Penny Whitney-Asdourian named as recipient of our 2024 MSEA-SEIU Lifetime Achievement Award!

 

MSEA-SEIU Retirees Steering Committee Chair Ginette Rivard, at right, and MSEA-SEIU President Mark Brunton, at left, present our 2024 MSEA-SEIU Lifetime Achievement Award to MSEA-SEIU Retiree Member Penny Whitney-Asdourian

By Ginette Rivard, Chair, MSEA-SEIU Retirees Steering Committee

Good afternoon brothers and sisters.

The Retiree Steering Committee established the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016 in order to recognize a retiree member who has distinguished themselves through their leadership throughout their years as a union member and has made a significant contribution to further the goals of our union. All MSEA Retirees are eligible for this recognition and all members are invited to submit nominations.

Some of our past recipients are no longer with us. I ask for a moment of silence as we remember Bill Deering, Bob Galloupe, Billy Noyes, Jackie Roach and Ben Conant.

Past honorees who are here today are Bob Ruhlin, Lois Baxter, Steven Keaten and Jane Gilbert. Please stand as we show our appreciation.

A committee of three past recipients reviewed the submitted nominations and selected this year’s recipient.

Our honoree is well known and respected by their union brothers and sisters. Before I go into some of the reasons for this year’s selection, please join me in congratulating the 2024 recipient of the MSEA-SEIU Local 1989 Lifetime Achievement Award, Penny Whitney-Asdourian.

It is not easy to summarize the role Penny has had and continues to have in our union and the labor movement in Maine in general. I will attempt to give you a sampling of Penny’s work on behalf of working people in Maine. Penny has demonstrated her leadership skills in many ways throughout her career with the Judicial Branch and as a retiree. From Chapter President, Board of Directors, Lead on her bargaining team as well as special assignments such as Chair of the Resolutions Committee and others, Penny always has the welfare of all members at heart. Being a leader goes beyond holding positions in any organization though. The member who nominated Penny said it best when he said, “I have always listened when Penny speaks because I know she has done her homework and knows what she is talking about.”

Penny was a key player in getting Judicial Branch workers to become MSEA members and then made sure they always had a seat at the table; the bargaining table, the legislative table, the Board of Directors table.

Stronger Together isn’t just a slogan for Penny. She has developed and cultivated relationships with other unions. She is there when other union brothers and sisters need us and they in turn have often come to our support. She truly embodies what it means when we say SOLIDARITY.

Every retiree knows the impact of the Social Security offsets; namely the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO). Penny is undeterred in working on these issues. This has taken her to a lobby day in Washington, D.C. Upon return to Maine, she has continued to advocate for legislation to ‘fix the offsets’ and has kept us informed through the Facebook page dedicated to this issue. Penny is our go to person on the status of this federal legislation.

Penny represents MSEA retirees on the SEIU Union Forever work group. MSEA retirees are now the talk of other SEIU retiree groups. That’s because she told them about our retiree website https://msearetirees.org/ and they now visit our website. Not exactly going viral but clearly we are viewed as leaders in the SEIU retiree world because Penny has been talking us up with pride.

Each legislative session, there are any number of bills that can have an impact on our retiree benefits. Whether a bill would harm us or be of benefit, Penny can always be counted on to call legislators, write letters to the editor, present testimony; in other words, do whatever needs to be done to convey the importance of these proposals to our retirees.

Penny makes sure that her retiree chapter is active and informed. She serves on the Retiree Steering Committee where she advocates on behalf of all retirees and is typically the first to volunteer to take minutes.

And just this weekend she arrived with a beautiful handmade quilt she donated for a raffle to benefit PASER.

I hope this gives you a sense of why it was easy to select Penny for this year’s recognition. Once again, please  join me in congratulating Penny Whitney-Asdourian.