And it's not just manufacturing Chuck. My employer's expectation is 50 hours a week. Add to the fact that I'm an hour's drive from SLC, why I'm only at some of the club meetings. /R ________________________________ From: Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 7:34 AM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] SLAS Pres 2015 Lack of willing people to run for office may be a sign of the times. To be active in a club like this requires a certain amount of free time on a regular basis. More and more, the main demographic for people who have such time are those who are retired or whose jobs have flexible hours with regular access to paid time-off. Most new jobs I've seen don't have flexible hours, at least around here, in my line of work. We take our time-off during slow periods or between contracts- when they happen. Time-off can't be scheduled in advance, typically a few days notice is all you get. Such is the nature of custom manufacturing. We don't build inventories. I've also seen the workday start gradually earlier over the last 30 years, from 8AM to now 5AM in many related industries. That precludes weeknight meetings, period. The club has greyed over the years (most astro clubs across the country have, from what I read). As the economy shifts and jobs change, it's likely that the average worker will have less and less regular free time as the 21st century progresses. I've read that Americans have the longest workweek in terms of hours on the job, of just about any developed nation. The pool of potential candidates is probably only going to get smaller over the next few decades. On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 3:13 PM, Rodger C. Fry <rcfry@comcast.net> wrote:
The point is, we have a great society and it has become that by the dedicated work of its officers and the volunteer contributions of all the members. I am certain that when it is all said and done, we will be able to have all board positions filled with capable volunteers that will bring something to add to the strength of the society in the future.
If we can't do this, perhaps it is time to disband the society
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