Up on the Hill...........

What a day. It started at 5:30am Tuesday morning, with a breakfast meeting with the Connersville Community Delegation made up of John Pavy IUE-CWA president, Bill Goins IUE-CWA trustee, Ray Naseman Sr. H.R. Manager Visteon Systems LLC, Bill Groce IUE-CWA Delegate, Doug Howard EDG, and Mayor Max. Since each of the Senators and Congressmen were gracious enough to schedule us time on a very busy session day, we talked about our "game plan" for the day, and we each carefully went over our segment of the message we wanted to share with the Senators and Congressmen. We had limited time with each of them and their staff, so we wanted to be as prepared as possible.

Our first appointment was at 10:00am and we had a bit of a walk to the Russell Building on the hill from our Hotel. We first met with the Congressman Mike Pence's senior staffer's and within a few minutes was joined by Mr. Pence between other meetings. Next, we had some time between meetings, so we walked from Mr. Pence's office to Grand Central Station and grabbed a bite of lunch and again went over our game plan for the next meeting. We grabbed our gear and off to Senator Bayh's office again meeting first with senior staffer's and soon Mr. Bayh came in we again explained we were concerned about Visteon employees receiving TAA and TRA benefits. We were running late and it was a bit of a walk to Senator Lugar's office. This time however, we met Senator Lugar first, and then only briefly in his outer office.We were then ushered out to a makeshift conference room to meet with his senior staff members.

Unfortunately, Senator Lugar was called to another meeting and was unable to sit and discuss our concerns. However his staff was very impressive, they listened to our concerns and had already talked to the other senior staffer's from our previous meetings that day. They also had started gathering information about federal and state programs for displaced workers and had been briefed by the other offices. Needless to say, we were all pretty impressed by the fact that the different offices were communicating that closely in such a short time frame.

In all this, we came away from those meetings feeling that we had accomplished what we came to do. We also came away with the assurance that the Congressmen and Senators were aware of the situation in Connersville and Fayette County and were more then willing to offer their help in any way they could. I had follow-up emails waiting for me when I got home that evening with even more answers and some additionals resources that we will be investigating for Visteon workers.

Tomorrow (Friday) we are meeting to debrief and map out our follow-up strategy. I'll be adding more information to the blog after that meeting and give you all some views from the other members of the delegation. Right now though I'll say I feel like the meeting was very productive Connersville and Visteon employees and we will be getting help from D.C.