In attendance: Chris Mihiar, Stephanie Parreira, Thomas Morrill, Clint Mattox, Kris Osterloh, Zhian Kamvar, Vance Almquist; Ashley Bromley, Angela McClendon
Meeting called to order at 5:40 PM
We begin by celebrating: Vance’s birthday, the life of a man and his acquiring the qualifier “former” in front of his title, and a tentative agreement for the United Steelworkers at ATI.
Minutes from 2-9-2016 – Approved.
Email Decisions – (1) Approved all-member email about AFT Higher Ed conference, bargaining, etc. (2) Approved Ashley’s registration and travel expenses for the Labor Notes Conference. (3) Approved providing drinks (soda, coffee) for the Howard Bunsis event.
Trivia Night Debrief – This was two Thursdays ago, the 11th. Attendance was a little bit lower than we anticipated. (Chris mentions that several of his friends were interested, but unable to attend because of another event on campus.) Kris hosted and did a good job! The questions were fun. Vance is interested in hosting the next one.
Social Hour Debrief – This was last Thursday, the 18th. Turnout was great! We had about 16 people. The next Social Hour will be on St Patrick’s Day, March 17th. We will ask to reserve a table a few days in advance. Thomas will be our host.
Steward Council Debrief – This was last Tuesday, the 16th. Turnout was much improved from January’s meeting, and everyone stayed through the meeting. Three of the four resolutions were approved by the SC; for the fourth (implicit bias training) they requested some amendments to broaden the scope of oppressed or underrepresented groups. The quantity of food was pretty good, and all the leftovers were taken home by people. Using the Google form with RSVP options of “yes” or “I’ll meet with you individually soon” seemed to work well. Vance & Ashley will work to set up meetings with the stewards who were unable to attend.
PSU GEU Card Drop Event – Kris attended and participated in this last Tuesday, the 16th. They’ve just gone public with their grad employee organizing campaign. In this event they answered questions, talked about what other Oregon grad unions have done, and dropped their authorization cards.
Bargaining Update – Clint feels like we’re making a lot of progress on healthcare, specifically the automatic enrollment. The admin team is still digesting the language we brought about increasing premium coverage for all to 95% (with 100% coverage for those who would qualify for OHP) and having 100% coverage for all for summer term. At yesterday’s session they talked about some salary issues, including the possibility of improving compensation for the lowest paid grad employees better by increasing the minimum FTE, rather than just increasing the minimum salary. One problem is that the admin team sees this as a chance to budget-neutral by just getting rid of half the employees and doubling FTE for the rest. To be clear, this is not what we’re looking for. This is a complex discussion. March 7th is going to be really important because we’ll need to talk about all the rest of the financial issues, and because we probably won’t have another session for a couple weeks (end of term/spring break).
Steelworkers Update – After 6 months locked out of their jobs, the USW has reached a tentative agreement on a new contract with ATI!
Howard Bunsis Event – This is happening tomorrow at 12 in the MU Journey Room. Officers are going to email the grads in their departments. Stephanie will email the Stewards list tonight with details. Thomas and Vance will help transport the coffee and soda.
Howard Bunsis Event 2: The Training – Tomorrow morning at 9:30, here at Westminster House. This is a session where Howard will train interested folks in how to do their own budget analyses like he does. We’ll tell the Stewards about this as well.
AFT Higher Education Conference – We have received two letters of interest, from Meghann Fenn (HDFS) and Riki York (Hort). The EC is excited about sending both of them. Riki mentioned there’s a Thursday pre-session she’s very interested in attending; she actually volunteered to cover the additional cost herself. The EC agrees that it sounds very useful and decides CGE will be happy to pay for the extra night of accommodations. Ashley will email both Meghann and Riki to let them know they’re selected and about the extra session.
Meeting with Rodolfo – Rodolfo would like to meet with CGE leadership this Thursday at 10 AM. Kris, Thomas, Vance, and Ashley will plan to be there.
Budget Review – Angela has printed out a year-to-date report for everyone to look over. At about 62% of the way through the fiscal year, we’ve around 60% on revenue and around 58% on expenses. Still waiting on some reimbursement from AFT for AGEL hosting expenses.
Mizzou Solidarity Statement – The administration at the University of Missouri (where they recently had a big kerfuffle about health insurance) is currently denying that the graduate assistants there are employees. That sounds familiar! Ashley will draft a letter of support and the EC will have a look at it to approve before sending out.
AFT-Oregon Convention – Convention has officially been moved to the Portland Hilton. Ashley has cancelled our house reservation in Lincoln City, we’ve been refunded all of our deposit except the cancellation fee ($75), and AFT-Oregon has agreed to reimburse us for that $75.
- Pre-Meetings: We need to schedule some meetings with our delegates. We usually have one several weeks in advance (to talk about Convention in general) and one the week before we leave (mostly about logistics). We’ll plan to have the first at 5:30 PM on Tuesday, March 29th, and the second on Tuesday, April 5th, at 5:15 PM, just before the Steward Council meeting.
- Hotel Reservations: The EC approves Ashley reserving 7 rooms plus a parlor with sleeping space, or 8 rooms if the parlor doesn’t have sleeping space.
GTFF 40th Birthday Party – Our “big sibs” in Eugene are having a birthday party on Saturday, March 12th, and we’re invited! There will be games, prizes, and swag. Kris and Thomas plan to attend. Kris will mention it on the Social List. There’s also a rumor that GTFF has procured a new Labor Gnome to replace ours that was stolen/rescued/stolen/broken.
AFT-OR Meeting Debrief – Kris, Vance, and (briefly) Thomas met with Julia and Maria a couple weeks ago. They wanted to hear about CGE’s plan for organizing strategy.
Meeting adjourned at 7 PM