In attendance: Thomas Morrill, Alisha Jones, Gloria Ambrowiak, Drew Hatlen, Shannon Andrews, Kris Osterloh, Béatrice Moissinac; guest members Kevin Weitemier and Chris Mihiar; Ashley Bromley, Angela McClendon
Meeting called to order at 6:05 PM
Minutes from 1-20-2015 Meeting – Approved
Online Payment – Approved Angela paying our year-end Fed payroll liability online
Email Decisions – (1) Approved audit reports from Kern & Thompson. (2) Approved all-member email.
Fair Share Complaint Update – Last Friday, we emailed out the fair share notice to all non-members. Shannon also emailed the EC’s reply specifically to the complainant, who sent back a response to the EC list (CCing Tedesco and a member from CBEE(?)). Ashley talked with Julie from TLG today. She suggested we respond (briefly) with reasoning from case law, and going forward say as little as possible. The EC approves Ashley requesting that Julie work on this.
Electronic Fair Share Refund Requests – The EC agrees that email requests will be accepted if they are (1) a digitally signed PDF or (2) a scan/photo of a physically signed letter.
Refund Request Continuations – Ashley raises the question of whether we should automatically send refunds (just for Fall 2014) to the people who requested them last year because we weren’t able to send out the rate & refund notice as anticipated in the fall. We would remind them that they need to renew their objection for 2015. The EC agrees that this will be acting in good faith.
Game Night Debrief – There was a miscommunication with the Senior Center about when we needed the room; Gloria and Ashley showed up and it was dark and locked. They decided to move the game night to Woodstock’s instead. Gloria thinks Woodstock’s was a good location for socializing. Unfortunately, buying pizzas and pitchers costs more than we’d planned on spending (we only planned on popcorn, above the cost of the room rental). The EC is all in favor of holding the next game night at Woodstock’s. For next time, the EC approves spending about $80 for pizza (the cost of the Senior Center room), and people will need to buy their own drinks. The EC furthermore approves reimbursing Ashley for her expenses from last week. Ashley will talk with Natalie at the Senior Center about cancelling our spring term reservation and our account balance.
Winter School Debrief – We sent a bunch of people, they learned a lot, and they had a good time! Kevin and Nikki went to the workshop about organizing on political issues; Kevin says AFT-OR didn’t push too much on CGE’s policy of non-politicalism. Kevin and Thomas attended the bargaining workshop. Kevin and Ashley went to the How To Manage A Meeting meeting, which had some useful suggestions. One great idea (which we’ve used previously but not this year) is to have a “parking lot” for suggestions that come up in a meeting but aren’t relevant to the topic at hand or won’t fit into the current agenda. Shannon and Gloria went to the workshop about organizing around issues. One issue they brought up is that the wait staff at the hotel who were working at the Winter School meals would not receive tips for their work for us, like they would usually receive for working in the attached restaurant; the group organized around this and actually raised a good bit of cash for their tips. Thomas and Ashley went to a workshop on organizing worksite leaders. Ashley felt it was weaker than last year’s. Ashley attended the workshop on union elections. It is absolutely clear that we must send out paper notices in the mail for elections; it is pretty clear that we can do online voting (and Ashley learned about some new platforms). Shannon, Drew, and Chris went to the best financial practices workshop and had difficulty pinning down exactly how much we ought to have in reserves (3 months? 6? 1 year?); we’ll be sure to talk about this in our upcoming budget review. (Also, there’s a reminder here for us to send our audit to AFT Nat’l now that it’s complete; Angela will work on that.) Nikki emailed some thoughts to Ashley: she felt like some parts of the weekend could have been better organized and that some of the discussions were focused on surface issues rather than discussing the underlying issues that are more important to organize around. Chris agrees that many times, underlying issues were missing from discussion. Chris is also excited about working on mapping for office visits; Béatrice agrees this would be useful. Gloria and Kris went to the communications workshop but didn’t feel like it was very helpful, other than that Kris is now excited about starting a Pinterest account for CGE. Gloria and Thomas went to Grievance 101; it’s pretty clear that CGE has fewer grievances than average! Kris went to the resolution-writing workshop and received a template that he’ll share. Kris also went to a workshop about bullying and learned about what to do if it happens. Also in the financial practices workshop, Shannon learned that the standard of fair share payers needing to annually renew their objections (to receive refunds) is definitely within the law.
AFT-OR EC Meeting Debrief – Kevin’s report: The EC received a budget update that things are pretty positive (largely due to adding UAUO); they approved a couple long-term expenses. AFT-OR has hired an interim political affairs director and a temporary bargaining research staff (because a lot of Oregon locals will start bargaining soon). Great news: AFT-OR approved CGE’s request for financial aid related to last year’s arbitration (once we get the info from AFT-OR, Angela will send our request to AFT Nat’l).
HIAC Meeting Update – Yesterday we had a HIAC meeting between CGE’s group and OSU’s regarding improvements to the summer health insurance system. They seemed pretty receptive to both (1) changing summer sign-up to opt-out rather than opt-in, and (2) moving to a 3-month payment plan through spring term (instead of all in one month). We can’t make any promises yet but we’re hopeful.
Family Issues Caucus Debrief – This was last Wednesday. There were 4 people in attendance in addition to Ashley and Shannon. (1) Expanding hours for Our Little Village; the finances are available and they just need research on which hours would be most utilized. Ashley and Terese are putting together a brief survey. (2) Expanding the student-fee funded child care subsidy and also finding more funding that isn’t student-fee funded; the Student-Parent Advisory Board is working on it. (3) Expanding and improving the Beaver Bus (on-campus shuttle) to have stops at family housing; will need to set up meetings with TAPS. (4) Researching CGE’s ability to fund/provide child care during the times when OLV is past capacity (dead week!); will depend on budget and liability.
GMM –
1. Agenda: Ashley has printed a draft. Everyone has jobs! We discuss it. We update it a little.
2. Set-Up Plan: Kris will pick up beer on Thursday that Ashley orders. Gloria and Ashley will go food shopping tomorrow. Drew will get liquor (gin + whiskey). Wednesday night chopping party at Shannon and Ashley’s house. On Thursday: 4:30 departures are Ashley, Thomas, and Kris. Drew, Gloria, and Shannon will bring the food at 5.
3. Check-In Plan: Ashley, Shannon, and Béatrice will be in charge of checking people in for voting, so Kris and Drew will be in charge of finishing set-up and fielding all the other little questions.
4. Convention Nominations: We’ve gotten about 39 nominations so far, with about 5 declined and a few not responded.
Tuition Remission Issue – Shannon will talk to the CEOAS stewards to see if this misinformation is still a problem, and if so, she and Ashley will revisit the email they started writing earlier and ask the stewards to pass it along to their college.
AGEL Registration – We got notice last Friday that registration for AGEL/AFT Higher Ed must happen before 2 PM next Monday, February 2. Yikes! That was the day we had said was our deadline for receiving applications. We’ll push it up to THIS Friday by 5 PM. Then the EC will go through them and make a decision over the weekend so we can register them on Monday. Tomorrow Angela will finalize the Winter School expenses and then send the EC numbers about how much funding we have available in the membership training budget line. Béatrice will email the reps list with this timeline update.
AFT-OR Award Letters – Ashley filled out the award applications and the EC approves her sending them out tomorrow.
Meeting ended at 8:15 PM