IAM Convention Taking Place September 7-12
September 4, 2008
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On the afternoon of Sunday, September 7, the 37th Grand Lodge Convention of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers will open in Orlando, Florida. The convention will run throughout the coming week; once the convention opens, follow highlights here.
TCU’s International President Bob Scardelletti will lead TCU’s delegation comprised of himself, International Secretary-Treasurer Danny Biggs and the Union’s seven International Vice Presidents–Joe Condo, Bob Davis, Rich Johnson, John Lydon, Russ Oathout, Joel Parker and David Steele. The delegation will be observing but will not be voting delegates at this convention because the merger with the IAM is not finalized, but at the next convention in 2013, TCU will have a full voting delegation. Nonetheless, IAM International President Tom Buffenbarger has asked President Scardelletti to address the convention and he is due to speak on Monday afternoon.
The actions and activities of the following days will revolve around the Four Freedoms named by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his annual message to Congress on January 6, 1941. They are, he said, fundamental freedoms humans everywhere in the world ought to enjoy. Roosevelt’s words resonate in today’s world climate, as is evident in this excerpt from that speech:
“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.
“The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world.
“The third is freedom from want–which, translated into universal terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.
“The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world.
“That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.”
