CGE Executive Council Meeting Minutes – March 10, 2015
In attendance: Thomas Morrill, Drew Hatlen, Alisha Jones, Béatrice Moissinac, Gloria Ambrowiak, Shannon Andrews, Kris Osterloh; Ashley Bromley, Angela McClendon
Meeting called to order at 6:05 PM
Minutes from 3-3-2015 Meeting – Approved
Email Decisions – (1) Approved AFT-OR Convention resolutions. (2) Approved fair share reminder
Convention Meeting Debrief – The first meeting of Convention delegates was last Thursday. There was a lot of discussion (and some tension) about the percaps proposal: what percaps mean, what the proposal would change. Delegates were invited to the Social Hour afterward and Ashley thinks that went really well. The next delegate meeting will be at 5 PM on Monday, April 6.
Budget/Dues Committee Meeting Debrief – There was a meeting yesterday afternoon to talk about whether CGE should lower dues, and whether that should be dependent on whether percaps change at AFT-OR this year. There were no decisions made. The next dues conversation will be after Convention.
Convention: Hotel Update – Ashley tried to get all the rooms we’d planned on, but the hotel’s availability was limited, so she had to rearrange a little. It would cost slightly more than we’d anticipated, but we’d get to have the “parlor” room. The EC approves Ashley booking the rooms, including the parlor.
Fall AGEL: – The EC agrees that CGE’s delegation to Spring AGEL this weekend should lobby to get 2015’s Fall AGEL in Corvallis!
Board of Trustees Meeting/CLA Budget – The next OSU Board of Trustees meeting will be held next Wednesday and Thursday, March 18-19. Thomas and Ashley have been trying to set up a meeting with Sherm Bloomer and the CLA department heads to talk about the CLA budget crisis. They’d hoped to get this meeting to happen before the Board meeting, but the timeline isn’t working out. Sherm has offered his availability this Friday the 13th or Tuesday the 24th; we feel like it would be super hard to get any turnout this Friday plus Ashley won’t be here. We will still want to have this meeting later. Board of Trustees: What we have in mind is to turn out as many people from CLA as we can to speak during the public comment period at the Board meeting, about the lack of financial support for the college and how detrimental it will be to those departments’ future recruiting efforts. (We’ll reach out to CLA grads for turnout through the stewards.) We will email Sherm to let him know we’ll be speaking to the Board. We will schedule the CLA heads meeting for Tuesday the 24th.
Empower Mini-BT – The EC (re-)approves empowering Thomas-Sean-Ashley to open the article and bargain on the issue of summer health insurance signups and signs a letter to OSU HR stating such. Ashley will send the letter over.
Public Information Request – We got a response from OSU’s paralegals (via Viki Dimick) about our information request regarding hourly grad workers and grad fellowships. OSU responded variously to the different groups: to some they said, “Sure! We’ll get you that info.” To some they said, “That isn’t what we call them.” And finally they also said, “Fellows aren’t employees! They don’t do work.” They have requested pre-payment of $514 for the info pull. The EC now approves increasing the budget line for information requests from the current $200 (of which we haven’t spent any yet) to $550. We’ll send a check to the public records office.
Summer Health Insurance and Appointment Timeliness – Some of the people who have turned in their insurance enrollment forms do not yet have their Spring Term appointment paperwork finalized. The EC approves Ashley emailing these people to be sure they know they aren’t in yet and tell them who are the people in their departments they should talk with to get all set up.
Salem Lobbying Trip – Drew went to the state legislature meeting last Friday for a hearing about the “Pay It Forward” bill. He was there with AFT-OR to speak against the bill. Many other people were there to speak for it (including the government relations people from OSU and ASOSU). There were a lot of people and not much time for them to speak in. No decisions were made at this hearing; in general, the legislators liked the Pay It Forward idea but had some concerns and needed more info.
Grad Open Forums –Drew has been setting these up for April 6-7. In the past, CGE contributed planning work, promotion for turnout, and helping recruit facilitators. The EC approves doing this again.
Accountability Check-In – Look at us, being all timely!
Organizing: We’re almost at 61% membership (of our 66% goal); struggling to make any movement on this number. Caucus meetings: we’ve had some results from the family caucus (good interest in the Beaver Bus/Orchard Court issue). Béatrice is trying to set up meetings with leadership from the campus cultural centers; Drew will help. Organizing in low-membership areas: Béatrice and Ashley will pick a few low-membership areas with strong stewards to focus organizing efforts on. Benefits letter developed: Ashley & Thomas seem to have approval from OSU HR to create a document that “could” go out to new grad employees, about the various benefits of an assistantship (eg, insurance, tuition waiver, fee relief). Plan event at student housing: hasn’t happened. No SC vacancies: a very ambitious goal that Béatrice doesn’t really think should be a priority. Department meetings: Shannon is really interested in setting up a Soils meeting; the EC approves a budget of $50 for this.
Social: Goals this month are a May Day 5K and a “Union Cup” CGE vs GTFF soccer game. We’re going to prioritize soccer: Gloria will email GTFF’s pres (and CC Rodolfo) to start setting this up; maybe it could happen the same weekend as the Cover Up?
Communications: Kris hasn’t done much website review (although Ashley & Angela already ask Rob to fix things from time to time). Kris will talk with AFT-OR about getting a story in the Fed News (ideas include the Social Justice Teach-In and the establishment of CCGEE). We’re really close to our goal of 800 friends in the Facebook group; if all the officers invite their friends, we could reach it this week! Iconic CGE poster: Ashley will talk with Gavi (who’s worked on Brew- Off art) about designing one.
Bargaining: Thomas has a few people in mind to talk with about being on the next BT. We’ve decided that we’re very unlikely to make any progress on getting the ASOSU GATF position back into the BU, so we’re going to remove it as a goal. We’ve heard that there are undergrads working as TAs in the College of Business; we’d like to be able to research this but have too much on our plates right now.
Financial: We need to have our quarterly budget review; Angela will prepare numbers for the EC meeting week after next.
External Relations: We have a goal from February to have a joint event with USAS; that organization doesn’t really exist at OSU anymore. Publicize ASOSU elections: these are happening April 6-7; there aren’t yet any candidates for the grad seats in the house; we’ll probably just remind people to vote. Recruit four Cover Up bands: we have three CGE bands already interested!
AFT-OR: We don’t know of any AFT-OR presidential candidates we can reach out to (we only know of David Rives running). We still need to meet with GTFF & UA to solidify our Convention strategy regarding voting and percaps; Kevin & Ashley have plans to work on this at AGEL this weekend.
Office Upkeep: Kris will totally work on getting photos onto the website. We’re currently doing (now finishing!) our accountability check-in.
Meeting ended at 7:40 PM