EC Meeting Agenda 1 1/27/18

Facilitator: Emory
Vibes Watcher: Lzz
Time Keeper: Val
Notetaker: Nick

Attendance: Nick, Clint, Emory, Val, Micknai, Lzz, Erin, Paris
Meeting began: 5:22

Ice-breaker: What do you know about fixing broken computers? (a practical question)

• New website is live!! https://www.cge6069.org
• Slack Approvals We Made (1 Minute)
  • • Switch to Comcast, 3-year agreement at $121.90/mo
    • Newsletter #2 on Nov. 15 2018
• Approvals to be made: (1 Minute)
  • • Newsletter #3 for Nov. 28th
    • Add: invitation to participate in hiring committee for business manager
    • What should Alex’s role be on this committee?
    • Lzz added invitation to newsletter #3
• • • Winter Events Calendar (see further in agenda)
  • • Membership Cancellation Form
      • • Try to arrange for exit interviews either in-person or over phone
      • Having members come into office to cancel is ableist and coercive
  • • Social gathering next Tuesday (Dec. 4) Alex wants to host a film viewing of Sorry To Bother You at his house.
  • Lzz will redact/edit minutes over break for approval over slack

Within Next Two Weeks

• Newsletter #3 Items (add things as we go): (prepared to send)

• • • • • • Add: invitation to business manager hiring committee
        • • An EC officer will need to finalize the newsletter in mailchimp. 
        • • The draft of the newsletter is already formatted and listed as Newsletter Issue #3 (should be the first campaign you see on the list). Kali and Lzz have both used mailchimp previously, might be a good idea for one of them to do this or to show someone else how mailchimp works.
        • You’ll need to make sure everything is updated, spell-checked, not inaccurate. You can schedule the email to go out at a specific time on Wednesday the 28th, in my experience emails that are delivered at 9am are the most widely read.
    • Table of Contents
      • • Membership tallies with additions since last newsletter (currently +6)
      • • Upcoming Winter Events (requires confirmation of events calendar below)
      • • Grievance Reports
      • • EC and SC decisions
      • • Upcoming Elections Reminder
      • • Member Spotlight
          • • We need a list of questions to ask. Likely 3-5 questions at most. Not geared toward research questions? Probably also not useful to try to ask every person what their organizing philosophy is…
          • Everyone feels good about nominating Mick Carter
            • • Turns out to many events (strategic retreat, steward meetings, etc.)
            • • From an underrepresented department (MIME)
            • • Plan for newsletter #4
            • Think about who to nominate for newsletter #5
      • • Call for Submissions to Radical Imagination (bottom-lined by VP of Social Justice)
      • In Other Labor News…
        • • Good week for grad locals! Columbia, University of Chicago just won their union vote, Harvard is bargaining, Brown just unionized.
            • Took photo for social media
        • • Places Alex regularly combs for labor news:
            • • Organizing.work (this is the actual url, newer journal that puts out really informative analysis on labor organizing)
            • • www.Labornotes.org
            • • www.Inthesetimes.org
            • • https://www.dissentmagazine.org/tag/belabored
            • https://www.iww.org/news
        • Folks likely have their go to sources as well…list them here please

• Keep Westminster Open

• • • These activities are happening between Monday-Wednesday when Alex is off so someone from the EC needs to make sure our office is open.

• MIME Department Meeting- Tea Room, Monday Nov. 26 sometime b/w 10-2. This one is in the main room so we probably don’t need anyone here for it unless MIME folks requests some documents or something.

• Comcast Installation- Tuesday, Nov. 27 between 9-11am

• Caucus Meetings:

• International Caucus– Looks like it will be from 4-5pm on Wednesday, Nov. 28

• • • • • Clint will open up WestM and take notes

• Fidelity Bond Insurance:

• • • AFT requires all locals to have some minimum amount of bond insurance. I’m not sure how much we would need to cover, but the baseline is coverage for up to $50k which costs $60. There is a fuller document with details that the Treasurer should be able to talk about more.
      • • Covers 10% of total liquid assets – would cost $290 annually
      • • We may already be paying this along with Per-caps
      • Clint will follow up and see what we need to do

• Signatures for EC Policies

• • • • Nick will need to sign our policies pages and someone already on the debit card policy needs to submit to the bank his signature and photo ID so he can sign checks.
        • Nick will come in and sign these soon
    • Also, Nick needs keys to the office.
      • Nick will make copies of Val’s keys and return them

• Solidarity Picture for Grads at Columbia

• • • Quick update, reports are that the university is recognizing the union and agreeing to bargain. So a strike likely won’t be called for anymore. So, might want to adjust to a congratulations type solidarity picture.
      • Picture taken

• Decision on phone number

• • • Comcast will need time to get permission to port our old phone number to their system. Currently, they set up a new one but left the old one connected. We need to decide if we just want to switch numbers and update our flyers or if we want to go through the process to switch the old one to Comcast.
      • We want to keep the old number to circumvent a massive re-printing frenzy.
  • Also noticed we don’t have the phone number on the website.
    • Can Alex add this soon?

Further Down the Road

• SEIU Holiday Party (Dec. 6)
  • Time? Place?

• Elections

• Winter GMM is January 31 when elections will kick off.

• AFT-OR Convention

• • • • • We will have roughly 30+ delegates allotted to us (maybe a little less considering drop off in membership post-Janus). However we only budgeted for one hotel room (4 people) for this year’s convention. We possibly have one place we can have 3 people crash that’s not a hotel as well.
      • We also have the Brew Off happening on May 4th.
        • Brew-Off committee will discuss changing date to prioritize participation at convention and make it easier for grad union cousins to attend.

• Questions:

• • • • • • How many delegates are we sending to convention? Full number or a smaller number?
            • Micknai may be able to host a few delegates
        • How will we arrange for Brew Off needs considering we might have active leaders at convention that theoretically would be involved in the Brew Off?
          • Lzz and Nick intend to stay for convention.

• Steward Council

• • • • Nominations open. Here is a list of potential activists we want to reach out to and encourage to run. Please add names with contact info and start marking who you have reached out to.
    • Also start nominating folks: https://goo.gl/forms/XeapATxZMPgCRY4s2

Longer Discussion

• Confirm Winter Events Calendar

• • • Here is a rough list of events for winter, some things are already confirmed and some need decisions to be made. Confirmations are in bold.
      • • Executive Council meetings? Tuesdays 5-7pm still? Starting January 8th?
      • • Week 1– Maybe revive Game Night or do a Thirsty Thursday? (Jan. 10)
          • • Discussed having a Thirsty Thursday at McMenamins or somewhere else where we can pull tables together and bring games (Bombs bad configuration)
          • Val booked 5:30 to 7:30 in their schedule for this and will send out an email
      • • Week 2– Steward Meeting (Jan. 17 5-7pm)
      • • Week 3– Trivia Night (Tuesday Jan. 22 or Thursday Jan. 24?)
          • Val prefers 22nd at DeMaggio’s
      • • Week 4– GMM (Jan. 31 5:30-8:00)
      • • Week 5– Caucus Day (Tuesday Feb. 5 or Thursday Feb. 7 either at 12pm or 4pm?)
      • • Week 6– Could be a Steward Party on Feb. 14? Or Thirsty Thursday? Or something to have fun on the 14th?
          • • Val will be busy and unable to organize. Can someone else?
          • Erin noted that this is Valentine’s Day
      • • Week 7– Steward Meeting (Thursday, Feb. 21 5-7)
      • • Week 8– Movie Night (either Tuesday Feb. 26 or Thursday Feb. 28 at 6pm)
          • What movie? This is Black History Month: Black Panther? Blind Spotting?
      • • Week 9– open
          • Paris suggests Mardi Gras celebration, we tabled the conversation after discussing potential for cultural appropriation/insensitivity. Could be a potential event for social justice education?
      • Week 10– open

• EC Social weeks-Schedule Professional Development workshops ex. Story Circles (Micknai)

• • • • We could start Winter Term with a personal statement/positionality sharing conversation.
    • Also talked about potential work parties for filing for university reimbursement, meal bucks, building maintenance forms, etc.

• Longevity Committee Final Decisions

• • Renegotiated three terms of staff contract:
    1) re-worded business manager role to include organizing activities

2) changed $$ set aside for bicycle from $650 -> $300

3) changed requirements for initiation of next longevity meeting

• Ed Ray Meeting Debrief

• • • • Clint and Alex attended.
    • Discussed:
      • • Poor quality buildings (particularly Graf); were told that the next building to renovate is Cordley and then Graf. No real timeline given.
          • • Cordley is not likely to be remodeled until Summer 2020
          • • We are encouraged to file maintenance request forms
          • Nick will follow up with an instructor about asbestos exposure in Waldo Hall
      • • Gaps in fellowship insurance. They were already aware of this and claim to have already found a solution. They are going to start syncing up appointment dates so that they match, and HR said that this will be from now on how it works so these gaps shouldn’t exist anymore. Likely need to make sure this is happening.
          • University is moving on this
      • • Mandatory CBA training for supervisors. We applauded HR’s recent effort to resolve a grievance by training all the PIs in Chemistry, and we suggested they follow-up with MIME and Public Health next. Idea here is to keep this topic on the agenda and build up to a bargaining proposal to require mandatory CBA training for the entire university (Business Centers and supervisors).
          • Everyone seemed on board
      • We didn’t discuss sexual harassment, gender-neutral restrooms, or Ecampus because we didn’t feel we had enough info to go on for what we should discuss. However, Ed Ray asked us about the university’s name change policies and whether they’re good enough and we wrote a detailed email on all the things they need to correct.

• Caucus Updates:

• • • • Following caucuses met b/w last EC meeting and today:
        • • Anti-Bullying
            • • Paris went: 3 members in attendance
            • • Crafted a survey that EC can distribute
            • Discussed changing name (anti-discrimination? anti-harassment?)
        • • International Graduate
            • Clint will attend 11/28/18
        • • Pride
            • • Emory attended: 6 members present
            • Discussed caucus values and potential partnerships with community organizations
        • Housing
          • • Nick attended: 4 members + 1 staff present
          • Talked about housing co-ops, Andrea expressed interest in AFT-OR housing coop committee
    • • We also have the beginnings of a proposal for the creation of a Disability Justice Caucus
    • • Meeting notes will be linked in our Newsletter.
    • Probably need to put a pin on this if folks have specific questions about what discussions have been taking place because there’s so much to report on. Lots of activity, lots of involvement. Our caucuses are already injecting some new energy in CGE!

• Internal Membership Audit:

• • • Need to schedule a date, just sometime before winter break. This can be done over the course of a few days too, and would likely only require an hour of your time if enough people pitch in.
      • Emory will distribute a whenisgood to schedule help

• App development (Micknai has update)

• • • • Micknai is in touch with someone from computer sciences to see what this would entail.
    • Paris suggests providing a stipend to a member who takes care of website, app development, etc.
      • • Clint suggests that deciding to compensate some members for their labor and not others is problematic;
      • • Micknai reminds us that some labor is valued as higher (e.g. computer and technical skills) than others (e.g. organizing, leadership, etc.)
      • • Lzz proposes opening up an EC position for something like a “technical officer” (Nick’s words) that would have these responsibilities and be a decision-maker within union leadership. Suggests that Brian could be appointee.
      • Conversation tabled for now.

• Membership Cancellation Form:

• • Alex has made a draft of what the membership cancellation form could look like. We could begin using this as a form we require members to fill out (essentially just like when we ask them to sign up) and make a PDF fillable version for folks to still be able to do it online (though it’s not a good idea to host this on our website, just make it available upon request).
    • Here’s the form:

• Whatever we decide, we should announce in newsletter to be transparent

Things To Keep On Our Radar

• 20th Year Anniversary Celebration

• Executive Council role with Caucuses

• • • • Currently, our External Relations Chair has had one primary task in scheduling Ed Ray meetings and has other responsibilities that are less structured (excluding LBLCLC meetings). Considering the development of caucuses and trying to ensure that they are kept in the center of organizing activities, it seems like our Executive Council could make the External Relations Chair more focused on nurturing the development of caucuses. They could do this with the assistance of our Social Justice Chair and the VP of Organizing and VP of Membership can be secondary point people. Since both the External Relations Chair and Social Justice Chair have more open role descriptions, this could be a way of making these roles more concrete for future Exec Councils.
    • What do folks think?

• Financial Committee Discussions

• • • • Discussions on possibly getting a credit card for CGE
    • Investment options for our reserves

• Look into re-branding

• • • Move away from OSU colors (both to differentiate ourselves and to move away from the history of orange in relation to OSU).

• AFT Connect Database

• • • • AFT is launching a new database that will synthesize all sorts of data (such as Hustle, email responses, etc). We already send our member lists to Aft but it’s through a terrible system that is being retired. We will need to use connect starting January for updating our lists with national, but we can also opt to use Connect exclusively and stop using Knack (since Connect will offer all the same things).
    • Alex spoke with Ben from AFT about this, and it seems like moving to Connect would actually reduce the amount of redundant things we currently do with data management and get everything in one place. We would also not have to pay for Knack anymore, which would save us a few hundred bucks a year.

• Bargaining Recruitment and Campaign

• • • • Winter term should be when we start generating momentum for our next bargaining round. This document has been created to start highlighting areas for improvement in our CBA and additional items to bargain over.
    • • GTFF is bargaining with a 25-person team! They set their ground rules this term and will have a schedule of sessions soon. Good idea for us to visit a session or two (primarily thinking Erin and Alex) to help inform our ideas for starting some bargaining momentum here.
    • Alex feels it would be a good idea to host some sort of introductory session about bargaining in winter to start trying to recruit people to our bargaining team, and then potentially in spring we could do a whole workshop on how bargaining works, what a team needs to think about during bargaining, etc.

• Brew Off

• • • • Probably want to send out our call for brewers real soon and keep moving on logistics planning.
    • Also a good idea to consider making logos for pint glasses and fliers now, because we’ll need some advance time to order glasses.

• AFT-OR Executive Council

• • • Apparently local 111 has stopped paying their percaps, and Michelle Catena no longer attends EC meetings for AFT-OR. This could potentially mean that we have an opening on the EC (and maybe another one soon if Kris O. steps down). Hazel has expressed interest in filling the role. We need to find out the details about this.

• Exit Interview or Opt-Out Form for Membership Cancellation

• • • Alex has worked on a potential form we might consider using. (Will have print out for meeting)

• AFT-OR Convention Delegate Elections

• • • Screen print shirts with other grad locals?

• Meeting w/ Provost Ed Feser

• Nov. 20 3-3:45pm

• • • Micknai saw Mohammad and is going to follow up by phone. Doesn’t necessarily need anyone else to attend, but wants to strategize.
  • • About a scholarship that they got rid of.
  • Mohammad hasn’t gotten back to Micknai yet: no update

Adjourned: 7:00