Marc Smith, the Nursing and Allied Health Coordinator at Long Beach City College, has been the president of his local, Long Beach Council of Classified Employees, for less than six months.

Being new, he’s looking to learn how to best serve his members.  The first Council of Classified Employee (CCE)’s President’s Retreat on November 7 – 8 at the CFT office in Sacramento gave him what he was looking for with sessions led by AFT trainers on topics such as the constitution and bylaws and member benefits.

Smith found those particularly useful, and he enjoyed talking with others in his position. 

“The networking I think was helpful, getting to know what issues we all have in common, and what challenges we have,” he said. “The whole experience was really helpful.”

Along with trainings and networking at the event organized by the CCE, the 20 or so participants had a chance to relax and have fun at the Game Night on Friday.

“It was nice to because the workshops are pretty intensive. You get a lot of information,” Smith said. “So, it was nice to cut loose a little bit and enjoy some camaraderie with other people.”

Tina Solórzano Fletcher, the Membership Coordinator for AFT Guild Local 1931 in San Diego and the Southern Vice President of the CCE, says she and CCE President Carl Williams wanted to do something for the local presidents, so they hit on this retreat, which will happen every other year when there isn’t a convention.

“We wanted to dive deeper into tools presidents need to be a good leader,” Solórzano Fletcher said. “We surveyed the local presidents and asked if we did this, what kind of things would they find helpful.”

This led to six sessions, two on Friday afternoon and four on Saturday afternoon, on subjects including effective new employee orientations,

how a bill becomes a law, maintaining a union/work life balance, and a final session giving the presidents a chance to talk about what was going on in their lives.

“The end result was everyone was having similar issues, whether you were a seasoned president or if you were just beginning,” Solórzano Fletcher said. “So, people felt like, ‘Well, I’m not alone in this.’”

That’s what happened for Maira Gutiérrez, an administrative secretary II and the president of the Turlock Federation of Classified Employees. Like Smith, Gutiérrez is new to the job, with less than two years in the position, and she says getting to hear what her colleagues are doing is helpful. She also shared some of her ideas with them, such as a quarterly newsletter she puts out, which she says has led to increased membership.

Spending her weekend traveling to Sacramento and doing the retreat there was definitely worth it, Gutiérrez said. She found the sessions, like the one on new member orientations, full of concrete ideas about how to make things better.

“I’m a hands-on learner, so in-person works very well for me,” she said. “I’m just passionate about learning how I can support my members and bring back resources.”

Williams says the response from participants was even better than they expected.

“It was so great to be in a space with big locals and small locals, community college, ECTK12, and early childhood. We had the preschool local there,” he said. “Although we are all very different, we all have the same goal, and that is to ensure that the classified workers have a livable wage, a strong contract, and safety on the job. It was a space with folks who know the work because no one really knows the work of a president but another president.”

Like Gutiérrez, Williams appreciated meeting in-person. And even though he’s been president of Lawndale Federation of Classified Employees since 2008, he says he learned things at the retreat.

“It’s refilling our tank with new tools and ideas and ways to increase the membership’s participation,” he said. “We talked about, how do we create a path for leadership for those who are coming up behind us?”

Smith would make just one change. 

“I only wish it had been another day longer,” he said.