District Director Notes 2007 - 2008

AWS Fall show dates for this year in Chicago will be November 11^th to the 14^th.

            Next year will be at the Las Vegas Convention Center Oct 6-8, 2008.

CWI and Radiographic Interpreter for 2008

            Boston – CWI – March 2 –7, Test 9th

            Portland – CWI – April 13 – 18, Test 19th.

            Hartford – CWI – June 1 – 6, Test 7^th.

            Manchester, NH – RI – June 9-13, Test 14^th. 

 Taking the RI Seminar and passing the Test will exempt you from your next 9-year CWI recertification. There are 5 ways you can do your 9 year recert, contact Certification @ 800.443.9353 X273 for more information. Please print these dates in your flyers for our members’ benefit.

Two interesting studies were done for the Society this past year.

            Weldors Wage Survey. With 1400 responses from 86 companies in 27 states, came the following information.

• Average hourly wage - $17.27
• Average Union wage - $24.00
• Entry level wage - $15.91
• 5 year wage - $19.67
• 10 year wage - $25.90
• 15 year wage - $33.00
• 39 companies need a total of 456 new employees now
• 5 companies said their need in 5 years would be 146 employees, that’s over 29 new employees per company.

Membership had a survey done on getting more Weldors to join the society.

• 456 responded to the survey of 1750 sent out.
• Conservatively, with the right benefits package, there are 100,000 potential members available. The number could be as high as 500,000.
• Most important to them was information that helped them learn on-the-job how to do new things. Least important was attending local or area meetings with others involved in welding.

District Directors Bound Book – please have a look through it. It will give you an idea of what goes on at the BOD meetings. Anyone interested in what goes on at those meetings, I will try to answer any questions.

AWS membership hit an all time high of 51,887 so far this year.

Membership for the District as of 8/1/07 – Boston – 557. Central Mass – 273. Connecticut - 489. G & W – 178. Maine – 445. Montreal – 129.

District 1 is #7 of 22 districts with 2071 members. The largest is District 18 with 3599; the smallest is District 6 with 987. 

“Never Too Early to Start Thinking About…”

District Conference; weekend of May 30^th & 31^st, 2008. Central Mass/RI to host. Providence, RI is the target city.

Names for people to get Section and District Awards.

Names of Nominees for the Instructors Institute and Leadership Symposium.

Anyone interested in being elected to District Director in 2010 ask me what it's all about.

1) Scholarships - District, get the word out to our schools and students. March 1^st deadline.

2) Scholarships – Named, the ability to have a controlled district named scholarship with a donation in the $10,000, $15,000 & $25,000 range, and take up to 5 years to fund it.

3) Every member campaign. $1 per member to the Foundation.

Member-get-a-member.

E-mails of Nationals updates.

Rev: 8/24/07