3
The President's Message
I feel greatly honored to have the
privilege of serving the members of the
Oregon State Employees Association as
their fifth President, and to assure them
that I will do everything in my power
to foster and attain the objectives of
our organization.
Your new officers are truly repre
sentative of ail of the branches of our
State Government. This has been one
of the main objectives of the founders
of our association.
When first organized in 1943 the
membership consisted almost entirely of
employees of the Highway Department.
Because of the efforts of the founders
your Association now represents em
ployees from almost every branch of
the State Service.
This growth and the universal ac
ceptance of the objectives of the As
sociation is due to the unselfish efforts
of the previous officers and the policies
which your delegates have adopted at
the council meetings.
Unless one has had the privilege of
attending a council meeting he cannot
fully appreciate the unselfish motives
of the delegates and the good common
sense used to determine policies which
will be beneficial to all state employees
and to the public. These policies have
resulted in active participation in all
matters relating to the welfare of the
employees as well as the Civil Service
A ct and the Public Employees Retire
ment Act. Your officers have been in
structed to sponsor a number of
changes in both of these acts at the
coming session of the Legislature. We
have also been instructed to institute,
immediately, several changes to the
Rules of the Civil Service Commission.
As a matter of record your delegates
were unanimous in their expressed opin
ion that the Civil Service Commisison
rule on working hours was discrimina
tory, unworkable, contrary to the ob
jectives of the Rules, unwarranted and
arbitarary.
To some this may appear that the
Association is not getting along too
well with the Civil Service Commission
— and this is not the case. We believe
that the Civil Service Commission and
its Director are doing splendid work
at a very difficult job. However, the
Association intends to aggressively use
every possible means to secure the cor
rection of any rule or action of the
Commission which is in our opinion
contrary to the best interest of the
state and the state employees.
A t the present time we have more
than 3000 members. This represents a
remarkable growth when one considers
that the Association has been in exist
ence for less than four years. However,
there are still several thousand state em
ployees who do not belong. Most of
these employees have never been con
tacted and are not informed about the
(Continued on page 4)