Employee Assembly Meeting
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
12:15�1:30 p.m.
316 Day Hall
Minutes

I. Call to Order

B. Cornell called the meeting to order at 12:18 p.m.

II. Call for Late Additions to the Agenda

B. Cornell called for late additions to the agenda. K. Howell asked to move the elections discussion under the Internal Operations Committee Report.

III. Report from Chair

B. Cornell reminded the members elections were coming up including elections for officers. Anyone interested in being an officer should contact a current officer for more information. He said John Miner from Arts and Sciences voiced concerns the assembly hadn’t really answered at the last meeting, so Brian said he contacted him and John has agreed to join them, along with some of his colleagues, to discuss how the EA can get more academic staff involved. He said the last meeting provided some negative feedback, but he feels they’ve done a good job in their roles, given they were short-staffed all year. They should take the feedback and use it to move forward. He announced L. Lawrence had been appointed to the University Assembly and introduced Jason Seymour, from the Electrical Engineering program as an EA candidate.

IV. Report from Employee Trustee

B. Cornell said that M. Esposito could not attend today. D. Goss said there were trustee meetings scheduled for next week in New York.

V. Report from UA representative

B. Liddick reported at the last UA meeting they discussed the Childcare center. There will be information sessions for staff and faculty on April 28 & 29 at the ILR conference center. The committee also decided the initial placement of children would be through a one time, unbiased lottery. The Family Services committee has met twice now and is still in the process of generating ideas.

Additionally, Bill said there was a lengthy discussion about the Campus Code of Conduct revisions; there are ten issues the CJC and administration were debating and the CJC made recommendations to the UA to accept seven resolved issues, but some of the UA members had problems with three of them. The CJC is still working and hopes to complete the revisions by April 23. Lastly, A. Mittman came to speak to them about revising the Holiday Decorations Guidelines. He thinks they should invite him to an EA meeting to talk more about this. B. Liddick said he would contact A. Mittman and arrange this.

VI. Approval of Minutes

B. Cornell asked the assembly members to review the February 20, 2008 minutes. A minor spelling error was corrected. P. Mahoney made a motion to approve the minutes. L. Lawrence seconded. The February 20, 2008 minutes were approved by majority vote.

VII. Committee Reports

� a. Executive Committee

B. Cornell said the Executive Committee met and discussed committee appointments and the process. K. Howell will speak more about Communications Committee appointments later, but the more people appointed to committees will really help them run more smoothly.

� b. Staff Award Recognition

B. Cornell said there were no updates for the Staff Award Recognition Committee.

� c. Communications

K. Howell said the next “Welcome to Cornell” event was coming up on Tuesday, 4/8 from 10–11:30 a.m. The EA operated a booth at the last one and planned to do so again. The booth is a great way for the EA to reach out to new employees. She requested volunteers to staff the booth and interact with new employees in order to increase awareness of the EA. She already has handouts prepared so it requires minimal effort.

K. Howell said the committee is still working on the REACH communication list. They used it for publicizing elections and it was quite effective. They’re also working on the brochure. She said that Kelly Speiser from AA & D and Stephen Perina from Campus Life had been appointed to the committee.

� d. Finance

B. Liddick said the committee had not had a meeting but one should be coming up soon.

In response to K. Howell’s question asking when they should submit each committee’s itemized budget for next year, P. Beach said after they’ve elected new officers and decided their direction; a budget outline should be submitted to the Office of Assemblies by August or September. She doesn’t expect an increase in their budget. They put in a request for funding to cover the President’s Address, hopefully that will free up some EA funds.

In response to B. Liddick’s statement that they may need to do two drafts - one with the President’s Address expenses taken out of EA funds, and one where they weren’t, P. Beach said it’s safe to assume the President’s Address funds will not come out of EA funds.

� e. Emergency Grant Fund

B. Cornell said there was a recent email about awarding another grant for the victims of a house fire. He doesn’t know if he was approved but it seemed that everyone was in favor of it. He hasn’t heard of any other upcoming meetings.

� f. Personnel Policy

D. Goss said the last meeting for Personnel Policy had been cancelled. The next meeting is in two weeks. They’d like to revisit the Release Time policy changes they discussed with M. Opperman at the February 20 meeting.

� g. IOC

P. Korolov said because they had fewer candidates than available seats, there doesn’t need to be extensive campaigning for the Employee Assembly elections.

A. Epstein said there will be an election even though everyone will be seated because all of the candidates were from endowed colleges and exempt, so they were all running for that seat. They would have to do an election to figure out who would get that seat, and then figure out which seats the remaining candidates would fill.

There was a brief discussion about the feasibility of changing this system to avoid confusion. They also discussed whether campaigning was necessary, the importance of campaigning, and how the winner of the endowed, exempt seat would be publicized.

P. Mahoney asked if there was a way to figure out how many seated individuals actually represented their seats (for example how many people filling a contract, non-exempt seat was actually a non-exempt employee from a contract college). She thinks if they keep moving members to statutory seats just so they can have more assembly members, they will never get adequate representation for contract college employees. There was further discussion about this, including changing the charter so that only people who actually represent a seat can fill that seat.

In response to a request for employee election dates, A Epstein said ballots for EA candidates go out on April 14th and are due back April 25th. Candidates will be announced at the end of this week, campaigning begins the week after, and voting will occur the week after that.

In response to P. Mahoney’s question asking whether the current members whose terms expired in 2008 were running again, A. O’Donnell said only L. Lawrence and G. Stewart were.

� h. University Benefits

D. Goss said the University Benefits committee has met several times. They’ve been discussing retiree health benefits. Four faculty members attended and she had to try to explain the impact that raising premiums would have on non-faculty employees. There is nothing definitive to report; they’re still looking at four different scenarios.

In response to J. Magura’s statement that she wanted to be on the Benefits committee, D. Goss said she didn’t know if there were any employee positions available. P. Korolov said he had been looking for someone to fill his spot and he would be glad to give his seat to J. Magura.

There was a brief discussion about getting retiree representation for the committee.

D. Goss said the committee is meeting regularly and coming up with recommendations. Once they narrow down the number of recommendations, she’ll present the details to the EA.

� i. Employee Education

D. Goss said she sent an email to Maureen Brull, from Benefits Services, and there still has not been any movement on the Tuition Plan issues. In response to B. Cornell’s question asking if they had space on the committee for more members, D. Goss said yes.

In response to P. Beach’s question asking if there was a proposal for a change in the employee education benefit, D. Goss said that M. Opperman has stated she has put something together regarding this.

VIII. New Business

� a. EA Meeting in Geneva

D. Goss said they had tentatively agreed to have an EA meeting in Geneva, so they wanted to discuss this and see how many members would still be able to participate. George Peter is not able to attend the May 7th meeting date they were considering. In response to B. Cornell’s question whether they could still go to Geneva without George Peter, P. Mahoney said people would still attend. The last Geneva EA meeting had the largest attendance of any EA meeting she had ever seen. She suggested they include a tour of the Geneva campus to the visit.

There was a discussion about logistics and about how many members would be attending.

IX. Open Forum

B. Cornell said M. Esposito’s term as Employee Elected Trustee was at an end and it would be a great if they could do something to thank him for his contributions. The other EA members agreed and there was a brief discussion about what they could do.

In response to J. Magura’s question asking if there was a report that could explain the outcome of executive committee meetings for the benefit of other EA members, K. Howell said they don’t really take minutes, but the Chair’s report outlines what happens at the executive committee meetings quite well.

In response to P. Korolov’s question asking if there would be a budget surplus for this year, A. Epstein said the EA would most likely be in a deficit, due to the costs of the election.

In response to J. Seymour’s question asking how many employee trustee candidates there were, one representative said three. Candidates will be officially announced in Thursday’s PawPrint.

B. Cornell again encouraged everyone to think about officer positions and if they were interested in running for an executive position. There was a brief discussion about which current executives would be running again for executive positions.

X. Adjournment

P. Mahoney made a motion to adjourn the meeting. L. Lawrence seconded the motion. B. Cornell adjourned the meeting at 1:18 p.m.