MARSHALL
UNIVERSITY CLASSIFIED STAFF COUNCIL MINUTES
Thursday,
January 18, 2001
Smith Hall 263 – GC 134
President
Nina Barrett called the meeting to order at 1:00. Motion was made by David
Blackburn, seconded by LuAnn South to accept the December minutes as written.
Council unanimously agreed.
GUESTS: Bill Burdette, Assistant to the President, Jim
Stephens, Director, Human Resources and Bernice Bullock
President
Barrett introduced Bill Burdette. Mr.
Burdette spoke in detail about budget reductions of 3% excluding higher
education; the changes that will be brought about by Senate Bill 653; Peer
Equity Funding; salary schedule; Advisory Board (the board that will set salary
policies for every institution); PEIA; Community and Technical College;
Governing Boards; Five Investment Funds 563; Autism Training Center; priorities
for the School of Medicine and sick leave. These issues will be taken up this
Legislative session. Several questions were asked and answered. Mr. Burdette
thanked Council for our time.
Mr.
Stephens voiced his appreciation for the opportunity to visit with Council as
well as his opportunity to interact with Council members.
LuAnn
South asked in a previous meeting about the use of accrued sick leave to pay for
retirees’ insurance. Mr. Stephens gave out handouts from the current summary
plan document for using accrued leave to buy retirees’ health insurance when
it comes time to retire.
The
new performance assessment system for exempt and non-exempt employees became
effective November 1, 2000. HR is
meeting this week to figure out how to get the Banner system to alert them as to
whose anniversary date comes up. Mr. Stephen passed out handouts of the approved
policy and an example of both of the forms (one for exempt and one for
non-exempt) there basically very similar character and content. Mr. Stephens
discussed the form and asked Council to support this process.
Mr.
Stephens was asked to explain what MURC employees are.
Council wanted to know how they compare to regular status University
employees. Mr. Stephens gathered some information and put together a fact sheet
about MURC employment. He
distributed and discussed the fact sheet. He mentioned that we (Marshall) are
the recruiting agent for MURC and for their exempt positions they will do client
based recruiting. There are 250 to 300 total MURC employees that are paid from
MURC funds. About 120 of those people are in full-time positions and the balance
are in part-time, non-benefit eligible positions that are generally
characterized as student assistance type positions. He is not sure where all of
these people are assigned. They have 18 administrative staff that is responsible
for all grants and contractual activities for the University and they have their
own internal supporting officers. Their retirement is the same as Marshall
employees. Council members expressed concerns over the fact MURC employees are
eligible to receive tuition waivers. There was a great amount of discussion.
Mr.
Stephens distributed a draft of the Alternative Dispute Resolution
(ADR) Services form. This would be used if a grievant wanted to
voluntarily participate in an attempt to use the alternative dispute resolution.
They would go ahead and file the grievance so that their right to grieve
is protected. But HR would ask for
a waiver of the time lines. He continued to explain the use of this form. He
will bring this form back to Council with the draft policy and the draft forms
at a more finalize state. Council is to give Mr. Stephens any feedback that we
feel necessary. Mr. Stephens is
very excited about ADR and feels that it is a good thing for us to do when we
have tremendous potential to settle questions in a more informal and less
expensive way. He continued to
discuss ADR.
Mr.
Stephens spoke about the bumping policy. He distributed copies of Section 18(b)
7-1 out of the WV State Code. He
explained that if an individual is a classified staff employee and has a regular
status appointment and their program is retrenched either the University decides
to shut down a program or they could of gotten some type of grant-funded support
like a Federal Program and funding is no longer available. What happens to the classified staff employees who are in
regular status when his/her position is affected? They have rights to what is
called in the Code seniority based displacement or what we call in common terms
“bumping”. He explained in detail how the procedure would work. Several
questions were asked and answered. This was a lengthy discussion.
Mr.
Stephens mentioned the 653 Enhancement recommendations to have higher education
employees use the State employee grievance sequences.
The differences are about the same but there is a difference in the
schedule in which you would have to bring your appeal to various levels and
their level three is different than our level three. Our level three is an
external appeal to the Board of Trustees or what ever it is called now and they
never hear grievances. They
immediately remand those up to the next level. The State level three is the
highest administrative center for that department so it stays in the department.
GRADUATE
SCHOOL REPORT: No report. But
Martha Pierson has a difference of opinion on the bumping issue.
FINANCIAL
AFFAIRS
– Mr. Blackburn said that there is nothing to report at this time. He will try
to make contact with David Mills, Chair of the Budget and Academic committee to
find out when the next meeting will be.
SERVICE - Ms. Bullock
reported that they had three groups of flowers sent as get wells and we sent
three cards for get well. We had one group of flowers for sympathy and two
sympathy cards. We still have a budget until the luncheon in May.
PERSONNEL
COMMITTEE –No
report.
LEGISLATIVE
AFFAIRS
– Mr. Reffeitt reported that his main problem is contacting people at the
Capitol through e-mail because not all of them have access to e-mails. So we
have some people who volunteered to be on the legislative committee and will
meet with them next week to be ready for the middle of February maybe they can
help fill in some of the slack position to try and get word out.
MEMBERSHIP/ELECTION
– Mr. Wortham reported they have not met as of yet and we will be in limbo on
one election depending on what the legislature does. They will try to meet next
sometime next month.
PHYSICAL
ENVIRONMENT
– Mr. Harless reported that they met last week and they decided to draft a
letter listing our concerns in regard to the issues he mentioned at the October
meeting concerning sufficient lighting on campus, etc.
They will send this letter to Dr. Grose with a copy to President Angel.
STAFF
DEVELOPMENT
– No report
ACCE:
- No Report
INSTITUTIONAL BOARD:
Ms. Bobo reported that they had their Institutional Board Advisory meeting on
Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. at the Graduate College. Dr. Denman came to the meeting and
presented the Marshall 20/10 report and draft form of the compact. Both of those
documents she has draft copies of and they are also on the web. If you have
access you can get a copy off from Marshall web page. But the Strategic plan
basically outlines 12 initiatives and staff is one of those initiatives. And
that plan address very clearly that one of the goals is to get a salary
schedule. The compact is a different document and also refers to staff salaries
and she feels that Dr. Denman is very clear about what classified staff wants.
They are waiting to hear from the higher education policy board about what kind
of recommendation that we need so it is still up in the air, but she feels that
we have the support and the attention of all of the administration and everybody
that are involved that is important. They also spent some time talking about the
transition period of this group ends July 1 and how many more responsibilities
they will have after July 1. They are going to be doing some training and
orientation for the group to make sure that they are ready for the challenge.
President Barrett mentioned that the overall sense she has is that we have great
support for a new salary schedule, but where the money is going to come from to
fund it is another question. Martha Pierson feels the same way.
She said even on both proposals if they were to modify the current salary
schedule its going to take around 9-12 million dollars and if they bring the new
salary schedule in they are talking about up into the 20 million dollar range.
Either one of these has the problem of where the money is going to come
from. President Barrett said that according to the new senate bill we are
entitled to all of this new money with the peer equity and so forth.
But quite frankly, no one knows at this time what the legislature plans
to do.
OLD
BUSINESS:
President Barrett will try to schedule a meeting with President Angel next week
to see how he feels about a new salary schedule. Council expressed
mixed feelings about the President not being able to meet with Council
due to his schedule, and directed President Barrett to continue to try to
schedule the President to meet with us.
With
there being no other business, the meeting was adjourned at 3:30 p.m.