WAGES has had an unusual year. At the last AGM, Carl Gareis gave a speech explaining his concept for the Exchange to simplify its accounts and speed up the statements to members. Members present were impressed, and Carl was then voted in as new Chairperson. He proceeded to encourage the committee to investigate the new accounts system, expand the WAGES website, and do a survey of all members. The survey sadly suffered from a "too many cooks" syndrome, as every committee member stuck their oar in and tried to improve it, resulting in a compromise survey, which in the end was not very helpful.

The previous chairperson, Valerie Longworth, was shocked to be deposed, and began a whispering campaign against Carl, with the result that he was voted out in a no-confidence motion near Christmas. The committee then voted not to appoint a new chairperson, but just to elect a chairperson for each committee meeting, and this role has been fulfilled by various folks, particularly Neil Murphy, who proved to be an excellent arbitrator when tempers flared. The wonderful plan to put the accounts system online and make it instantly updated was bitterly fought by Valerie who felt it would mean we would have to close the office and she would have nothing to do on her one-day-weekly visit to Grey Lynn. Consequently, this proposal was ignored, and to this day, the accounts continue to be tediously written out by hand, and are never up to date. This is despite our having been granted about $680 by Western Bays Board to fund a new accounts system, which would have paid for the online system to function for 1½ years.

Committee meetings have generally been a farce this year. No matter what is decided by the committee, the office worker, Valerie, does her own thing as she pleases. I took issue with this in March and interviewed her at the office on why she was arbitrarily ignoring committee decisions, at which she began swearing at me. That interview was typed up and copies sent to all the committee, as well as being added to the website. Last month's committee meeting voted to delete that interview from the website and this has now been done.

But Valerie still persists in ignoring the committee and doing things her way. The most recent case was a decision at last month's committee meeting to post a survey (plus a stamped return envelope) to all members. But Valerie told me she did not want to do that, despite the committee agreeing it shall be done. Her excuse was we had not been left a survey form to xerox by our English visitor Katie Perry, so I have now emailed Katie and requested a copy. Hopefully the new committee can arrange for this to be sent out to all members.

I feel the exchange needs a new direction and new management. Committee meetings are pointless, since whatever is decided is ignored in reality.

Some folks on the present committee have stressed fund-raising, but I question the need for this. Our only expenses are the monthly phone bill and a few stamps, and we receive huge grants which we never spend. We were offered three computers free during the year, and hoped to take up the best of these, but this has yet to happen. The committee did vote to spend $150 on a storage cabinet for the office, which some may see as being questionable expenditure for a small group like ours, but its proponents argued that we need such a cabinet to store our cups and saucers in!

The Committee tried to organise another movie evening as a fund-raiser at the Grey Lynn Community Centre, but sadly, we were told by the Centre co-ordinator that she will not permit WAGES to use the hall for films again, since the last time we did so (May 2001) the projector caught fire and a fire-brigade callout resulted. I think this attitude of the co-ordinator amounts to discrimination and feel we should protest vigorously and complain to the Human Rights Commission. Despite having two of our committee on the Centre management committee, we have not been able to reverse the heavy handed and unfair dictate of their co-ordinator in this regard.

We agreed that it is high time that WAGES adopted a constitution and registered itself as a charitable society or trust. To this end, we requested and got copies of the constitutions of several other Kiwi exchanges, with an eye to producing our own version using the best of these. Sadly nothing has been done to progress this point and no draft constitution has yet been produced as all on the committee declined to accept this chore. I urge the incoming committee to address this issue urgently, as we presently face a very Micky Mouse situation where committee decisions are ignored and committee meetings are often "stacked" as folks bring their friends along to vote measures through.

To summarise: it was a real tragedy that we neglected to adopt the excellent online accounts system offered by a member Harvey Kane. The exchange needs a new constitution and a means of enforcing it. We need to deal responsibly with the unfair treatment we are getting from our landlord, the Community Centre, rather than lying down and letting them kick us. And we need to ensure that members account statements are automated and sent out to members faster. It is pointless to force our office staff to do slave work, when modern technology can bring accuracy, speed, and less drudge for all.

Bruce Grenville, Secretary. 13th September 2002.
bruce@greylynn.zzn.com