MINUTES
Employee Assembly Meeting
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
12:15 - 1:30 p.m.
B16 Day Hall
“Being an active Voice for Cornell Staff”

I. Call to Order

T. Grove called the meeting to order at 12:24 PM

Present: D. Brooks, B. Cristelli, L. Croll Howell, B. Esty, K. Fahey, C. Ferguson, T. Grove, M. Kitchen, L. Meyerhoff, L. Morris, G. Osborne, L. Sayam, B. Schaffner, J. Seymour, G. Stewart, B. McKinney

Absent: J. Boodley Buchanan

Also Present: A. Epstein, A. O’Donnell

II. Call for Late Additions to the Agenda

T. Grove called for late additions to the agenda.

L. Sayam asked to add the results from the Education Committees recent survey.

G. Osborne asked to add an update on the CARE Fund.

III. Approval of Minutes from last Meeting

There were no changes to the minutes. L. Morris made a motion to approve the minutes. All were in favor and the minutes were approved.

IV. Business of the day

a. Academic calendar update

Leslie Meyerhoff reported the two proposed staff holidays had been removed from the resolution but they were still in the proposal. In addition, L. Meyerhoff said the students are very unhappy with the changes. She is asking if the assembly would still support the resolution that says they are in favor of the academic calendar changes if the new staff holidays were no longer included?

T. Grove asked the assembly if they would or would not support the changes to the academic calendar if there were no staff holidays included? The general sentiments were “no” by the members, with specific comments made by B. Esty and C. Ferguson.

C. Ferguson said if students are voicing concerns, this is an opportunity for us to voice our concerns as well. He said he personally would not support a revision that didn’t incorporate the employee voice.

T. Grove asked if we got ONE of the two days off would we support it? The response was yes. D. Brooks asked why the change. L. Meyerhoff said the Faculty Senate had changed this because staff responsibility is not in their purview and therefore staff holidays may not be taken into consideration.

L. Meyerhoff noted the changes were meant to deal with student stress not staff stress. The conversation about staff holidays was an extra, not the original purpose of the committee.

C. Ferguson said that from the staff engagement survey there were indications of issues of stress so the calendar should deal with both employee and student stress.

T. Grove then made a motion to support changes to the academic calendar with the language recommendation of staff holidays and the EA can do a follow up resolution specifically recommending staff holidays.

Two members were opposed to this motion. Discussion continued on the motion. The motion needed to be reconsidered - Amy O’Donnell noted the EA was writing in support of the holidays but the resolution didn’t mention the holidays. T. Grove then asked if the EA wanted to abstain from supporting the academic calendar?

All are in favor with one abstention.

b. Staff Education Exploration Day

T. Grove reported this was usually in July and asked if the EA felt it was effective? The members respond no.

L. Sayam asked if there could be an education committee table featuring the EA also and the members thought that would be fine.

c. Employee volunteer extravaganza - May 18th 12noon

T. Grove said this is the CRC event we have been hearing and talking about for a while now. It is planned for May 18th. She said she would send out an e-mail to see who was available in order to have one or two people attend.

d. Announce New EA members and New Employee Trustee

T. Grove announced the new EA members and the name of the person who has been elected as the next Employee Trustee.

e. Elect UA members for 2012–13 term

T. Grove said they need to appoint or elect next years UA members. She noted Ned LaCelle and Brigitt Schaffner were interested in being reappointed. Do we see any problems with renewing their terms for next year? Everyone was in support and they were reappointed.

T. Grove said the EA will still need one more, but we have someone who is interested so we will be working on that at a future meeting.

V. Report from the Chair

a. Meeting with Mary Opperman

T. Grove said she, Brigitt and Beth had met with Mary and she talked about the survey results. The HR team has been moving forward with this. There are four initiatives they are focusing on�career choice, staff recognition, supervisor feedback, and workload. They are going to be looking for people from the EA to participate in those teams.

Discussion started on supervisor feedback.

b. Leadership Breakfast

T. Grove said they had attended the leadership breakfast last week. Gannett came and spoke about their need for a new building — their building is beyond capacity and they can’t fit anyone and anything else in there. They spoke about the use of their services and noted it is open to staff as well. Members were surprised Gannett said services were open to staff because a few members had been turned away from Gannett. T. Grove said she will send an e-mail. B. Schaffner added there was a lengthy discussion of the $10 co-pay.

T. Grove said the communications team would like to come to the next EA meeting for a few minutes to show them the new layout for the newsletter and see what they think.

VI. Committee Reports

a. Campus Welfare Committee - Leslie Morris

They are working on two resolutions, one endorsing the Office of Workforce Diversity and Inclusion and the other has to do with course evaluations.

b. UA Update - Brigitt Schaffner

The UA had an update from transportation—they are going to add the parameter rate for the staff at East Hill Plaza.

c. EA survey update - Leslie Morris

It has concluded, and they are waiting on the results. The consensus was too many reminder emails, fourth reminder went out April 27th, plus there were many other emails having to do with EA business, so some people were not happy.

VII. New Business

a. Kudos Notification and luncheon

B. McKinney said some people miss their Kudos when it is given, so she wondered if there was a way to notify the recipients, or perhaps send a certificate. T. Grove said the EA could spearhead something like this. They are sending out a “Doodle” poll to choose the date for the Kudos lunch-please respond.

The Geneva trip still has some details to work out.

b. Education committee results - Lavanya Sayam

She said 71% people responded and spelled out their issues with the Employee Degree Program. Topics of concern fall under 3 areas: 1) Flexibility 2) Supervisor support 3) Tax implications. Need for awareness regarding tax implications elicited in the survey. There was a brief discussion on the fact it is a benefit, and not a privilege so it should not be able to be denied. It would be great to interview some of the EDP graduates in Staff Notes.

c. CARE fund update - Gemma Osborne

B. McKinney said they have used up all the money, but luckily HR funded them back to a zero balance. This is no good since they still have applications coming in. There are lots of fundraising ideas under discussion. C. Ferguson said he will check into a student group at the Hotel School to see if they can help. T. Grove suggested a 5K race also.

VIII. Old Business

There were no Old business items.

IX. Adjournment

Meeting was adjourned at 1:30 p.m.