Exclusive Representation

The Association of Supervisory and Administrative School Personnel . . .

the single, coordinated voice for administrators, supervisors, and other professionals employed by Prince George's County Public Schools who are designated by the Board of Education as members of Unit II and Unit III.   For our members, we are the exclusive collective bargaining representative with regard to all matters relating to salary, wages, hours, and other working conditions.  ASASP takes great pride in improving the educational process for students by helping members become more effective in their various roles as educational leaders.  Employees who are at peace with their terms and conditions of employment are better equipped to focus on the needs of our future . . .

HISTORY IS MADE

Working Families have spoken!

Barack Obama

44th President of the

United States of America

Standing before a crowd of more than 125,000 people at Chicago's Grant Park, President-Elect Barack Obama declares - -

REPORT FROM DUBLIN

Union Roots
By Chris Garlock, Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO

The union movement grew out of Europe's medieval guilds, a connection beautifully illustrated in the guild banners I saw over the weekend in Drogheda and Dublin. Hand painted on silk or canvass, the banners proclaim their bearer's trades -- including shoemakers, bricklayers, carters and fishermen -- and were proudly carried during annual parades and festivals. Guild members served long apprenticeships of up to seven years with master craftsmen before being accepted as full members in their own right. While the banners of the Drogheda's museum's are on display in a converted army barracks overlooking the ancient Norman town, the Irish Labour History Society's banners lie carefully wrapped among hundreds of boxes of union records in the Society's unheated -- and largely unlighted -- building in central Dublin. Leased for a nominal sum from the government, the Society's building -- the former officer's quarters for the British Army's Dublin garrison -- is in desperate need of major renovations, which had stalled even before the current economic crisis. Meanwhile, Director Brendan Byrne told me during a tour Sunday, the Society, staffed only by volunteers, struggles to keep to its mission to produce Irish labor history materials -- they produce a magazine about every 18 months -- as well as regular lectures and serve as an archive.  The Society's holdings also includes an extensive collection of books on Irish labor history, which are stored on modern movable library shelves but, notes Byrne, have yet to be properly catalogued. There's now some debate about the Society’s mission, Byrne told me as we leafed through yellowing union ledgers from the 1920s. "We're definitely not a museum and while we do well with publishing the magazine and lectures, we are not trained archivists," Byrne said, standing amidst towering boxes of unsorted material, old union rally signs, banners and busts of labor leaders, "so we collect everything indiscriminately. We don't want to risk losing anything.” Special thanks to Services Industrial Professional Technical Union’s Paul Bell for arranging the both visits.