ROBERT J. HARRISON

Upon election, I put forth a Vison and set goals for our District, the key message being that the 9th District would not wait - we would be proactive in building resources within the District to support our locals’ missions of “representation, organizing, and collective bargaining.”

Building our infrastructure so the district would be better able to support its locals in just over a year under my leadership, we have:

• Set a clear path to improve the delivery of services to our locals by:

 Helping locals build and strengthen their internal infrastructure.

 Provided locals with direct access to support from the District Office

 Ensuring that locals have access to and are given support from national-level resources when necessary.

 Working with the AFGE National President and AFGE National Department Directors ensures that issues impacting our membership here in the 9th District are elevated and addressed

• Started Quarterly leaders calls where the District gives financial, membership, organizing, and legislative and political reports.

• Started issuing an electronic newsletter that goes to every member that highlights our activities as a District and features the successes of the locals in our District.

• Held District Presidents' meetings where your Local Presidents had the opportunity to meet in person and receive training from the AFGE National President, the AFGE National Secretary/Treasurer, the Chief Investigator for the Department of Labor covering our district, and various other AFGE Department Directors. (We will be expanding our Presidents meeting to include E-Board members from each local)

• Set a goal of growing our District by 2,200 new members, knowing this was ambitious. However, we needed a target. While we have yet to reach the goal of 2,200, we have grown by approximately 1,100 new members, bringing the District to over 18,000 members. This growth made us one of the fastest-growing Districts in the Federation!

• Redirected our organizing goals by pairing the National Organizers with our District National Representatives, ensuring targeted use of our limited district resources to grow our membership more effectively.

• Specifically targeted our DoD locals (which have the most significant potential for growth in our District) and TSA locals with National Organizers to work mainly with those locals to address the special needs of those unique bargaining units.

• We launched three (3) digital media pilot programs targeting remote and teleworking federal employees to help our district’s locals’ organizing efforts.