MARSHALL UNIVERSITY CLASSIFIED STAFF COUNCIL MINUTES

THURSDAY, March 20,2003

Memorial Student Center - Room 2W22

MEMBERS PRESENT: President Bamtt, Barbara Black, Jack Blake, Fran Browning, Bernice Bullock.

Jill Burcham, Carla Cook, Betty Cook, Woodrow Edmonds, Charles Harless, Leonard Lovely, Stephanie

Neal, Sherri Noble, Nancy Pelphrey, Linda Rhodes, Patsy Stephenson, Joe Taylor, Cora Westmoreland, Joe

Wortham.

EXECUSED ABSENCES: Muhammad Chaudhry, David Cremeans, Judith Damron, Charlene Hawkins,

Sonja McKenna, Martha Pierson, James Sinnette, LuAnn South, Leah Tolliver

UNEXEUSED ABSENCES: Elizabeth Graybeal, Gary Stone

GUESTS: Jim Stephens, Director of Human Resources

The meeting was brought to order at 1:05 p.rn.

President Barrett asked for acceptance of the February 27, 2003 minutes. Ms. Noble said that there are some corrections on page 5, the Institutional Board of Governors report - 7th line down where it says changes; it should read changes that are needed for the institution. On the 20th line where it reads Gary Hanson it should be Gary White and on the very last line, insert "new" committee. Ms. Neal said on page four of the last paragraph there is a couple of references made about Ms. Neal, it should read Ms. Noble. Ms. Bullock said in the question and answer section, she said it should read, "there was a federal law that a furlough period could only be five days (pg. 2). Motion was made by Carla Cook and seconded by Nancy Pelphrey to accept the minutes with the corrections as specified. Motion carried. Minutes approved.

ACCE: - Ms. Neal distributed handouts and mentioned that there are many different versions of House Bill 2224. She recommended that we look over the entire bill not just the section that pertains to the classified employees. We need to be aware of the situation that occurred the last night of the session with our annual increment Last year the annual increment cap was removed for all state employees except classified employees in higher education. We were told this occurred because we were in a different section of code from all other state employees and they (the legislators) promised this year to correct that language. House Bill 2224 originated as a three or four page bill and ended up being some 60 pages. What they decided to do is write the language in there (House Bill 2224) that would move us for annual increment purposes only to Article 5, where all other state employees are, so in the future if there were perhaps a raise in the annual increment amount we would automatically be covered. In looking at the handout, you see on the first page, which is actually page four of the bill, where they moved us to Article 5, Salary Increase for State Employees. Actually on the next page, second item, any classified employee as defined in Section 2, Article 9, Chapter l8B of this code who is an employee of the state institution of higher education or of the higher education policy commission... so that is where they moved us and they moved that language. The problem came in late Saturday night when Jerry Mezzatesta wrote an amendment into the bill, which had some mean spirited language, aimed at this increment and us. He did not want the increment to go through this year. So what he came back with was the language, on Page 5 of the hand out, under Article 9, classified employees salary schedule classification system, item number C this is his amendment: to the cost of providing any salary increase pursuit to provision of section 2, article 5, chapter 5, of this code shall be borne by the commission or institution from existing budget. The commission or institution may not increase tuition and fee charges, increase auxiliary fee charges or receive additional general revenue funds to recover the cost of the increase. Notwithstanding any other provision of this code or law to the contrary if sufficient funding is available to an institution or the commission to implement the provisions of Section 2, funding may be derived from reducing employee positions to any level in the discretion of the institution or commission that is sufficient to provide adequate funds and without regard to seniority. The Senate was very honest when this came to the floor. They told all their members of the amendment that Mezzatesta had made to the bill. None of the (senators) agreed with this language but they were at a point so late in the session that it was either approve of it or lose the entire higher education bill. The Senate Finance Committee Chair stood up and said, "we'll try to find the money for the funding,” so in all reality if the funding is there they can't do anything with this language and they can't lay anybody off if the money is not there, so it becomes a moot issue for this year. Next year we will put forth a bill that will correct this language. When it was voted on in the house, they did not know what they were voting on.

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They did not know that this amendment had been added. They were questioned several times about the funding and got different answers and that is what clued us in that there might be something wrong. After they voted on this, we went to the senate education committee office and they gave us a copy of the changes and at that point we looked at it and even asked if that language had to stay in there and if we could just drop the whole annual increment issue altogether and wait until next year because we did not want anybody to lose there jobs regardless of seniority. Jerry Mezmtesta had already told the Senate that he would not accept the amendment to have all the language stricken. It was either take it all or lose it all. Ms. Neal met with the Governor's chief of staff, he told us that the Governor was very disturbed at this language when he heard about it and he called the Speaker of the House in and said he wanted to do a line item veto, send it back and have the House and the Senate vote on it someday when they were in session for the budget bill. The Speaker informed him (Governor) that the House was not likely to take it back up again so it would be either take it like it is or lose the entire Higher Education Bill. The Governor has told us that he has found the money to provide these increases for removal of the cap. A question we asked him was $320 thousand dollars necessary for the state employees or does that include auxiliary employees as well. Nobody had given them a budgeted amount for the auxiliary employees so they are now trying to see if there is also money available for the funding of an auxiliary cap removal as well. Ms. Bullock asked, what is the auxiliary cap? Ms. Neal explained that the auxiliary cap is like Resident Services and Parking. It is revenue-generating accounts where fees are charged that in turn pays for salaries. It was asked if it would take $320,000 to give all state employees and classified employees the increment pay. Ms. Neal said this is State Funds only, not auxiliary funds. This will only cover a portion of the cap removal. Ms Neal reported that for Marshall's portion it would be about $24,000. If we include all funds it would be just over $60,000.

The other major change for classified employees is on the third page under Article six - Advisory Council -- this establishes into State Code classified staff councils. All of us have had classified staff councils in the past, but what happened recently at West Liberty is when the layoffs occurred the staff council representatives were counseling the laid off employees. The West Liberty President wondered why have a staff council if it is not in State Code. The President made the decision that they could no longer have a classified staff council and dissolved it. That is why the Advisory Council asked for language in code to establish Staff Councils.

Elections: Mr. Wortham explained the changes that have taken place for Council elections. Where as before we've always based our representation for the last 17 years on the Division/Group you are in. There is a new bill that they just passed and is waiting for the Governor's signature. Now our representation will be by EEO groups. This is basically how the federal government has job families divided up. There are five groupings that the bill calls for representation from. They are Executive/ Admin. And Managerial, Other Professionals, Technical and Paraprofessionals, Clerical and Secretarial, Skilled Crafts, and Service/Maintenance. The bill calls for two representatives to be elected from each area in the smaller schools. However, the bill allows Marshall and WVU to elect five representatives from each area. We received our EEO list from the Human Resources Office the other day and we are reviewing it. What this is going to mean is that we are going to have some groupings that will be fairly large groups and will be represented by five people. We will have some groups which are probably going to be smaller groups. Every two years everybody will be up for re-election. The next important section is that this calls for the Chair of the classified staff council to be elected by the classified employees as a whole. Right now our election process of the President (as we call it) is selected as a member of council from his/her area and then at the council she/he is elected as our president. The president will be elected, or as they call it the Chair, by the classified staff as a whole. So there will be a campus wide general election for everybody to be able to vote on who will be our Chair. President Barrett said that instead of 10 people being up for re-election everybody is up for re-election. A couple of other little tidbits which is good, it says that this Council will meet on a monthly basis and that the President of the institution will meet with staff council at least quarterly as well as the Governing Board will meet at least annually with council. Mr. Wortham reported that as part of the provision of the bill, the Graduate School and other separate campuses like our Graduate School will have their own staff council now. They will no longer be a part of the staff council here on the main campus. According to what we understand, the Graduate College will not be electing a representative for Institutional Board of Governors. The Institutional Board of Governors representative will represent both campuses. President Barrett said that as we understand it the Graduate School will still vote for the Institutional Board of Governors representatives as well. The Chair of our council will only be elected on our Huntington campus and the Graduate College will have a chair for their council elected on their campus. They will also still have their ACCE representative elected on their campus. We will have our ACCE representative elected on our campus.

Mr. Wortham reported that the election committee met this week and has set up a two-tier election schedule. The law calls for these elections to be conducted in the month of April. We have to conduct elections for the Chair, Institutional Board of Governors and the ACCE representative, and then we also have to conduct an election for council. Since this is going to be a new set up for us we decided (committee) to conduct two separate elections in the month of April. The first one will be on April 9th and is a campus wide election and it will be for the positions of the Chair, the Institutional Board of Governors and Advisory Council for Classified Employees (ACCE) representatives.

On April 24th, approximately two weeks later, we will have an election for the representatives to staff council by the EEO groups and only those people in the EEO group can vote for members within their groups. There was a question about utilizing the e voting this time. Mr. Wortham said not at this time because this has happened so fast that we don't have time to get in and set it up. A member of our committee works in the computer services area and he is going to report back to us and hopefully we will set up the procedures for the next time. If the Governor signs the bill we'll have to get the letters out seeking nominations on the first election next week and conduct the election and then send the letters out seeking nominations for the second election and conduct that election. We have to have all of this done by the end of April. An explanation will be placed on the nomination explaining the reasons for the election. Mr. Wortham said that the one thing that is required since the Institutional Board of Governor's representative is being voted on at both campuses is we need to coordinate that election dates at the Graduate College. He feels that we should not have them on the same date although he does not see there being any problem having them on different dates. Mr. Wortham will check with Ms. Pierson to see if elections can be held on April 9 as well at the Graduate College.

Ms. Bullock shared that the election information does not stipulate as to term for chair or members. Mr. Wortham said the members are for two years and they can succeed themselves (see part three on page 48 of HB.2224). It was explained how the election of the chair is conducted.

Mr. Stephens explained that the EEO category is attached to a person's position like an Administrative Secretary Senior, for example, is assigned to a particular EEO category. We can reliably produce a list of the people who have the same EEO category. He continued to explain the EEO category. Ms. Noble asked Mr. Stephens to explain how he determines the category that a position goes into. He answered that at some point in time a decision was made that a person with a particular title belongs in a particular EEO category. However, he is not aware of any discretion about that assignment. HR does not make any changes. The decision comes from the University wide classification system. He believes that it is the product of the system. He does not think that we (HR) have made any judgments here about it. He would suspect that it would probably come from the JEC. Mr. Wortham asked Mr. Stephens if an individual, once we send out the list, feels for some reason he/she is not in the right grouping, do they have a process that they can go through to have the HR office review it. Mr. Stephens said that they would be happy to hear from anyone to help them, but he does not feel that they have a lot of flexibility to reassign. He thinks that it is pretty well hard wired from the system. He would be glad to hear from anyone who has an issue and we'll go over it and find out what the problem is. A question was asked about distribution of the nomination forms. Mr. Wortham said that there would be one nomination form. There were several questions asked in regard to the EEO Discussion was lengthy.

Mr. Wortham indicated that the old council members would serve till the end of June. The new council will not take office until July 1, 2003. If, by chance, the Governor should veto the bill then we will go by our normal election procedures and have election for the Institutional Board of Governors Representative and the ACCE Representative in April and then we will have our council election in May.

President Barrett asked Ms. Neal when she found out that they were contemplating this change with council. Ms. Neal said that they asked for staff council to be established in code, but as to actually what was going to be in code she did not know until late Thursday. Ms. Neal said that there are a lot of changes but when you look at it statewide, and the fact that West Liberty's staff council was done away with, and the budget times that we are facing in the future, she feels that we need to look at it in a positive viewpoint. Another positive is that we are still going to have a council and the president is required, by code, to meet with council at least quarterly. Also, the governing board shall meet at least annually with staff council. This is not occurring now. She feels that we should look at this change in a positive way. This is going to take some getting use to and once we are satisfied that the EEO list is correct because we have a few categories falling in two different places and we need the Graduate School removed from our list President Barrett asked the Graduate School to coordinate with council on the elections on April 9 for the Board of Governors position. Ms. Bullock wanted to thank Carla for all of the work that she did on the previous list even though now they are all void.

Ad Hoc Committee: re: Draft Lavoff/Reassignment & Displacement of Classified Staff Policy: President Barrett reported that the ad hoc committee felt that the policy put together by Mr. Stephens was not explicit enough, and we thought maybe we should look at it and see what we could come up with. And we wanted to draft a policy that covered more than just the crisis at hand. We wanted one that would cover any layoff situation. President Barrett informed council the reason why we are not talking about furloughs is because it came to our attention that if you take a furlough you can be compensated for it and in our opinion that would not work with what the University is trying to accomplish. Mr. Stephens said that they have the letter from the Commissioner of Labor and they have it under advisement and will confirm with the Commission whether this is so or not. President Barrett said basically there was a letter from the WV Division of Labor which stated that if you have a furlough/layoff you can use your annual or sick leave to cover the period that you are off up to the amount of time that you have accumulated which pretty much defeats the purpose in the committee's minds. After the ad hoc committee learned of the existence of this letter and saw what it said, we felt that we needed to try and draft a layoff policy on our own that would be more explicit and more inclusive with what we believe needed to happen on this campus. Discussion was lengthy. Mr. Lovely made a motion to accept the draft policy with changes as specified by Ms. Bullock and seconded by Mr. Harless. Motion carried, Draft Layoff Policy approved. President Barrett commended everyone that worked on this policy.

New Business: There was some discussion on when we would have our council meeting at the Graduate School since it is so late in the year. Council agreed that our May meeting will be held at the Graduate School.

President Barrett announced that our recommendation to waive the parking fee was not approved and this is because of the bonds. She also mentioned that with the increases in the parking fee, PEIA and not to mention the City of Huntington User Fee financially it is not going to be a good year. However, she believes that we can work together and get the new council up and going with our new found strength in code and meeting with the President quarterly and meeting with the Board of Governors once a year.

With there being no further business, meeting was adjourned at 2:40 p.m

Minutes Prepared by:

Cora Westmoreland President Dan Angel