MARSHALL UNIVERSITY CLASSIFIED STAFF COUNCIL MINUTES
June 12, 2003
Big Green Room/Stadium

MEMBERS PRESENT: President Barrett, Barbara Black, Jack Blake, Fran Browning, Bernice Bullock, Jill Burcham, Muhammad Chaudhry, Judith Damron, Woodrow Edmonds, Elizabeth Graybeal, Charles Harless, Charlene Hawkins, Leonard Lovely, Stephanie Neal, Sherri Noble, Nancy Pelphrey, Martha Pierson, LuAnn South, Patsy Stephenson, Cora Westmoreland, Joe Wortham 

EXECUSED ABSENCES: Betty Cook, Sonja McKenna, Leah Tolliver   

UNEXEUSED ABSENCES:  David Cremeans, Linda Rhodes, James Sinnette, Gary Stone,  

GUESTS:  Connie Zirkle, Mike Dunn, Ronnie Hinks, Angela Bradshaw, Thomas Dorsey and Yanzhi Wu.

Teresa Bolt, Jody Perry, Adrian Lawson, Terry Olson 

GUEST SPEAKER:  

The meeting was brought to order at 1:10 p.m. 

President Barrett commended Cora for all of the years of taking such wonderful minutes. President Barrett said that the location needs to be changed in the May 15^th minutes because we were at the Graduate School instead of the Memorial Student Center. A Motion was made by Mr. Leonard Lovely to accept the May 15^th minutes with correction and seconded by Ms. South.  Motion carried. Minutes approved. 

OLD BUSINESS: Ms. Burcham mentioned that she was not at our last meeting but Mr. Stephens spoke about the YMCA Membership. She said that she still has a lot of people contacting her asking her how we are doing with the membership. She read Mr. Stephens statement and disagrees with it. She called the Auditor’s Office today and talked to Terry Hoover. He is the payroll director for the State of WV. This can be done but we have to have 50 employees from Marshall and 50 people from another state agency and he would gladly set us up. So if we can get this done, we can have the YMCA deductions taken out of our payroll checks plus we will get a discount. She does not know the amount of discount because Mr. Stephens was working on all of this and he did not tell her.  Before we start any petitions, she is going to see if she can find another state agency that will go in with us. She will continue to work on this and we are not going to let this issue go because it can be done. Ms. South asked what about individuals who are currently with the YMCA now that are Marshall employees? Ms. Burcham said that this is something that they will have to work on because she knows some employees who would want to switch to Marshall. You can contact her if you would like to join. You can send her an e-mail or call her (2823).  Ms. Westmoreland asked if this would include University Physicians & Surgeon’s employees as well. Ms. Burcham said that the way the Auditor’s office talked that this would be state employees. It was mentioned that any organization could join as long as you have the amount of people. Discussion continued. Ms. Pierson asked about the Charleston YMCA. Ms. Burcham suggested that she contact the Charleston YMCA to see if they would be interested.  

GRADUATE SCHOOL: Ms. Pierson reported that there have been lots of changes over the past year. They have had a lot of people move down to the Huntington campus. By the end of July they are expecting five more people to come to the Huntington campus.  Their numbers are starting to dwindle there which is even more reason to question why this issue of having a separate council.  Basically what they are going to have left at the Graduate School are Academic units only. No administrative offices and no administrative support services and because of this she is having a real hard time getting people to participate on staff council. She is still working on it and she is still hoping to have something done by the end of the month. She has submitted a budget request and has not heard anything. Discussion was lengthy.  

MEMBERSHIP ELECTION: Mr. Wortham reported that they conducted two elections in the month of April. The first election was for the three campus wide positions: Institutional Board of Governors representative, ACCE representative and the Chairperson of staff council. We have three fine people elected and in the latter part of April we conducted our council elections and elected a new 25-member council that will take office effective July 1, 2003. A new council list has been distributed. For the campus- wide election we had two persons who were re-elected to their position, Stephanie Neal, ACCE and Sherri Noble, Institutional Board of Governors. Mike Dunn was elected as the Council Chair effective July 1, 2003. Mr. Wortham did report that we began e-voting with the first election which worked out quite well. The participation for that election was up significantly from what previous elections had been so we think that it is only going to grow. We will expand the e-voting into the realm of the council elections next time around. The program that the University has now does not permit us to be able to vote in the category that we are in. The way it is set up now is once you go into the e-voting you can pick whatever category you wanted to vote in and that is one of the reasons why we could not use it in the council elections. The Computer Center had indicated to us that they will work on the program and write some changes so they’ll be set up to be able to identify you and what division you are in and it will only allow you to vote for the candidates in that particular division. They expect to have that up and going before our next scheduled election which will be in the spring of 2005.  

LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS – Ms. Burcham report that they got a lot accomplished and they have the staff and students at heart beside themselves. When they go, they go for all of us (Faculty Senate). They met with a lot of senators and different legislators, and in fact, they went to Charleston on June 9^th for the special session showing Marshall's interest because they have finally realized that they need to get out and lobby. They have gotten their agenda done but one of the things that they are fighting for mostly is for a state employee to be able to run for public office.  They think that we should be represented in the legislature. That is there main topic that they are going to be working for next year. We still do not have a presence for LAC but we will take care of that in September. Ms. Noble asked what the LAC is. It is the Legislative Affairs Committee of Faculty Senate. Doesn’t staff council have a legislative affairs committee? President Barrett said that she gave the report for both committees. She is the only person on this committee for staff council. Ms. Noble said that she would like to see us get our committee going because this is important. Ms. Burcham said that they pushed heavy for the tobacco tax and pop tax. They also worked hard for the cap to be removed from our increment. Ms. Bullock stated that Faculty Senate reported to the Education Committee on Monday. The faculty are trying to convince the legislature that faculty are entitled to the annual increment experience and they are also trying to convince the legislature that faculty senate needs to be in code the way staff council recently has been put in code. Ms. Bullock said one of their goals is equalizing the TIAA-CREF contribution.  Currently we are at 6% employee and 6% employer and staff had talked about asking that it be changed to 4% for staff and 7.5% for the University. Discussion was lengthy. 

SERVICE COMMITTEE: Ms. Bullock mentioned the current membership of the Service Committee and she asked if they still wanted to serve but received no response. She gave an invitation to council who would like to become a committee member just let her know. One good thing about being a member of the Service Committee is that we only meet when there is actual work to be done and we do meet during lunch hours. No committee meetings were held because there were no major issues to be discussed or no action to be taken but committee members assisted when needed.  She reported that they continue to send out cards and flowers and Key Cards when we we’re notified. We sent 16 get well cards, 27 sympathy cards, five get well flower arrangements and 11 sympathy arrangements. Last year we did not make any memorial contributions. We started off with a balance last July 2002 of $569.30 we had one deposit through the year  of $538.20. We expended $616.50 and we have a current balance of $491 and hopefully that will last us through the year. Since I prepared this report on June 10^th we have sent more flowers and cards. President Barrett said that the classified staff contributes this money.  Money is solicited at the door at the Service Awards Luncheon and sometimes we have to solicit money in the middle of the year but this is a good thing that we do. The biggest problem is that we don’t know when someone is sick or in the hospital or death until it is too late. So what we need is more eyes and ears out there to let us know so we can send the cards and flowers. Ms. Bullock said that they are waiting to see what is going to happen with the budget in July before we take any action on revising the Key Card program.  

UNIVERSITY FUNCTIONS – Ms. Hawkins reported that University Functions Committee meets only twice a year. We met in the fall to consider candidates as nominees for honorary degrees and commencement speakers. We do not choose the speaker. We make recommendations to the President, which we did in November. We met again in April and the purpose of this meeting was merely to elect officers for the coming year.  

PHYSICAL FACILITIES: President Barrett said that Betty Cook could not attend today but basically their report is that the biggest thing that they accomplished in conjunction with faculty senate committee they joined with them to have signs put up that says, Do Not Block Entrances, No Smoking and they did get an agreement to change the classroom furniture on the fourth floor of Smith Hall. Hopefully each year as money permits the furniture will be changed on each floor of Smith Hall. 

INSTITUTIONAL BOARD OF GOVERNORS: Ms. Noble reported that her year’s overview was quite an experience. She voiced her concern over the Layoff Policy and we were given the opportunity to respond again. A question was asked when a new chair would be elected for the Board of Governors. Ms. Noble said that the nominating committee will meet June 26 and the elections will be held in July but she thinks according to state code it is supposed to be done in June. 

President Barrett reported for our Ad Hoc Committee that was formed to discuss and suggest changes with the lay off and furlough policies. These suggestions were distributed and it was mentioned that this was our second go round. Basically the work that we did before was rejected because it was too lengthy and too detailed. They don’t want detail.  So we decided to reconvene the Ad Hoc Lay off Committee and work again. President Barrett continued to explain our document and she said basically we have complied with their request and once again we have had no feedback from them. So she does not know what their thoughts are.  Discussion was lengthy.  

ACCE:  Ms. Neal reported that the ACCE was successful with a couple of issues in working with the legislature this past session. First, Staff Councils were established in state code.  Second, the annual increment cap was removed for classified employees and our increment language is now in the same section of code as other state employees.  This is important to remember, as any future change to the code will affect classified employees as well.  The unfortunate matter in the removal of the annual increment cap was that language was added by the House, which stated that for the purpose of funding the removal of the annual increment cap, that classified employees could be laid off, without regard to seniority, in order to do so. Governor Wise provided funding for the removal of the annual increment cap so the language becomes moot for 2003-2004.  We have until the next session to work with the legislature to remove the language and we believe that we have the support to do so. The upcoming year could prove to be a very critical one for classified employees.   A question was asked concerning the fate of the JEC (the Job Evaluation Committee—a statewide committee comprised of human resource administrators and classified employees.)  Ms. Neal indicated that the role of the JEC is under review and added that there has been a classified employee vacancy on the JEC for several years but the ACCE has not been permitted to fill the vacancy.  The only reason given has been that no one is actually trained.  It is the ACCE’s position that there are classified employees who have been trained and who are willing to serve.   

Ms. South’s concern is if they are successful in giving the faculty increment pay what does that do to us. She would think that this would bankrupt the School and it probably would eliminate it all together.  Ms. Neal said that when the legislature removed the cap for us this session they moved us over into State code with all other state employees.  Their justification for doing that is because if we’re over in one section of code and there are 5,000 of us consequently we are more vulnerable than if we are over in another section of code with 35,000 other state employees, therefore they thought it would be best if we were over there with everyone else. Discussion was lengthy. 

President Barrett explained that we went basically from a council of 30 to a council of 25. We went from a different type of representation to strict EEO representation so in the interim we’ve lost quite a few council members.  She wanted to honor our out-going council members that either did not win re-election or chose not to run for the new council. The out-going council members were honored and the original council members were honored with certificates. 

President Barrett read a letter of invitation to begin discussion and to form the Classified Staff Council (1979). President Barrett said that on December 18, 1979 a group of classified council members met in the multipurpose room. It was a large meeting and at that meeting they took from the EEO groups seven secretarial/clerical members. This was three percent of each group, two technical/paraprofessionals, seven skilled crafts and four professional/administrative people to make a total of 20 people on the original council. They were given a charge to be concerned with policies and procedures of the University as related to them. They were encouraged to express ideas and make suggestions regarding policies, communication among the staff, focus attention on problems with policies, reaction to administrative views and a forum for discussion and advisory to the President. July 1, 2003 we go into our new era. She thinks in the last 20 some years that we have definitely fulfilled our mission. We did focus attention on problems and policies sometimes painfully so to the administration. We did foster communications among the classified staff. We did react to the views of the administration and we were an advisory body to the President. President Barrett feels that what got started on December 18, 1979 has carried through. We have been sometimes a weak voice but most of the time a powerful voice. Sometimes we were the only people that other classified employees had to turn to when they needed help and advise we were there in one way or another. She thinks the old system fulfilled its mission. She looks forward to serving with the new council and its mission to be. She welcomed each new council member and the historic undertaking that you are about to undertake because you are in State code. This cannot be taken away from us.  We are more powerful now. They have to listen to us. They have to meet with us. We have a voice. Never let our voice be silent and with that I turn it over to Mike Dunn. Ms. Pierson acknowledged Sherry Noble and Stephanie Neal for all of their hard work and she also thanked President Barrett for her leadership and feels that she has done a tremendous job. Mr. Wortham presented Ms. Barrett with a gift saying that it is in recognition of her service as Classified Staff Council president. She served for two terms – one for three years and the last time for four years. 

With there being no further business, meeting was adjourned at 2:30 p.m. 

Minutes Prepared by: 

____________________________                           ______________________________

Cora Westmoreland                                      President Dan Angel