EC Meeting Agenda 8/14/18

Facilitator: Erin Abernathy
Vibes Watcher:
Time Keeper: Val Fraser
Notetaker: Emory Colvin

Attendance: Alex Riccio, Valerie Fraser, Erin Abernathy, Emory Colvin, Azadeh Ghanizadeh

Meeting began: 5:05

Ice-breaker: Labor Notes quick quiz.

• Be cognizant of departments that are toxic and come up with ways to communicate with people.
• General membership meetings – come up with ways to get more people engaged, not just white voices all the time.
• Need better updates between bargaining team and members. Also a feeling with the bargaining team that there wasn’t much to do (no feedback from OSU team).
• Make sure to focus on benefits and solidarity for recruitment.

Alex took notes on the consensus answers so we can compare at the end of the year.

• Slack Approvals

• Approvals:

• EC Meeting Minutes 7/31/18 -> Do at next meeting when they’ve been redacted for public posting.

Continuing Business

• Staff Transition Plan: Wait on hiring Business Manager; Check in with Alex each week

• Is everything getting done on time?
  • Created a financial calendar to keep track of when things are due.
• Do officers need to do more?
  • Will probably need help in the future to input membership cards, especially in September, October.
• Does temporary help need to be hired?

• Longevity Committee: Emory, Kali, and Erin expressed willingness to serve on the committee. We need to set a date for the first meeting of this committee.

• Tentatively Mon Aug 20 at 5.

• Blue Cards: Checking in with GTFF, they have decided not to change their dues language for the time being. They feel like they won’t be getting a lot of folks opting out, and they want to wait to see if issues arise before changing the language. Also checked with AFT rep Jess Foster and she said she doesn’t think it’s a serious mistake not to change the language, and there could be value in waiting to see what happens first.

• On a related note, the Blue Cards box has seemed to disappear or we actually used them all last year and we need to order blue cards regardless if we change the language or not.
• 400 new cards should get us through fall.

• Alex: look for cost. Already in the budget.

• Social Media Engagement: Lzz created a template for all EC officers to put a human face to the titles for our members. Fill out your info here. *Please email your photo (640×640+) to Lzz

• Strategic Goals Materials: Erin will print poster at library and should be ready by Wednesday.

• Orientation Powerpoint: Has everyone looked at the powerpoint? Are there thoughts about revisions/additions?

• Steward Toolkit: Completed and a great resource for folks on our Executive Council as well! Check out the section on Office Visits/organizing conversations.

• Per-caps convention: Hold new election or use delegate list from last convention?
  • Send 5 (one car-full). Use delegate list from last convention (otherwise have to do physical mailers to notify members of new election). Erin: send email to list asking who wants to go (mention asking for 4 volunteers)
  • Which amendment (4 choices) do we support?
    • Amendment 4 saves CGE the most money (47k) but leaves AFT-OR with 80k less.
    • Amendment 1 is the best for AFT-OR with only 40k less, and still saves CGE 14k/yr.
  • Plan to talk to GTFF (likely want amendment 4) and GEU about their choice as well. Erin: Call Mike to see what their plan is.

• Translated Materials: Before we can send the email to the membership soliciting translators, we need to:

• approve a budget line with an amount per translation

• be prepared to tell potential translators the amount of compensation we are offering.
• EC can then finalize and approve draft email, to be sent out by Lzz asap.

• Maybe look at videos instead, with members speaking in their own language, addressing this in terms of their own language and their own cultural contexts. Alter email to ask for volunteers.

• Joint Corvallis Union Event: First meeting on Thursday, Aug 16 1pm at Westminster House. Clint and Alex will attend, anyone else from the EC want to be a part of this?

• Emory can you reach out to Chris from SEIU to see if he can join?
• Any stewards we should invite? Erin: check with DuBose

• Measure 105 Workshop: Anyone that wishes to attend a workshop on educating against Measure 105 (an anti-immigrant ballot measure) the date for the event is August 14th, 6:30pm at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis 2945 NW Circle Boulevard Corvallis, OR 97330.

• Ed Ray Meeting: re-scheduled for September 26, 10-11am Kerr 6th floor.

• AFT-OR Hiring Process, we were asked by GTFF/GEU to sign on to a letter about the hiring process for AFT-OR Field Staff – forwarded this afternoon to the EC email account
  • People should read it, decision over Slack.

New Business

• AFT-National update (5:55-6:30, sometime then): Sami is going to come give us his update

• Since Janus, now feel freer to put a lot more politics in things like this.
• Resolutions: passed sanctuary status resolution (for both university & k12 level) – made it easy for groups to implement; many others did not pass. Oregon had ~25 folks, but very few from the higher ed locals. Need people in the committees to speak for the resolutions if we want to pass them. Things won’t pass if it’s just from a higher ed perspective.
• Progressive caucus: $25 to be there, and then weeks in advance they debate and decide on what they are going to pass, what they want to amend, and what they have to defeat. Have to have people there to tell the right narrative in the beginning. They control the mics on the floor as well.
• Next convention is in Houston, the one after that might be in the PNW.
• Maybe limit resolutions going to AFT-national to 5 or less, depending on how many people are going to the convention.

• We are the only local in Oregon that does not do endorsements on the state/local level, so we should revisit this to work on getting more pro-union candidates in office (as much as we don’t want it to, money is speech)

• Need to focus on conversations on a small level, not in large groups.

• Boot this to the next meeting as a larger discussion.

• Uncomfortable with endorsing, but think about sending out questions about stuff CGE cares about to all candidates.

• Steward Appointment: Sarah Erickson would like to be appointed as an interim steward in Mathematics. We currently have zero stewards in this department with a total possible number of 5.

• +4 votes, need one more

• David DuBose (Integrative Biology) is requesting that we appoint him as an additional steward (only have 2, I think Integrative Biology can have 5). Yay more stewards!

• +4 votes, need one more

• Member Organizer: AFT-OR willing to pay, still costs CGE $100/month

• Do we want to continue this program/ approve this expense?
• Azadeh felt it was useful, but wasn’t manageable. Productive, but both were burning out even in the 3 months.
• We’re in favor, but want to generate some recs for AFT to modify it to avoid burnout.
• Allow locals to manage it more directly, especially in cases where there is local staff.

• Alex ask: How long are we obligated to do this? As far as $$, we need more info before we can commit.

• Membership Blitz: Final round of house visits on Thursday, 4:30-7:00. One steward and Jess Foster have agreed to participate. Can anyone else join?
• Hustle Campaign: To complement our house visit efforts, I would like the EC to consider initiating a hustle campaign.
  • We can target only non-members with current appointments.
  • First ask can be to fill out the survey with an online link.
  • People that express interest, we ask to sign an online membership card.
  • Alex can set up the draft texts and have Lzz look over and make improvements. We can set the campaign to start by August 21.
  • Good to go.
• Draft of Constitutional Amendments: The Constitution & Bylaws Committee has generated an initial draft of proposed changes/amendments to the CGE Constitution & Bylaws. Please review this document and ask any questions or make general comments about changes to the language. The total package of proposals will be re-submitted to the Executive Council by September 11th for approval to be sent to the general membership by September 18th.
  • Currently the plan is to break up the proposals into general themes and allow members to vote on specific proposals for approval rather than an all or nothing approach.

• All EC: look at this by the end of August

• Faculty Bargaining Discussion: We’ve been invited to attend the UAOSU meeting on October 2 to discuss our experiences in bargaining with faculty union. Meeting goes from 6-8pm and UAOSU is asking us if we have a preference for when we arrive. They estimate our conversation will take roughly 30 minutes.

• Emory will touch base with Hazel

• Website improvements: Lzz and Alex have discussed ways to make the website look better and more readable. There are some templates we could quickly change to that would right away overhaul the whole design, but make a much cleaner and easier to modify site. Are EC folks ok with us potentially changing how the website looks completely?

• All in favor

• AFL-CIO Training: Just an FYI, we booked Westminster for some AFL organizers on Sep. 11 5:30-7:30 to do a specific training on how to have difficult conversations and particularly how to talk to folks that want to opt-out of their union. More info to come, mark you calendars

• Bargaining: Need to have another meeting with OSU about removing fair share language from the contract before the new language is voted on.

• This should be an uncontroversial meeting, but this would be a good time to adjust the language to reflect the current legality of fair share.

• Alex is in communication with OSU regarding this process, HR will schedule a time to meet.

• Grad Local Meetup:

• August 28 from 12-2pm at WestM but be here ~11:30 for lunch
• Purpose is to get all three Oregon grad locals together to have a discussion about specific needs grad locals experience, and how might we work better with AFT to have these needs met.
• Mike at GTFF also suggested we do one without AFT

Future Business

• Budget Committee: need to form a committee that regularly meets

• Who wants to help organize? – Clint

• Erin and Emory as helpers

• Write email saying we’re forming the committee and looking for members to be on it.

• Fall BBQ Recognition: We want to visit the idea of having CGE members “recognized” for appreciation that our VP Social Justice thought of at the end of the year.

• Alex: touch base with Micknai for info/getting started

• Potential ideas for printing awards, projector

• Steward Retreat: How do we feel about doing a single-day (afternoon) retreat at the Rotary Shelter in Willamette Park? The Shelter has electricity, grills, and water access so we could do a small picnic at the Shelter and host a retreat that focuses mainly on relationship building (since we’re doing separate trainings for orientations, one-on-ones, etc.)

• Costs for a 4-hour block on a Saturday is $106, plus alcohol and sound would be grand total of $130 and then basic food costs (for roughly 30-40 people).
• Date we’re looking at is Saturday, October 27. Could do either 1-4 or 6-10pm.

• Kali: email them with this idea, along with maybe the idea of coming in costume?

• One activity we could do is having Stewards screen print their t-shirts since we would have access to a sink.

• First Full EC Meeting: We should spend time at the beginning with each of us describing our officer roles to each other so that we are all on the same page and understand what is expected of each other.

• I think we also need to go over group agreements about how we should operate in meetings and creating a culture of care, as well as have a longer discussion on why each person wanted to be in the EC, the direction they want CGE to go and their role in that direction as @an EC member.
• Can we set the date for this yet so we can prepare for all of this beforehand and also get through whatever else will be on the agenda?

• Screen Printing Shirts: Erin ordered supplies (using her money) for everything but shirts.

• How do we want to handle the shirts?

• Organize files on computer

• Brew Off Committee: regularly check in with this group. Meeting soon. Probably will be in the spring.

• Eugene training debrief: Alex will try to get Nick Fisher to come and talk about this

• Entering new membership cards

Meeting Adjourned: 7:10