In attendance: Drew Hatlen, Kris Osterloh, Shannon Andrews, Thomas Morrill, Béatrice Moissinac, Gloria Ambrowiak; Ashley Bromley, Angela McClendon
Meeting called to order at 6:10 PM
Minutes from 1-8-2014 Meeting – Approved with Thomas’s edit to finish a sentence.
Email Decisions – (1) Approved all-member email about applying for AFT-OR scholarships and awards. (2) Approved all-member email about GMM. (3) Approved Convention delegate nomination form.
Steward Council Debrief – This was on Tuesday. We had a very participatory group this time who brought up many good points and/or questions.
1. Parking permit payroll deductions: Faculty and staff have the option of paying for their parking passes with monthly payroll deductions. It’s not an option for grad employees. This is an issue of grad employees being in the system as “just” students rather than student employees. We’ll bring this to the next Ed Ray meeting with the aim of having it available for fall term.
2. Anthropology increasing class size: This issue has come up as a result of bargaining for higher FTE for instructors. Thomas will communicate with Dave Blake and Viki Dimick.
3. Tuition remission concerns: A steward from CEOAS emailed to ask for more information he can use to talk with people about OSU’s changing politics toward 0.2 FTE appointments vs higher FTE. Ashley drafted a helpful response. Ashley will also send the information over the reps list.
4. Lowering dues: The question came up again. We’ll add this to the GMM agenda; Shannon will ask Amir to co-present at the GMM. Then we’ll begin to form a committee; Amir and Sean have both expressed willingness to work on this. In talking about the dues committee, we remembered how imperfect and uncomfortable the voting process was last year. Based on the last EC’s recommendations, we’d want to have a secret ballot if we do end up voting on dues again. Then we reminded ourselves that we want to put together a committee to re-evaluate how CGE runs elections/ratifications/votes in general, particularly as we head toward important votes on officers, dues, etc. This reminded Ashley of recently reading the UM GEO’s bargaining handbook and that a lot of locals have the membership vote to confirm their bargaining team. We don’t currently do that, meaning the membership has no control over who makes up what is arguably the most powerful group within CGE. The EC agrees it would be worth thinking about have CGE’s membership confirm the B-Team, perhaps at the Fall GMM.
5. Grads in MPP don’t have offices: No one is really complaining about the issue right now, but we know the grads are entitled to office space. However, we really want to be careful not to push for movement that the grads aren’t comfortable asking for. We’ll talk with the department head and steward first. If it’s okay with them, we’ll bring it up to Ed/Dave.
6. SWLF 0.45 FTE for 2 separate courses: It’s complicated – we feel like instructors of record should be getting 0.3 FTE for each course, but it’s not necessarily a contract violation. Thomas will talk with André for clarification.
7. Appointment letter updates: These are still not all correct. Shannon will send a reminder email to Dave and Viki.
8. Non-BU employment: Thomas is trying to set up a conversation with Heather from physics.
9. Quorum for strike authorization: The strike committee presented their proposed language to make a requirement of a minimum percentage of members for a vote for a strike authorization. For the Winter GMM, we’ll have them present the 30% quorum idea and request feedback and further conversation, before a vote for amendment at the Spring GMM.
Audit/Fair Share Update – We did receive a timeline update from the CPAs, so we’re expecting a draft of the audit report tomorrow and a fair-share calculation early next week. Also, Ashley emailed Mike Tedesco regarding the complaint email, and his associate Julie talked with Ashley today. Julie will do more research about various parts of the situation, and Ashley will update us on her advice. Ashley will also call the CPAs tomorrow to convey that their lack of timeliness could be putting CGE at risk.
Game Night – Next Thursday at the Senior Center. Gloria will work on promotion.
Convention – (1) Nominations: Nominations for delegates are now open. (2) Resolutions: There are like a hundred people on this committee. There have been a lot of suggestions for the committee to work on.
Staples Boycott – The American Postal Workers Union called us this week to ask if we’re boycotting Staples. The APWU is running a campaign against the rather shady deal between USPS managers and Staples to establish “postal counters” at Staples stores that customers can use instead of going to post offices (basically outsourcing bargaining-unit work). The campaign has been endorsed nationally by AFL-CIO, AFT, NEA, AFSCME, and SEIU. CGE (ie, Angela) will no longer buy CGE’s office supplies from Staples. Kris will email the Social List with the information from the APWU campaign.
Ed Ray Meeting – (1) Confirm Time: There are options on Tuesday 2/3 and Thursday 2/5. We’ll ask Alisha to confirm Tuesday at 10 AM. (2) Agenda: We have quite a list in development.
Transfer to Fair Share Money Market – Angela will move the funds we received for December’s fair share deductions into the FSMM account. (The account already has funds in it enough for October and November’s fair share fees.)
Ink Purchase – The EC approves Ashley buying new ink ($640).
Meeting ended at 8 PM