NEWS AND VIEWS: New UNA By-Laws: Is this the answer? (04/22/01)

NEWS AND VIEWS

New UNA By-Laws: Is this the answer?

by Alexander Chudolij

It is now time for all the delegates to the previous convention of the Ukrainian National Association to piece together all of their thoughts and make an honest decision on the proposed changes to the UNA By-Laws based primarily upon what they have read in The Ukrainian Weekly and Svoboda written by a handful of authors, as well as what they have heard at their local UNA district meetings.

The problem with this is that there has been no way for the delegates to fully discuss their views among themselves. What are the chances that a delegate from Canada or Florida will really be contacting a delegate from New Jersey to discuss the proposed by-laws changes?

But, in the same hall at the convention, distances are bridged and everyone can be heard by everyone else at the same time. Anything less than this becomes an inefficient system where communication is in bits and pieces and the delegates are segregated - kept apart from each other.

Unfortunately, because of lack of time at the previous convention in 1998, we now have community activists like Dr. Myron Kuropas saying that "the UNA is at a crossroads" and Taras Szmagala Jr. warning that "we cannot wait any longer." If this is the case, then why didn't the previous UNA executives involved in preparation of the convention agenda make sure that these proposed by-laws changes were at or near the top of the agenda?

I have to conclude that it is because they did not really want to have this topic discussed freely at a convention. An exchange of ideas among convention delegates is, in my opinion, the best, fairest and most democratic way for any or all of the delegates to be heard - both leading up to and during the actual vote. Every delegate is in attendance and already sitting in the same convention hall. It is the perfect setting for an exchange of views, opinions and understanding of the issue at hand. In fact, it's exactly what conventions are for!

I had previously stated that I was undecided about which way to vote on this issue of whether to change to a board of directors governance system or to retain the historic way the UNA has chosen its leadership, that is, by directly electing the new (or re-electing the previous) executive officers and the General Assembly. I am now ready to contribute my thoughts to this topic.

I can understand the arguments made by both the proponents and opponents of this proposal. However, the first question I found myself having to answer is not whether to vote yes or no, but to determine what exactly is the real problem at hand. What is causing the difficulties the UNA is currently experiencing and has been experiencing for many years, ever since our reserves started to erode and membership goals became more and more difficult to achieve? Are these problems due to the system of leadership with which the UNA was born and had worked so well up to a point in time? If so, then the system should have been changed many years ago. Why wasn't it changed? Up until the past two conventions, the governance structure was never even mentioned as being a problem. The system we had apparently was just fine, and the problems we were having would be taken care of by a professional sales force and by other measures.

What I find interesting is that many of those same people who now urgently implore us to change our present governance system are the ones who had no problem with it even into the 1990s. Some of them were not vocally against our current system even through the last convention, where many of them were re-elected by the current rules.

I have always believed that it does not matter as much what type of system we use to elect our UNA leaders, but that it matters whom we elect and what resources they have to get the job done. Does anyone really think that all of our problems will turn around if we elect a board of directors?

There has not been any statement of how or why a board of directors with a CEO elected by six to 11 votes (of the board) and his or her appointed, not elected, staff will be in any better position to increase the UNA reserves, improve our membership base, bring Soyuzivka back to prosperity and be fraternally beneficial to our fraternal organization. The quality of the board will be a critical factor (but not the only one) in determining how good a CEO its members choose. The CEO will then appoint a team that he or she can work with well.

How does this give the UNA membership more of a voice in the UNA? Under the current system at least we elect delegates who directly represent the membership and are able to attend meetings and caucuses, and actually listen to candidates who may be running the organization in the coming term, as well as directly elect many more members of the General Assembly who, although rather powerless, still have the opportunity to voice their views as well as those of the membership at the General Assembly's annual meetings. Very good recommendations are often made within the General Assembly; resolutions and proposals are passed which can help the organization. However, it is the Executive Committee that turns these General Assembly resolutions into mere pipe dreams.

I can certainly see amending the UNA By-Laws to give more teeth to the General Assembly so that it can do the job it is being asked to do. This can be done under the current structure, which allows for more representation. The General Assembly should exercise the right to impeach an executive officer if it finds that a member of the executive is having a detrimental impact on the well-being of the organization. There's your power in the current system.

The UNA's convention delegates now are the ultimate "board of directors" for the UNA. They have the right to directly elect or reject any or all of the members of the Executive Committee and the General Assembly every four years. Under the proposed board of directors system, the delegates to the convention, for the first time in UNA history, would not have the right to elect the UNA's chief executive officer, treasurer, national secretary, etc., nor any of the critical personnel responsible for the UNA's day-to-day operations.

We would elect 11 board members, all of whom would have only a periodic, part-time responsibility of overseeing possibly the only person whom they would elect - the CEO. They will not elect the other full-time officers - they would only "approve" of the CEO's decision to hire these other officers. To be sure, they wouldn't have to wait four years to fire an officer, but what would be the contract payoff cost and practicality of actually firing the CEO or even one of the other officers? I would not be surprised if the board of directors were to decide to wait until a convention anyway (or at least until contract renewal time) to bring up any serious concerns about a CEO and/or another UNA officer's performance.

Concerns have been raised about certain Executive Committee officers and/or the way that certain dominant cliques or factions have formed throughout many administrations, but even at the four-year intervals when the convention delegates have had the opportunity to make changes, very often change is viewed as unpatriotic.

So, who is responsible for the current problems and concerns of the UNA? We all are. It is complacency at many levels of the organization that can be blamed.

However, it is the leadership that must set an example for the membership to follow. In the same way that the majority of a UNA Executive Committee can run the show and do things its way, it is absolutely the case that the majority of a board of directors also can run the show. There is nothing in the new by-laws proposal that would or could stop that.

The top officers of the UNA must not consider a critic to be an enemy. There is nothing in the new by-laws that, in itself, will change that. Censorship of the press reports, exclusion of the UNA's own press from covering quarterly meetings of the Executive Committee, and the executives' tendency to assume that they know best and that everyone else should just listen and fall into line all have contributed to the UNA being in the situation it is in today. There is nothing in the proposed by-laws that addresses such attitudes. Elected officials forget who elects them much too quickly. The board of directors also is elected. Do we know why the directors' memory of the election should be any different than that of the UNA officers elected the old-fashioned way?

Finally, some executives scold those of us who do or say things that they construe as being damaging to the UNA. However, the executives have been dismantling our fraternal pillars bit by bit for the past decade and more by reducing support for fraternal activities and leaving branch secretaries - many of whom see themselves as without a purpose or means to communicate with their membership because of the new direct-billing system - without anything more than a topical list of ideas, with no clear plan of how to fraternally energize the local membership. If the local membership were fraternally energized in the first place, maybe we would be in better shape today.

We are where we are because of decisions that were made and attitudes that existed or still exist, and they have nothing to do with the type of governance structure we have or should have, or the fact that we directly elect a president, vice-president, national secretary, and so forth. This is a people problem. People have attitudes. People make decisions. If they have bad attitudes or make bad decisions, then the delegates have a right to elect someone else to take their place.

So, will new by-laws ensure better times ahead. Not the way I see it. I wish I could have been convinced otherwise.

We must move forward, but we cannot afford the luxury of time to try out a new way of doing things. We know that it will take time to get this new corporate structure off the ground and working properly - if, indeed, that is ever possible. Just three years ago our UNA president changed her mind and decided to run for re-election because she felt that it was too critical a time for the UNA to change paths and go with a new leadership. Can we now afford to change paths regarding our governance structure and risk giving away our power to elect those who will be in charge of running the UNA's day-to-day operations at a time when every day counts? If the new by-laws go into effect, after the convention ends you will not know who will be leading the UNA as your chief executive officer; you will not know if the UNA will be able to afford to pay the amount of money that a truly qualified CEO would demand in his or her contract.

It seems to me that my colleague Taras Szmagala Jr. has put a great deal of hard work into drafting the proposed by-laws. He did an amazing job (and continues to do so on the standing committee charged with drafting a plan for the UNA resort, Soyuzivka). However, I feel that it was unfair to place Mr. Szmagala in the position of having to draft the complete by-laws changes that were presented to convention delegates only via mail and the UNA's newspapers - not in person at the convention. If we had been allotted the time at the last convention to have an open and constructive discussion then we would have already known whether we will be electing executive officers or a board of directors a year from now, at the UNA convention in 2002. At the very least the proposed by-laws might have been tailored to address the concerns of the vast majority of the delegates.

As it now stands, it seems that this may prove to have been a tedious exercise that has taken away our attention from the real issues impacting the UNA. And those issues are not whether we change the governance rules as to how the UNA is run, but rather how we can get the UNA back to a positive, healthy prognosis. Our UNA treasurer has been able to do some positive things regarding the UNA's balance sheet - and this was done without any change in the by-laws.

It is people who make or break any organization. However, those people, despite all their good intentions, must be given the tools to do their jobs best. How many of the executives have undergone formal training in executive management? If none of them have such a background, how can they be expected to do things the best way? Does the UNA have a personnel department - or even a personnel manager? Not to my knowledge. So how can we expect to get the most productivity out of our work force and build morale? If management does not understand or know that such things are critical to the success of a corporation, then they need to listen to those who do and to address these matters. If they do know and still do nothing about enhancing their on-the-job effectiveness as managers and also the effectiveness of their work force, then they should be voted out of office. Do the new by-laws require any training for the board of directors members? No.

Let's not use the UNA By-Laws issue any longer as a smokescreen to take attention away from what is really at the heart of it all. Let's ask our UNA leaders what their real plans are for improving the UNA's position in the future. If it's purely through lowering costs, then we will definitely have fraternal atrophy and the organization will not continue to exist for the purpose envisioned by its founding fathers. If we are to prosper by increasing our revenues, then we should know more about such a plan and be told how, this time, we can be any more successful than we have been in the recent past.

That, my fellow UNA members and delegates, is the real issue on which we should be spending our time in discussion and debate.

Alexander Chudolij is an advisor of the Ukrainian National Association and a member of the UNA By-Laws Committee and the General Assembly's Standing Committee on Soyuzivka.

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