Fiscal Trend Section of the 1993-4 FY Audit Cmte. of the IWW Report THIS IS A FIRST DRAFT ONLY, AND *NOT* FOR PUBLICATION OR CIRCULATION!!! --X341697, of the '93-4 Audit Cmte. THREE-YEAR TRENDS ----------------- One of the three segments the Audit Committee decided to do as part of our work was to go over the Fiscal Year (FY) statements for the last three years, in order to get a better sense of how the Union, and its General Administration, have handled the expenditure of economic resources. We also looked at income. While strictly speaking not something we're demanded to do by the Constitution, we felt that this sort of look at Union finances would be to the benefit of the entirety of the membership, and as the Constitution doesn't forbid us to do it (in fact, that part of the Constitution is particularly, um, General-- see Art. VI, Sec. 9, all three lines of it). We felt it would behoove all to take a look at the following. It is apparent to those of us serving on this particular Audit Committee that, in general, Union resources have been expended over time according to the wishes of the membership, as expressed in referendum. We say "in general" because we did not pore over the last three year's worth of referenda, but instead feel confident in our grasp of the Union's will thus expressed over the last three years. As with all things, there's good news, and bad. First, the good news: DUES INCOME, by FY, all categories excluding initiations and assessments ----------- FY 1991-2 --> $15,915.31 FY 1992-3 --> $13,715.68 FY 1993-4 --> $19,234.33 We see this as a distinct trend towards growth, as measured by members who pay their dues on any sort of regular basis. Assesment stamp sales increased as well, especially in the FY under our direct jurisdiction, at least at the GA level. A mitigating factor is that Initiation income held steady, which implies that people aren't joining any faster, just paying dues longer. All this means that our membership is increasing, and that is an unmitigated Good Thing. The IWW's Lit operations have consistent income figures for all three years-- about $4,000. Though we expended more on lit operations than we brought in for all three years, Lit has the smallest income/outlay ratio gap of any project in the Union, and we feel that this speaks well of our Lit operations. While we couldn't help but notice all the thousands of dollars expended on a Songbook that has never appeared for distribution, all those expenditures were outside of our FY, and thus we do not feel we have the power, in this context, to demand an accounting. But we do wonder. IW income held steady all three FY's too, at around $4000. IW expenditures have mushroomed meanwhile, but the IW Co-ordinator has acknowledged the failure of the iW Growth Plan passed last year, and committed to an outlay of no more than three times the income from IW publication. Further, as the question is currently being put directly to the UNion for a vote, we feel that this category of deficit is well under the control of the membership. The GDC, whose accounts have been closed out upon the expenditure of the $25,000 granted to FWs Bari and Cherney to pursue justice in the wake of the assasination attempt they endured, has flatlined in the past FY, both in terms of income as well as of expenditure. All monies are accounted for responsibly, by the way. Our income total has declined somewhat, but only by average. It held steady over the last FY, from the year before, at around $40,000. The membership growth is there, our public operations hold steady as measured by income therefrom, but our defecit has a pernicious momentum of its own. Which brings us to: THE BAD NEWS, which has actually been mitigated over the last FY. We feel this is in good part to the diligently fiscally conservative administration of this year's GEB and GST Rush. This is elucidated elsewhere (as our term of duty overlaps two administrations). However, even with this new fiscal responsibility in evidence, the defecit has steadily grown, especially as surrounds our two union-wide projects-- the IW and GHQ. This is the fault of no administrator-- it is instead the results of the way the union keeps voting. GST Rush has made the very best of a bad situation. He cut expenditures on paid office hours through attrition and increased voluntarism, leading the way by example. If not utterly politically correct, we feel this was the best possible alternative (as opposed to either a wage/benefits cut or the closing of GHQ). After all, we haven't caused unemployment, this system has and it's all our job to eradicate that. We can't do that by hiring everyone who wants a job (not yet, at least)! Even with an increase of 10 paid hours of work for a while late last year (that's 25%, folks), this FY's expenditure on the *single most expensive* item of unionwide expenditure-- office workers-- actually dropped by FY's end. Though not ideal, we feel that this has been an elegant enough solution. Our gross expenditures over the last FY have been reduced by almost 30%. This is good news, and mitigates as much as the defecit itself aggregates. How did we do it:? The answer to this question concerns this Audit Committee. In FY 1992-3, this Union spent $17,372.08 on activities officially categorized as Organizing. We further believe that the figures show, in the FY under our scrutiny, real and promising progress being made on the membership front. In FY 1993-4, the total of funds expended on official Organizing activities (the second of our three stars) was $2000. Last year's Audit Committee expressed a concern that of all funds expended that FY, only "less than 16%" of monies spent that FY were for the purpose of organizing. This FY, that figure has dropped to LESS THAN 2%. We must emphasize that this is in no way an indicator of malfeasance on the part of anyone in the General Administration of our Union, but rather, it is true to the proorities our UNion has set through recent referenda, which is (after all) the closest thing we have to an actual budget process. However, even with all the other factors taken into account, we can't help but notice how close the amount our UNion saved on organizing is to the actual decrease in the Unionwide defecit. We find this disturbing, as such "savings" undercut our ability to achieve future growth. An untilled field yields little harvest. We are concerned that apparent savings now will actually undermine our potential for future benefit, that our defecit decrease this year is one of those "quick fixes" you've been hearing so much about, the kind that leave the mess to be cleaned up later. Again, we stress that this is no matter of malfeasance on the part of anyone in a position of GA responsibility over the last FY. Rather, it is the priorities our Union has set for the expenditure of what funds we currently have. We respectfully submit our deep concern over this seam in our budget to the whole of the membership for further comtemplation and discussion. As are so many others in this Depression-scale disaster of global-capitalist economy, we are going without food in order to pay the rent. That is a real alternative to being fat in the rain, but it bears the calling of it to the attention of the IWW as a whole.