In attendance: Thomas Morrill, Shannon Andrews, Araby Belcher, Sneha Gantla, Béatrice Moissinac, Lizz Hardardt, Mindy Crandall; guest member Kevin Weitemier; Ashley Bromley, Angela McClendon
Meeting called to order at 2:30 PM
Email Decisions since previous meeting – (1) Approved purchase of 1” button system. (2) Scheduled winter meeting with Ed Ray for February 24 at 11 AM.
AFT-OR EC Meeting – Steve McAllister (GTFF) won the Treasurer position. Devon Hunter (Hillsboro Classified) won the Secretary position. The chief-of-staff search is ongoing. There’s a proposal for a $1 (pro-rated) increase to percaps for one year just for political action that will come to Convention.
Winter School Debrief – Kevin learned some about national and state politics related to upcoming elections. He also learned about the AFT-OR political action fund and is wondering if CGE can put some effort into getting more of our members signed up for the payroll deduction with information about how they can get the annual $50 tax credit. Béatrice participated in the session about worksite leadership and learned about strengthening the steward system. Thomas participated in the financial practices session: he “checked off” several things we’re doing great and learned a few new things we’ll try to implement. (He’ll present these to the EC next week.)
Steward Incentives – There will be reward badges for ongoing coolness. We’ll offer our extra parking space at Westmin for those who do the most orientation/office visit shifts. There will be some awards like the RWH Long-Term Service award and Steward of the Year; these will be nominated by the GMM/SC.
GMM Debrief – Dues Restructure: The amendment proposal failed with a vote of 27 to 26, after a lot of discussion. Sneha received feedback with concern about the legitimacy of a vote by 50 people that affects over 1,000 members – even though everyone had advanced notice. She (and others) also felt concerned about voting seen as an officer (not an individual). In the future, we should probably do a secret ballot, but we feel that keeping it in-person is important. Mindy has a few concerns about the process, especially that the dues committee (who had the closest understanding) felt unable to advocate for lowering dues because they may have felt they had to be a “neutral” facilitator of the discussion. (1) We’re going to report to the membership how the vote went (as well as what else happened at the GMM). Araby is working on an update for the next all-member email. (2) We’re going to invite Sean to the next EC meeting to talk with him using “I statements.” (3) We’d planned to reconvene the budget committee anyway once we have a good sense of what the additional revenue looks like.
Salem Testimony – AFT-OR brought to our attention a proposal to amend the institutional board language so that there’s a guaranteed spot for a graduate student (as well as an undergrad). This is tomorrow morning at 8 AM. Lizz will speak to the grad students’ perspective on the importance of having a seat on the board.
AFT Higher Ed Conference – Lizz will represent AFT-OR there (this is in April in Baltimore). That means we’ll be able to send 2 (additional) members to Spring AGEL!
Labor Notes Conference – This is the weekend of AFT-OR Convention, so unfortunately we won’t be able to send anyone.
Child Care Subsidy – Terese estimated her child care costs at around $42 for Saturday’s long B-Team training session. The EC approves reimbursing her for that whole amount (rather than the $30 from the GMM policy). We also need to have an amount set for SC meetings; we’ll determine this next week.
Meal Reimbursement Revisited – Thomas had some concern about being reimbursed a little more than he spent for dinner. We still prefer to have a flat rate policy for meals as discussed in August.
Info Request re: Hourly Employees – Ashley couldn’t find a very similar document so she and Lizz will create what they need.
Safety Survey – Ashley will email the rep list once more to remind them to remind their departments to fill out the survey.
GTFF – Dave Cecil wants to meet with Ashley this Friday to talk about Convention stuff. GTFF is having a bargaining session Friday afternoon as well. Lizz and Kevin are both interested in going along.
T-Shirt Design – Shannon is going to announce the design contest on fbook, reps list, social list.
AGEL Call – Sneha will be calling in tonight at 6 PM.
Switching to Bitcasa – Forrest found a new online back-up service that would give us quite a lot more storage space and only cost about $3 more per year compared to the current setup with Mozy. Angela will see what we need to do to make this happen.
New Printer – While the dues committee was working in the fall, Alex found a new machine that we could purchase (rather than lease) that includes color printing! And it could actually save us money after a few years. The EC is excited about moving forward on getting this. Angela will talk with Alex and see what we need to do to make it happen.
Executive Session
Meeting adjourned at 4:30 PM