“You can run the office without a boss,” Jane Fonda once said, “but you can’t run an office without secretaries.”
On behalf of OPSEU’s entire Executive Board, we want to take the opportunity on Administrative Professionals Day, Apr. 24, to pay tribute to the secretaries, receptionists, clerks, transcriptionists, and administrative assistants who help keep thousands of offices across the province running.
You are the lifeblood of almost every single workplace in which you’ll find OPSEU members — In the Ontario Public Service, the Broader Public Service, Colleges, Schools, Universities, and Municipalities.
Without your skill, professionalism and vast institutional knowledge, the crucial services upon which each and every person in Ontario depends on would quickly grind to a halt.
Through incredible technological change, decades of austerity, and changing demands and expectations, you do your work tirelessly and – all too often – without proper recognition. If there’s a problem, it’s to administrative professionals we often turn to first. And when there’s not a problem – which is the vast majority of the time — we have administrative professionals to thank.
Along with the tens of thousands of administrative professionals in Ontario’s public services, we’d also like to salute the dozens of administrative professionals working for OPSEU and its members.
In our office, and in every single OPSEU office, you and your hard work make OPSEU one of the most successful and powerful unions in the province and in the country.
Thank you, and enjoy the recognition: you deserve it!
In solidarity,
Warren (Smokey) Thomas
OPSEU President
Eduardo (Eddy) Almeida
OPSEU First Vice-President / Treasurer