In attendance: Stephanie Parreira, Thomas Morrill, Vance Almquist, Clint Mattox (late!), Zhian Kamvar (late!); special guest B-Team member Dixie Daniels; Ashley Bromley, Angela McClendon

Meeting called to order at 5:21 PM

Minutes from 3-31-2016 – Approved.

Email Decisions – (1) Approved email to ASOSU presidential candidates to invite them to speak with the Steward Council. (2) Approved all-member email about bargaining, GMM, and EC/SC/ASOSU elections. (3) Approved Ashley cancelling one of our AFT-OR Convention hotel rooms because enough delegates have dropped out that we have too much space.

Labor Notes Debrief – Ashley attended this conference in Chicago last weekend. There were a TON of people there and a TON of sessions about useful things like union democracy and the role of staff in member-led unions. She felt it was really educational and really good to be around different groups of unionists, not just higher education people. She suggests CGE consider sending a group of members in the future.

Game Night Debrief – It was pretty good! Stephanie felt like a few people were confused that CGE didn’t buy pizza this time (they actually just took some of hers). At our last meeting, the EC decided that CGE would just buy some beer and soda; we spent about $90 of the $120 we’d budgeted. The gaming group wasn’t as big as last term’s, but they stayed to play until around 10 PM. Dixie participated and had a lot of fun.

Alliance for a Socially Just University Meeting Debrief – Clint attended the monthly meeting yesterday along with just a few other people. They talked about doing a Howard Bunsis Q&A session for about an hour via video-conference in Week 7; they’re looking at a Tuesday although Clint told them Tuesdays & Thursdays are bad for getting CGE folks there. Clint told Tony he’d get back to them about whether 6 or 7 PM would be better; we feel like earlier would be better (like 5:30?) for catching people before they go home from campus. The group is also interested in holding a mock Board of Trustees meeting (as a demonstration, eg on the MU Quad) during the next actual BOT meeting.

Steward Council Meeting Debrief – This was on Tuesday; turnout was around 27. Vance feels like it was pretty good and overall had some good conversations. Several of the stewards left immediately after the individual department check-ins. It was a little disappointing to see that they seemed to think the discussion portions of the latter part of the meeting was not important. However, at least a couple of them had also attended the convention delegate meeting just before, so Ashley thinks they just ran out of the time they could spend on CGE business that evening. Clint suggests asking the stewards whether they found the introductions of the ASOSU candidates to be useful and informative. Everyone agrees that the salad bar was good! Ashley and Dixie suggest that starting the meetings half an hour earlier (food at 5, business at 5:30) would be really helpful for a lot of the stewards.

AFT-OR Convention – This coming weekend!

• We still need to do shopping for groceries and liquor. Ashley already emailed a shopping list. Thomas and Ashley will get groceries after tonight’s meeting. Clint will get liquor.
• We’ll ask Sean to pick up the reserved beer (Flat Tail) and cider (2 Towns) tomorrow.
• Our convention credential cards still need to be signed by Kris and Chris, neither of whom was able to make it to tonight’s meeting. We’re hoping they’ll sign them when we get to Portland tomorrow, although it means our delegation may not be able to be seated on time.

Office Visits – These are coming up next week! Ashley printed out the spring term social calendar and bargaining calendar for approval; they are approved. She’s also emailed the office visit shift sign-up doc, so everyone should sign up! Tonight!

Sick Leave Timesheets – We received emails today from a few people in the College of Engineering about emails they’d gotten from their HR staff, saying all grad employees need to fill out monthly timesheets to track their paid sick leave accrual and usage. Ashley and Thomas think the information in the email was not quite accurate or in keeping with their understanding of the implementation of the sick leave policy. Ashley emailed Donna Chastain and Viki Dimick about it. We’ll push HR to send out clearer, corrective information. When we hear back from them, we’ll pass the information along as well.

Letter to UNB Board of Governors – Stephanie will write a letter this weekend.

Salary Data to a Member – Someone emailed Kris saying they think they’re being paid less than they ought to be and requesting salary information for grad employees in their college. The EC agrees that sending an anonymized list of salary, FTE, and job title for the college to this member would be okay.

Solidarity Fair – Ashley’s been attending the planning meetings for the annual solidarity fair (which will be in late May). She would like some officers to start attending too. Clint will plan to go to many of the meetings, and Vance says he can go to some of them as well.

Fair Share Back Charge – In the last few days, we’ve learned about a few grad employees whose employment was misclassified outside the bargaining unit for one or more terms, and who saw in their March paychecks a CGE deduction for 3 to 6 months, all at once. For the short term, the EC agrees that it would be appropriate to offer a refund to those grads for the back charge portion of the deduction if it’s put them in a financial hardship. The EC requests that Ashley also ask them if they had been receiving the contract benefits of a BU position without paying fair share (eg, health insurance contribution, fee relief). For the longer term, the EC agrees that we should bring this misclassification issue to the OSU admin and tell them to fix it so it won’t happen in the future.

All-Member Email – We’d like to send an all-member email tomorrow morning: ASOSU voting reminder, bargaining reminder (Monday & Friday sessions), and GMM reminder (with FB event). Thomas and Clint will write this.

Meeting adjourned at 6:28 PM