Employee Assembly Meeting
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
12:15 — 1:30 pm
Boardroom Day Hall
Minutes

I. Call to Order

The meeting was called to order at 12:19 p.m.

II. Business of the Day — Open Discussion with VP Mary Opperman

a. Meetings with EA and Expanded Group

D. Goss said she has received a letter from Mary Opperman about the expanded group and how the EA can interact or partner with them.

M. Opperman said they had agreed that the EA wants to participate with the open group. She was unaware, however, that all EA meetings have to be open meeting. It does not seem appropriate to send out invitations to an open meeting. Therefore, they were thinking that it would be best to hold a separate meeting, but the EA would still attend and set the agenda. The meeting will be held in a few weeks, so she needs to have an agenda created for it. This is the same idea and proposal as before, just with a few logistics changes.

D. Goss said the EA had talked about having the first meeting with the expanded group to go over the recommendations from Chili Chats.

M. Opperman said that would be fine, as long they send the report out in advance.

D. Goss said they would like to finalize the Chili Chat initiative. They hope to post the final report on the website soon.

M. Opperman said the EA needs to make it clear the purpose of the extended group; they can ask the members to react to the recommendations or to discuss how to make them happen.

D. Stein asked if there are supervisors on the extended group.

M. Opperman said yes.

D. Stein said this might be a good chance to ask a smaller set of supervisors to react to Chili Chat recommendations and give their opinions before they do it with larger groups in the spring. They can discuss the difficulties supervisors face and the challenges to implementing the recommendations.

M. Opperman said it is important to give them a chance to tell the EA if they missed anything during Chili Chats. They can also ask the extended group what their reactions are and the challenges they see in implementing the recommendations.

A. Goncarovs said it would be good to have a new perspective on the recommendations and take it from there.

D. Goss asked if anyone is still interested in making a Powerpoint presentation about the final report.

M. Opperman said the report is very clear and easy to read; it may not be worth it to make a presentation. When the EA sends the report to the extended group, they should also send the questions they want to address at the meeting.

A. Goncarovs said the presentation was discussed for presenting the report to trustees and senior staff members since the EA doesn’t have as much time with them.

D. Goss said they should develop questions now since the report will within a few days.

M. Opperman said they should ask if there are any issues or recommendations that were missed.

A. Goncarovs expressed concern about their questions being too broad.

B. Vangasbeck said asking if they missed anything would be a moot point because in order to address missed issues they would have to redo the entire report.

M. Opperman said they wouldn’t rewrite the report; however, the climate may have shifted since the Chili Chats and new issues may be more important now. She said she is hearing more and more about work load complaints. Asking their opinions would give them an opportunity to express these types of concerns. She suggested asking questions like: given the three questions that were asked, were you surprised by any of the findings? What are your general reactions to the recommendations? Which do you support? Are there any missing?

J. DeMarco asked how many people are in the extended group.

M. Opperman said she invited approximately the same number as there are EA members, so about 15.

B. Vangasbeck asked if the EA members could have a copy of the list of extended group members.

M. Opperman said D. Goss has a copy of the list.

B. Vangasbeck asked D. Goss to send the list around. She said she was under the impression that the EA members were going to receive a copy of the list before the meeting was scheduled.

M. Opperman said they should also ask what challenges they predict for implementing the recommendations.

D. Goss reminded the members that the meeting will only be one hour long.

M. Opperman said they may not get to discuss any of the recommendations and/or issues; President Skorton will be in control of the meeting in the beginning, and it is impossible to predict what will happen. The extended group is really excited to meet President Skorton.

D. Goss said they should factor in extra time for socialization since this is the first meeting.

M. Opperman said there are a lot of people on campus still asking when they will get to meet the president. He offered another “Open Forum”; is the EA interested in that?

D. Goss asked if that Open Forum was to take place at Geneva.

M. Opperman said the president is already scheduled to go to Geneva. He offered another open forum with time for questions.

P. Beach agreed, saying she understood it as an offer for a forum with a large venue similar to the President’s Address with a different format: a short comment by the president and then an open microphone session for answering questions.

M. Opperman said it would be good to get out a save the date for an event like that as soon as possible.

A. Goncarovs suggested holding the forum in the mid to late spring.

M. Opperman said they would need to send out a “save the date” early next semester.

B. Vangasbeck suggested having the forum in the period between spring break and Memorial Day.

M. Opperman said the president will probably be traveling during spring break.

M. Esposito commented that the EA has ownership of the recommendations from Chili Chats; he thinks people are going to expect action plans and strategies. He recommended that they think more about the deliverables that can be expected from the report. He said the current recommendations lack plans and strategy.

M. Opperman said those were her comments on the draft. They need to make the recommendations actionable in terms of responsibilities.

M. Esposito said the Work Life Family Committee is also looking at Martin Luther King Day as an additional day off.

M. Opperman said that in order for that to happen, it must be approved by the Faculty Senate through a process; it may not be considered until 2010.

D. Goss said that by the time they present the report to senior staff, they will have worked out the action plans and strategies.

P. Korolov said the expanded group would be a good opportunity to run their ideas by a group of supervisors and test their questions for supervisor chats.

M. Opperman reiterated that the group only has one hour. They will need to start with introductions; going around a group of 30 with introductions is not easy. The president will also want to say something. They will be lucky if the group has half an hour to discuss the EA’s agenda items.

D. Goss said they could send out the questions for supervisor chats ahead of the meeting so they would have more time to talk about them.

P. Korolov said they will also have more opportunities to meet with the expanded group on these issues.

b. Leadership Lunches (AKA Chili Chat for Supervisors)

A. Goncarovs asked if they know what the questions for supervisor chats will be.

H. Hall said they took the three questions they used for employees and reversed them to apply to staff: how do you keep your staff motivated? When staff members return from a vacation, what steps do you take to avoid work overload? Other than work load, what are your obstacles to approving time off?

M. Opperman said she thinks people want to talk about work loads, and supervisors feel that is out of their control. By saying “other than workload,” they are taking out the thing she is hearing as one of the most important concerns. She said they need to acknowledge what they are hearing about workload somehow. She suggested that they ask what their biggest obstacle to approving time off is. If they receive the answer that the biggest obstacle is workload, they can acknowledge it and say that it is too big to be addressed in the current meeting. They can then move on to other obstacles. This would avoid the problem of seeming like the EA doesn’t want to hear about workload at all.

B. Vangasbeck suggested changing the question to ask what the three biggest obstacles are; in that case, participants are allowed to mention workload, but they would also receive other answers.

M. Opperman asked when they are planning to hold the supervisor chats.

D. Goss said they are planning them for the spring.

M. Opperman asked when they plan to hold their meeting in Geneva.

D. Goss said they would like to do it in early February.

J. DeMarco said February 2nd is the second meeting of the EA for Spring ‘07.

M. Opperman said the senior staff is planning to meet in mid-February about wellness at Cornell. She mentioned that a discussion about workload might tie into this idea.

D. Stein commented that meeting would take place before the round of forums with supervisors has begun.

M. Esposito asked why they would make a presentation to the senior staff before the supervisor chats have taken place. It seems more balanced to have the supervisors go through the process to give the other side of the issue before a presentation.

M. Opperman said she just doesn’t want to see a whole year go by before these issues are brought to the senior staff. Perhaps they should have an interim report to senior staff, and then present to the President’s Council at the end of the year, which would include the deans. The entire report could be presented to the President’s Council; then the EA could move forward from there.

D. Goss said they will develop a timeline soon. She said the timeline seems to work well for the report to the trustees at the end of May.

c. Improving contact with Medical College employees

Another issue they need to talk about is the connection with the medical college that President Skorton brought up.

M. Opperman said the medical college is a very foreign culture to what most of the EA members are used to; they have no faculty or staff groups. They work like a hospital in many ways with different administrators of nine departments in the hospital, so it is much more decentralized. Their HR office does not have a group it meets with regularly, so there is a completely different set of relationships when compared to the Ithaca campus. She said she has issues regarding their climate that she plans to address when the EA is addressing their own climate surveys. She asked the members to look at their bylaws regarding the medical college to see what they say or if they are silent.

A. Goncarovs said the bylaws are silent as far as naming the medical college as represented by the EA; however, they also never specify that the EA represents the Ithaca campus only.

L. Lawrence asked if they can change the charter to reflect what they feel is best.

D. Goss said no, that process is not very easy.

M. Opperman said the EA needs to think about what kind of relationship they want to have with the medical college. It is a very different campus and their problems are not very similar to those the EA deals with. For example, many employees face a two to two and a half hour commute each way every day, the subway does not go to the medical college so commute takes place by bus, the employees have serious problems in terms of their work schedules with very long days, the medical college deals with high turnover. She asked the EA members to think about what role they want to play: if they want to take on these issues or if they want to encourage the staff at the medical college to take it on themselves.

B. Vangasbeck asked if they had made any type of offer to the medical college yet.

M. Opperman said no, nothing has been done yet. She said she will be spending more time there. The EA really needs to have a full conversation about their role with the medical college. They have to be willing to take on the issues if they offer help to the medical college and the employees at there say yes. The medical college has problems that the EA can’t anticipate.

I. Mahler said she worked in a hospital for 25 years and still doesn’t understand the climate. She said the EA might provide direction to the staff there, but she sees no benefit — for the EA or for the medical college staff — in the EA trying to take on their issues.

M. Opperman suggested that the EA encourage the staff at the medical college to start a staff governance group of their own.

L. Lawrence asked how many employees work at the medical college and if they are union or nonunion.

M. Opperman said there are about 3,400 employees at the college, less than half of which are on Cornell’s payroll. They are all nonunion. The staff is made up of people from various places including Cornell doctors and Columbia doctors. There are also a number of health centers around the area that are affiliated with the medical college, and those employees are on a different payroll.

A. Goncarovs asked if President Skorton has indicated what he is referring to in terms of developing a closeness with the medical college.

M. Opperman said the president is referring to the Cornell physicians and researches and developing academic and research collaborations. The problem is that the entire staff of the college is very interconnected, so it is difficult to draw a distinction between Cornell staff and other staff members.

A. Goncarovs asked how many employees are Cornell employees.

M. Opperman said she is not sure. She said there are probably about 1,500 Cornell employees, though that estimate may still be high.

A. Goncarovs commented that due to the interconnectedness of the staff there, the EA’s model might not even be useful. He also said it will be difficult to interact with the staff group there if they are unable to really define their group. It may, in fact, cause more problems to try and interact with only Cornell employees because some groups may not get represented.

M. Opperman said the EA could encourage them to put together a collective employee group and hear the voices of the people that work at the medical college.

B. Vangasbeck agreed that hospitals are a totally different world. She said she isn’t sure the EA would necessarily want to be involved with a staff group at the medical college, but they can offer their assistance.

M. Opperman said the president did tell the EA to think about it. Offering help or support may be the best way to interact with the medical college.

L. Lawrence asked what the proper process is to communicate with the staff there.

M. Opperman said the only effective place to send a letter is to the dean. Their HR office doesn’t function the same way the Ithaca campus HR office does. She cautioned them to think long and hard about what they say.

L. Lawrence asked if it would be practical to meet with the dean to discuss the possibilities before sending the letter.

M. Opperman said she would send the letter first. She said the employees there do care and are involved; it is just a completely different world. They have community-based activities; they just do it in their own way.

A. Goncarovs said, as chair of the IOC, he would like to write a draft letter on the issue to move forward.

M. Opperman said she does eventually want to talk about a climate survey with the EA.

d. Child Care Update

She also mentioned that she had attended a budget meeting on a childcare center for Cornell. They have a preliminary site near the A-lot; the center would hold 158 children. They still need site approval. Some students are upset by the plans because they currently use the site to play Frisbee. This is a good site and the best they could find. The other proposed site had large power lines running across it and a cemetery across the street. They are aiming to start building in the spring.

B. Bryant asked if the center will be technically located in the town of Cayuga Heights.

M. Opperman said yes, and they already have one neighbor who is opposed to the plans.

L. Lawrence asked if the 158 child capacity meets the demand for childcare.

M. Opperman said it does not meet the need, but it is better than nothing. It may be the only large center that is built because President Skorton wants to see every new building proposed have a childcare center in the plans.

B. Bryant asked if the center would be incorporated into a residential hall or if it would be a stand alone structure.

M. Opperman said this would be a stand alone structure. In her experience, it is more successful if daycare centers can be connected to graduate housing units rather than undergraduate units. Steve Golding has the issue of child care in the master plan, and they are still moving forward. It is also good to see that the president doesn’t think this one center solves the problem. The downtown centers see this as competition; however, they are not interested in child care, which presents a problem for many mothers.

D. Goss passed out a revised meeting schedule that includes information about when President Skorton, M. Opperman, or other guests will be attending.

A. O’Donnell said Oracle is up to date as well.

D. Goss said the membership list is updated as well; Christine Brown has been removed because she is no longer a Cornell employee. If anyone has any changes for the membership list, they should email Amy O’Donnell.

III. Report from IOC (A. Goncarovs)

a. Elect a Parlimentarian

The EA now has a vacant seat and a vacant Parliamentarian position. A. Goncarovs received one recommendation for Parliamentarian: Peter Korolov.

P. Korolov said he sees being Parliamentarian as a great opportunity to play a larger role in and contribute more to the EA. He will also be able to interact with senior staff on issues the EA cares about. He said he did a lot of work with Chili Chats, and would like to be able to represent the EA directly to senior staff to show off the things the EA has done.

M. Esposito asked if P. Korolov is familiar with the job of the Parliamentarian and knows what it entails.

P. Korolov said he intends to prepare himself and learn everything he will need for the job.

P. Korolov left the room. The EA moved into executive session to discuss P. Korolov as a candidate for Parliamentarian and to vote.

P. Korolov was elected as the EA Parliamentarian.

b. Appointing a member to UA

A. Goncarovs said there is an EA position open on the UA; it is an important position. The UA meets only once per month on a Wednesday evening, 4:30 — 6:30 p.m., with food. If anyone in interested they should contact him.

c. Other

He also introduced Kerry Howell, a guest for the day, who is interested in filling the open EA position. She is from the Health and Wellness Program.

IV. Old Business

D. Goss asked if everyone had a chance to read the minutes from September 6th. Not everyone had read the minutes. She said they would wait to approve them until the next meeting.

V. Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 1:27 p.m.