In attendance: Thomas Morrill, Stephanie Parreira, Vance Almquist, Kris Osterloh, Chris Mihiar, Clint Mattox, Zhian Kamvar (late!); Ashley Bromley, Angela McClendon; special guest Taylor Sarman
Meeting called to order at 5:35 PM
Minutes from 12-01-2015 – Approved.
Email Decisions – Invited Taylor to present about A Better Oregon.
A Better Oregon – Taylor Sarman (former ASOSU Prez, former student seat on OSU BOT) is working with an organization called A Better Oregon. They’re working on increasing state investments in schools and services, in particular by increasing the corporate minimum tax. They’re collecting signatures to get a ballot measure. Stephanie will draft an email to the Stewards list letting them know that the EC would like to invite Taylor to speak at the January GMM and asking for objections. [Partly related: Vance will draft an email about Oregon’s political contribution tax credit.]
Affirmative Action Policy – Thomas, Stephanie, Ashley, and Angela have been working on drafting CGE’s first Affirmative Action Policy for staff hiring. We started from the language created by GAU at UIUC, which has historically been very active in social justice work. They have a section about being a social justice organization, which CGE has not been historically and is not officially striving toward currently. The EC agrees that the AAP committee is not empowered to make an official statement that CGE should/will meet those criteria. We’d want to talk with (at least) the Steward Council before putting that kind of language in the document and will try to come up with an honest way to express that CGE “values” social justice. Another portion of the document is about demographic targets. Stephanie has gathered data about relevant groups (OSU student enrollment, US demographics, etc). Ashley also contacted OSU’s Office of Equity and Inclusion for help on deciding how to set targets and measure success in meeting them. The EC would like the AAP to include additional language about how to decide (and what to do next) if a search has failed.
Social List Code of Conduct – Zhian will have this for next week.
AFT-OR Convention Delegate Election – This is a reminder that we need to mail out election notices in early January. Ashley will draft the notice and let us know when we should have a folding party.
Ed Ray Meeting Agenda – This term’s meeting is scheduled for 1 PM on Thursday the 17th. One thing we’ve learned from some of our campus counterparts is that they use their Ed Ray meeting to tell Ed about the things that HR has not done. Thomas is interested in bringing up October 1 start dates, but Ashley feels like it wouldn’t be an effective use of our time: HR seems to be ignoring the issue until we will force them to deal with it in bargaining. Kris would like to talk about the field safety meeting we held last week. Ashley would like to talk about the ongoing issue of BU work being done by people not in the BU (hourly or fellowship). Stephanie would like to talk about earthquake preparedness at OSU; Kris suggests she review EHS’s report that includes relevant safety information about campus buildings.
HR Meeting: Sick Leave – Thomas and Ashley met with Dave and Viki today to talk about problems they see in the way OSU set up implementation for the new paid sick leave. There are a lot of disincentives for people to use it. We’ll also talk about this at the Ed Ray meeting.
Sick Leave Policy Presentation/Training – There are two meetings this week jointly hosted by OSU HR and CGE: tomorrow afternoon (2-3 PM) and Thursday morning (10-11 AM). The sessions will be both livestreamed (with time for questions) and recorded for future viewing. Thomas will draft an all-member email TONIGHT and officers will check their email TONIGHT to send comments/approvals.
Winter School – The EC approves paying for 7 members to go. Kris will ask AFT-OR if they’re willing to cover his hotel room and registration. CGE will plan to get 1 hotel room and will be willing to get a 2nd room if AFT-OR doesn’t pick up one for Kris. Thomas will email the B-Team for interest. Vance will email the Steward list on Monday. Registration is due January 15th, so we have plenty of time on that, but the hotel deadline is December 22nd. [Partly related: The EC had agreed to reimburse Kris for mileage to the AFL-CIO Friedrichs summit last week if AFT-OR didn’t cover it. However, Kris was double-booked that day (maybe triple?) so he wasn’t able to go. There was no cost for registration, so CGE didn’t spend any money.]
Social Hour Debrief – Stephanie and Thomas hosted this last Saturday. Only one other person came by. It seems like Saturdays don’t work even more than other days haven’t been working. For next term, we’ll try having Social Hours once a month on the Thirsty Themed Third Thursday. Ashley will be in charge of organizing the January one (Thursday the 21st) to show us all how it’s done right.
Grad School Intro Meeting – “Literally haven’t heard back from anyone.” Kris will email to ask again.
PhD Movie 2 – Stephanie emailed Drew to see how she can help with planning, etc, but did not hear back. Turns out the grad school has already scheduled it. Okay! CGE had previously agreed to pay $400 to share the cost of screening both PhD Movies. Chris will check in with Drew about what’s been done so far and then we’ll decide whether/how much we still want to contribute.
Board of Trustees Meetings – Thomas, Allison Dorko, and Ashley attended this afternoon’s meeting. Takeaway is that revenues are down because investments aren’t growing well, and for some reason this is funny to the Board (seems a bit inappropriate for a bunch of “old rich people” to make jokes about the university losing millions of dollars). Vance, Allison, and Ashley attended the meeting last Friday. Vance was impressed with the discussion and Ashley was impressed in particular by the chairing/moderating of the meeting. Ashley noticed that not everyone understands the obligation to work with CGE when decisions are being made that would affect graduate employment. The final meeting is at 3:30 next Tuesday the 15th.
AFT Regional Meeting – There’s a meeting for AFT local presidents happening in San Francisco on January 15-17. AFT would pay for the hotel but leave it to the local to pay for transportation. The EC approves paying up to $350 for Kris to get there, whether by driving or flying – his choice. (The amount was decided from our standard 35¢/mile for 500 miles driven each way.)
OR Labor Law Conference – Last year we sent 2 officers to this conference. Thomas found it really informative. Unfortunately, Thomas feels unable to go this year due to his bargaining obligations and would prefer we don’t ask other B-Team members to go. Vance will think about going.
AFT-OR Call – AFT-OR is hosting a conference call to discuss getting grad seats on Boards. Thomas asks the other officers to please check out the doodle poll and mark when they can participate.
CGE Survey Scheduling – Stephanie would like to do this in the first couple weeks of January. The officers think a few shifts of an hour each, at different times of day, should get a decent enough pool of responses. We’d like to shorten the draft that Stephanie had originally made a couple months ago. Stephanie will revamp it and send it across the EC list.
Calling vs Emailing Stewards – We’ll talk about this next week.
Accountability Check-In – We’ll do this next week.
Health Insurance – Rachel from SHS has gotten us a room for the informational meeting! This will be at 5:30 PM on January 20 in KEC 1003.
Meeting adjourned at 7:40 PM