Happy New Year OCEA members!

Dear OCEA member, 

Like many of you, I am saying “goodbye” to 2020 with a cautious sense of relief. But we all know that turning a page on the calendar doesn’t change the realities each of you continue to face every day of the year. The demand for the essential services you provide to our communities isn’t going away and the fiscal impacts of COVID-19 will make delivering those services ever more challenging.

It’s been said at countless management training seminars that, when assessing workers or workplace systems, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. When I take stock of the year that just passed, there’s no place I would rather be than marching into the future side-by-side with you.

We stood together throughout 2020 to fight for workplace safety and fairness. We closed our union headquarters but continued to provide a full range of services to OCEA members 24/7. We managed to hold our biggest event of the year, the OCEA Health Fair, virtually. We distributed more than 8,000 cooler bags full of OCEA-branded items and vendor giveaways. In the midst of a pandemic, we continued to negotiate contracts and maintain key benefits and protections in our MOUs. We even added a new group of public workers in Fullerton to the OCEA family.

We did all of this by standing together in our union. That is our past behavior – our record of achievement - and it’s because of our record that we can face the future full of confidence. 2020 couldn’t beat us. Neither will 2021.

Happy New Year to you and your family.

In Solidarity,

Charles Barfield
OCEA General Manager

Publication Date: December 31, 2020