some of their routes, because they don't know what to expect on Monday. So it's a really iffy situation and people don't know what to expect. Q: Are the current conditions putting some of the you have made at risk? KK: I think that Bena's point about the local union reducing the size of the budget for the women's committee, cutting $4,000 from the budget, is an indication that that means they expect that the women's committee is going to reduce their activities, it's going to change what they're doing. There won't be as much money for the local to do the things that it's been doing, so it'll have an impact. I don't think the women's committee has figured out yet where that $4,000 is going to be removed. If they just cut it off the top of the budget and said, you figure it out, then I guess the committee will have to do that. BP: Also the worry of the job and the worry of all the economic conditions and everything, people don't really want to participate in other activities as readily as they would when times are better. So that could have an impact too in trying to get some of the members to start looking at coming to women's committees. So they do definitely have ?? So a lot of us who are actively running the women's committee are going to be retiring so that may have an impact. The committee may not even exist if the younger generation doesn’t pick up, so that is another issue that we may face. I know that if I'm not pushing or Karen is not pushing, the women's committee almost dies. So you need somebody that keeps it going and you need somebody to pick up the phone and call people and do something – let's get together, let's organize some of this. It's definitely an impact. Q: How many are on the women's committee? KK: The way the local bylaws are structured, and we wrote them, is that we have standing committees in the local and in a specific month of the year we elect that committee at a general membership meeting. We elect a specified number of core members, but the size of the committee is not limited in any way, but we can have that
getting the work. You hear stories from certainly before Bena's time but before at the time around that I started, women in those positions going to convention and what it was like there when the women came in from the western areas who were women that were coming to these LCUC conventions. You should do some interviews with those folks because it shouldn't be lost what they went through going to conventions as definitely unpopular members. Q: Who were those women? KK: Well Lynn Bue was one of them, she was one of the first and she experienced all of that, what it was like working on the work floor, definitely predominantly men, and the attitudes toward women. She's got some great stories about other brothers standing up for her and how things went down. But I know who you're thinking of and I can't think of her name. BP: Shirley Cameron. She was the first letter carrier in Edmonton in 1973. KK: We did a write-up about her in the Inside Out, our newsletter, at the time that she left, that she retired. She's here in Edmonton, she's still here I think. BP: And the percentage on the executive is I would say about 30 percent women. KK: At the moment, ya. BP: More women are starting to get attracted to come to the meetings. You see them on the floor. Michelle Rim I forgot, she's an executive as well. So there is seven. Kathleen Mpulubusi is also the route measurement officer. She's a verification officer. She does the planning and building of the letter carrier routes, so she's quite involved. She started off from the women's committee. She was introduced by me to the women's committee and then she just started coming and she loved it. We kept pushing her. We said, you know there's a position. Karen was actually telling her. Kathleen, let's put your name down for