine. (yes… there were bagpipes!)

Do we really need to do intros at almost every session? It takes up a lot of time and is repetitive. I'm not saying don't do them, just keep it to the first day only/first session.

This is only a small sample of the 177 comments we received. A summary of the ratings along with all of the comments from the NJC evaluation forms are posted in the Member Resources area under NJC 2010. Members can also find handouts used in various workshops and all of the Resolutions adopted by the NJC, which are available for download. Please check back frequently, as these will be added to the website during the month of August.

Thanks again for all of you who made this year’s National Joint Council so memorable! And for those of you who didn’t or were unable to attend, please join us in January of 2012 for our next NJC.

In Solidarity,

Gordon Deane, President

Tim Yeager, Financial Secretary/Treasurer