8/11/11 Local 404 General Membership Meeting Minutes

Present: Kevin Graves, Ann Sullivan (Recorder), Lynn Whipple, John Collins, Charles Johnson, Matt Stenger, Connie Anderson, Chuck Carlson, John Knobbe, Molly Kennedy, Kelly Woelpern, Rich Delestre

Greet Membership
1.Secretaries Report: July 2011 meeting minutes- Additions or Corrections? Motion to accept subject to review by John Knobbe second by Connie Anderson then carried.
Correspondence Review
a) AFSCME Family Picnic Sunday August 14th from 1pm-5pm at Battle Creek Park in Maplewood MN- all members invited. Door prizes and food provided.
b) AFSCME Women’s Conference
c) C5 Exec Board Minutes May 2011
d) Secretary Training Oct 7th
g) 2012 AFSCME Family Scholarship- please see Chuck Carlson for info.
f) AFSCME GLBT Forum- Saturday August 20th
g) 2011 Convention Credentials
2.Presidents Report:
a) FD M&C - Minutes will be posted- Any questions, please see Chuck Carlson or John Knobbe
b) CBHH Meeting – upcoming
c) Forensic Division Joint Labor Management-
d) MSOP Meet & Confer – Any questions please see Molly Kennedy
e) Council 5 Presidents Meeting August 5th. John Knobbe attended.
3. Old Business:
a) State shut down - impact on the Local and grievances in process.
3 class actions rolled into one presentation presented at meet and confer today.
4. New Business:
a) Fall Convention
Voting will be at the General Membership meeting on September 8th. Anyone interested in attending should contact Connie Anderson on or before this date via email. Delegates will be finalized on this date- voting will take place if necessary. Up to 30 delegates can attend.
b) AFSCME Next Wave Bowling Event
August 18th, 2011 from 6-8pm at The WOW! Zone in Mankato. Please contact Jeremy Tubbs at 985-3001 if interested.

5. Items from the membership:
a) Kevin Graves is interested in looking into Skype technology to allow AFSCME members to attend/view union meeting online. Connie Anderson made a motion for Kevin to look into this and bring information such as cost back to the membership. Motion was seconded by Matt Stenger then carried.
b) Discussion at length about PI and union involvement in safety and the role of Dr. Adam Anderson- issue raised by Rich Delestre.
Social Committee –nothing to report
Officers Reports:
VP-John Knobbe: “Glad everyone is back from the shutdown. In the last month we have had M&C in MSOP and joint labor management. I attended the Presidents meeting @ Co. 5 & we had a new employee orientation this AM which brought 14 new members to our local.
I presented a grievance for staff @ FNH today which was granted on the spot.
In Solidarity,
W. John Knobbe”
VP- Molly Kennedy: “This month has been SUPER busy due to the shutdown in July. There were many different grievances filed thanks to Matt Stenger and Jeremy Tubbs. The grievances that were filed are; Out of order layoff and recall, for the people who were deemed critical having to use ETL vs LSS which means you lose your accruals. Denied vacation and floating holiday. Thanks to everyone who sent me responses. When I hear the responses to these I will send out an e-mail notification.
In MSOP we have been dealt with management looking at different scheduling patterns. The push for this is to drive down the costs of OT. We requested for the breakdown in OT hours to help make a better scheduling suggestion.
We have joint labor management with Moose Lake Aug 18th. Some of the topics that will be discussed are; The uniform site being available to order from, the 4th spot of vacation in St. Peter and one more spot on nights when they get to a full compliment, and the issue of people rescinding partial shifts and it not showing on the vacation calendar. I would just like to say that we should look out for each other since it is very hard to get vacation in this program. If you want to rescind a day, do it more than 14 days out so that someone else has a chance to get it and keep check of your vacation balances so that you don't have to rescind last minute. These are just suggestions so that we can all get a chance at vacation.
Thanks!
In solidarity,
Molly Kennedy”

Treasurer-Connie Anderson:
STATEMENT OF INCOME AND EXPENSES FOR MONTH ENDING July, 2011
CASH BALANCE BEGINNING OF MONTH: $ 45847.68
INCOME FOR THE MONTH: $ 5234.33
EXPENSES FOR THE MONTH: $ 13789.67
CASH BALANCE ENDING OF MONTH: $ 37292.34
SUBMITTED BY: _______CONNIE ANDERSON_____ on _ __, 2011__
Accepted subject to audit motion by John Knobbe second by Rich Delestre then carried.
CS MSH/Transition: John Collins: Nothing new to add or report.
CS-AMH/CARE: Kevin Graves: “CBHH – Combined M&C on the 25th We’ve lost two stewards one at Rochester and one at St. Peter both due to changing employment.
CARE – M&C scheduled for July was cancelled due to state shutdown.”

“Next Wave Conference 2011
Atlanta GA
Thank you to local 404 for sending Jeremy and I to this event to represent our local Union. The purpose of the next wave conference was to bring app. 600 new and upcoming union leaders/ activists together for the purpose of training, enabling, and educating them on the struggles that working people and our union in particular is facing in the upcoming years.
The Good: This was a very well organized conference. We were brought on a tour of Martin Luther King’s neighborhood (He grew up in Atlanta), the church he ministered to, and his memorial site. This was a bus tour with a local history professor as our guide. He educated us all along the bus route and when we would stop at significant sites along the route. We then headed to The Carter Center, a charitable organization that was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide. These Tours lasted app. 4hrs. We then returned to the Hyatt Regency Hotel for lunch and then got the conference rolling. We heard from the MC’s of the event who were from WI, NY, and CA. They talked about how they became active in the union and described their union experiences in the last couple of years.
There were dozens of workshops scheduled over Friday and Saturday that you could pick three of. They ranged in topics from workplace relations, media, negotiations, activism, bridging age gaps in memberships, etc.
We were able to hear many speakers including The Yes Men (political action group check them out on you tube) Al Sharpton, Bob McIntee, Lee Saunders, Sarah Kamal, a democracy activist in Egypt, among others. I’ve always considered Mr. Sharpton to be as crazy as they come but I have to admit I was impressed with his speech and he didn’t rant and rave like I expected him to do. Along with the other speakers they were really able to put into perspective the issues that we are experiencing here at home. The main points being; If the economy is so broken that workers need to lose their rights and their incomes, incentives, why is corporate America making record profits all across the board. On a national level after 8 years of Bush tax cuts to wealthy businesses and business men why are there no new jobs being created? Perhaps it’s time to reinstate those taxes so that the rich can bare the same burden as we have been doing by having wages frozen, property tax increases, and attempted cuts at our health insurance etc. Everyone should be pitching in not just the little guys. There is a concentrated effort all across the US to attack unions not on the national level but down home at the state level where they can really pick unions apart from MN to WI, NJ, OH, AZ, etc. We must stand together in solidarity to fight these battles for our future, and our children’s future.
The Bad: A few things disappointed me about the conference. Although this was supposed to be geared towards new and up and coming union leadership it was over represented in the 50+ age category. I would say app. 30% of the participants were over the age of 50 (while there is nothing wrong with this and they had good things to say this was touted as an event for those 35years and younger and the point was to get younger people involved) I am not sure if this is an issue on a local level where they don’t have any new members interested or if it’s a larger issue in communication but it was a little disappointing to see the status quo there. I was also hoping to learn a little more about how we can play to the right side of the aisle a little more and how we can help support republicans to be better union members but it appears that will have to be a more grassroots process. (I do believe that you can be republican and be supportive of the union it’s just going to take these folks a lot more work ? ) There was a call for the union to support collectivism business model (handily shot down, woo hoo). Quite a bit of focus on minor or absurd issues (I.e. talk about raises, modern day slavery, etc) Luckily most of these didn’t seem to be taken too seriously by the majority of the members in attendance.
I hope to bring some of the ideas and the things that I learned to help bring our own young members into the fold within our own union. One of the first things I would like to see our local support is the incorporation of Skype technology to our union meetings. Skype is a computer program that enables members to dial in from home and watch the union meeting. With the local’s support I would like to take the initiative of looking into how this would work and give the local a presentation in 1 or 2 months that would outline the process we would use. I already know the program is free. Costs to the local would be for web camera, microphone, etc. I would guess anywhere from $200-400 would be the final cost.
Thank you
Kevin Graves
Chief Steward”

CS- NOCs/CRP: Jeremy Tubbs: “During the month of July we have had a lot of issues where MSOP chose not to follow the contract mainly during the state shutdown. There were many instances where essential non 24-7 employees had their vacations canceled, people that thought there were getting legislative leave received no pay, and they even refused pay to some military members. We found that some of these issues had happened at other workplaces on the campus. As a result I filed 4 class action grievances and Matt Stenger filed 3. These were on behalf of every member of Local 404. If any of these issues happened to you please contact Molly Kennedy, she has been collecting all the data so that grievances can be tracked and filed.
I sat one investigation and filed one regular grievance this month. The grievance will be presented at the next meet and confer with MSOP.
The MSOP management has indicated that they are still looking at changing MSOP’s scheduling pattern. We were assured by Ralph at the all staff forum that they would hold a Q & A session with all staff to get feedback before making a decision. This kind of change will affect the lives of all employees in one way shape or another. Be very honest if and when you are asked for feedback. You may not think that your opinion matters but you will never know if you don’t try.
Jeremy Tubbs”
CS – Facilities and Forensic Nursing Home: Jill Gorman: Nothing new to report.
CS – MSOP: Matt Stenger: “Since the shutdown Molly, Jeremy, and Myself have filed seven class action grievances on behalf of local 404’s membership. Some were able to be presented on the local level and should be getting responses back from them soon. The rest will be presented by council 5 to MMB. We currently have a couple of grievances outside of the class action that Jeremy and I have been working on. Management has also stated they want to take away our fixed days off to make a 6-2 rotation. They made the claim that this would help save on overtime. We have requested the overtime that has been paid out in the last year minus overtime accrued by sick time. We will be having another meeting to discuss this on Aug 18. We should have more information then.”
EB-Anne Mehltretter: Nothing new to report.
EB-Charles Johnson: “I sat one investigation on NOCS, have yet to hear any follow up. Fielding questions from members regarding overtime / inversing eligibility and obviously the vacation situation.
Charles”
.EB- Eric Ridout: Nothing new to report.
Good and Welfare: Jesse Miller, Michelle Rodning, Jake Cottew, Matt Uecker, Tom Eustice, Mike Keech, Lori Nielsen, Kara Lehman, and Sarah Kerich
CLU delegate report- nothing to report
Council 5 Field Representative Scott Grefe- The shutdown is over and now it is on to negotiations. We will negotiate until a settlement is agreed upon by all parties involved. Our current contract will stay in place until this happens. Visit AFSCMEMN.org for updates on negotiations. There were many poisonous rumors and myths floating around regarding the shutdown and misunderstandings regarding the government rationale. Before spreading these myths Scott would like people to find out the truth by contacting him at 651-287-0506.
Message to Members:, The shutdown is over but the battle continues!

Door Prize Winners- Everybody Wins

Progressive Drawing- Sept 2011