I’m Ward Kaplan. I work at the Spokane Community Colleges. Member of Union 12 20 one in Spokane. Been at the college for 19 years. Worked as a custodian for 16 and now maintenance and Mechanic 1. The negotiations and bargaining it was marginal at best. This one is a fight. It’s been like pulling nails as I am a maintenance mag. Some nails are really tough and we got a hard win this contract. It makes me feel bad that we can’t hire people to do what we should be doing. And because the state will not pay people enough. We are all feeling that. My brothers and sisters of the union have sacrificed our backs for the state. Our SLAT committee delivered a 20 some foot scroll with our members signing it at. Hopefully OFM will look at that and say wow, this is a commitment that we should look at because our slate committee is painters, plumbers, all the trades. And I think they all feel overworked and underpaid. We lost an HVAC guy just eight months ago to a public school because they could pay him $10,000 more and there was nothing our college could do. We lost a ten year employee just like that. We have a walkout on September the 10th. This is a fight. Everybody get involved cause together we will win. And if we don’t get together we won’t win. So get involved by all means.