Meet Chad Pearson,
Chad Pearson was chief steward of Albany and is
currently Business Agent at large.
Here is why Chad Pearson is unfit for another term.
• Pearson is not a TA/GA. We believe that
those who run for office should be TAs or GAs when they run. Once the
candidate has taken office he or she may decide whether or not to continue
his or her GA/TA line. Non-TA/GAs should not seek to represent TAs
and GAs term after term.
• Similarly, as business agent at large, Pearson
supposedly represents TAs and GAs at the colleges, but Pearson has never
been a TA/GA at the colleges. We want to see members from the
colleges stepping up to represent members at the colleges. If not a member
of the colleges, at least a current GA or TA in the bargaining unit.
• Pearson was chief steward of Albany until 2002
when he became BA at Large. During all this time he has also been a
full-time organizer for CWA 1104, and in 2002 he spent almost all of his
time in Buffalo as an organizer getting signatures of RAs in an effort to
unionize them. We applaud his efforts, but if he spent nearly every
working day on organizing Buffalo RAs, how well was he performing his
duties as an elected officer serving first members in Albany as chief
steward, and then members at the colleges as business agent at large?
It is clear that during that year he devoted nearly 100% of his union
activity to nonmembers. We suspect that Pearson as chief steward and
then business agent at large has filed a grand total of “zero”
grievances on behalf of members. Full-time organizers should not be
officers because they necessarily devote much less than full-time to their
duties as elected officers. But that doesn’t bother Pearson because
separating the organizer position from that of the elected position would
reduce his income which now appears to be five times that of the average
TA.
• Pearson, like Sims, spends far too recklessly.
True, as an Albany graduate student organizing in Buffalo, Pearson
had to use union funds to pay for travel, room and board (why didn’t
1104 hire an organizer located in Buffalo?). But since we know that
Pearson was not working for the union every single day, we wonder how he
spent over $26,000 of members’ dues. Over the course of a year,
that comes out to more than $71 a day every day of the year. Surely
money could have been spent more wisely. Other organizers in CWA 1104
spent much less than Pearson on the same organizing projects.
Organizer Catherine Stanford, for example, spent around $17,000
organizing in Buffalo, Syracuse, and elsewhere.
• In 2003-04, Pearson allegedly colluded with
Kathleen Sims to prevent the GSEU’s Decision Making Body from meeting
to actively draft negotiation demands.