10-15-2003

Staff Assembly Executive CouncilMinutes

October 15, 2003

1898 Room

12-1 p.m.

Members Present:Kathy Sherrick, Marcia Bertholf, Stacey Chatman, Linda Sue McClure,Mike Casey, Janice Resch, Bill Kostelec, Krystal Burns, Kim Gieber,Trevor Werrtemberger

Called to order at 12:05 p.m. by President Marcia Bertholf

Old Business

Minutes from the October 8^th meeting were approved aswritten.

The frequency of the Executive Council meetings was discussedand the Council decided to meet every other week instead of everyweek.  Meetings willstill be held in the 1898 Room from 12 – 1 p.m.

The HR consultant will be on campus November 6^th and7^th.  TheExecutive Council, along with the Compensation Committee, will bemeeting with the consultants on Friday, November 7^thfrom 12 – 1:30 p.m. in the Foley 3^rd Floor BoardRoom.  Marcia has askedthat everyone on theExecutive Council make every attempt to attend this meeting.

Mike mentioned that the birth control issue is, and will be, ahot topic.  Some feelthat not providing this coverage discriminates against femaleemployees, since male employees get the full benefit as it fallsunder out patient surgery.  The University is currentlyrelying on the Conscience Clause of the law which states that if itgoes against the conscience of the employer they can’t be forced topay for the benefit. Since the University is a Catholic institution, and birth controlgoes against the teachings of the Catholic faith, the Universitywill not provide this benefit.  This is an issue with ouremployees, as was seen in the Compensation Survey results under theBenefits comments. There are some female Law Faculty that are looking into this issueas well.

New Business

Mike provided us with some comments by the Cabinet about theStaff Satisfaction survey.  The Cabinet met yesterdayand Mike asked Steve Doolittle to give a presentation of theresults of the Survey. The Cabinet had positive feelings about the idea of doing such asurvey.  They thoughtis was the best one that had been done recently.  They believe this is a goodway to find out what employees are thinking.  However, they see a problemwith using it in the Accreditation process as they think the 2documents (the Written Comments Summary and Analysis and the actualstatistical data) conflict with each other.  They did not feel that theWritten Analysis was a true picture of the statistics.  They felt the WrittenAnalysis was edited to reflect our (the Executive Council’s)political agenda.  Mikealso wondered why we did not provide staff with the statisticaldata, and again mentioned our political agenda.  It was then pointed outthat there were copies of the statistical data on every table, andMarcia told everyone that if they did not get a copy that all theyneeded to do was contact her and she would make a copy forthem.  Only a certainamount of copies were run, due to the size of the document.  Mike did not attend themeeting, so was not aware that copies were provided.

Mike mentioned that the Written Analysis was very negative,citing words like ‘anxiety, fear, mistrust’, and wondered if thesewere actually written by employees, or were inserted by the authorof the Analysis.  Fromthose that had actually read the written comments, he was told thatthose were words that came from the employees themselves.  This brought the discussionto the issue about whether or not the comments should bepublished.  In orderfor this data to be included in the Accreditation process, we wouldneed to provide the statistical data as well as the actualcomments, to avoid any editing for political reasons.  But by publishing thecomments, everyone would have access to them as all pieces of theAccreditation self study are published on the website.  Some comments mentionactual names, VPs, departments, etc.  If we edit these out, thatwouldn’t provide a clear picture and we don’t want to be accused ofputting our own slant on the data or doing something to promote ourown agenda.

After all the discussion, it was decided that we would talk toThayne about what he thought we should include in the AccreditationSelf Study and whether the comments could be a part of the selfstudy without being open to all employees to read.

Marcia then handed out a memo from Ken Sammons regarding theStaff Assembly Open meeting.  Ken was disappointed thatwe would single out Plant Services and publish excerpts fromcomments by the staff specifically about Plant Services.  Marcia and an Ad Hoccommittee are currently drafting a response to Ken’s memo.  Marcia also met with SteveDoolittle to talk about the Staff Assembly’s role in this issue,and what HR’s role would be.  The Staff Assembly hasbrought the information forward and has given it to the appropriateVP, but where do we go from here and how can we get the issuesresolved that are taking place in the Plant Services area.

Meeting adjournedat 1:05 p.m.

Scheduling of futuremeetings

Next meeting will be held on Oct 29, 2003.  Future meetings will beheld every other Wednesday in the 1898 Room from 12-1 p.m.  Since this is the lunchhour, please feel free to bring your lunch.  All SAEC members will benotified if there is a change to this recurring meeting.

By virtue of the bylaws,all Staff Assembly meetings are open unless otherwise designated bythe Executive Council. Everyone is welcome to attend.

http://www.gonzaga.edu/staff            email: staff-assembly@gonzaga.edu