Minutes
Mar. 6th, 2006
Ursula, Adrianne, Morgan, Sharyn, and Elizabeth were present.
I. Indiana Commission for Higher Education--useful to get someone on that if we can, but may be tricky if the permanent resident requirement is strictly applied? Elizabeth will ask for an application to see what's on it and check the deadline to know when to send it out to members.
II. Health Care--the topic of the rest of the meeting.
The cuts seem to be getting people riled up.
A. GPSO meeting Friday--Dan Rives of HR was present, as was Adrianne. See article in IDS today.
Physics rep talked spiritedly about cuts--had calculated additional costs for dependents and asked how we could keep this from going into a "death spiral" (i.e. higher costs mean more people drop out which means even higher costs which means . . .). Nobody had an answer to this question. Physics rep also suggested that we be added to the faculty & staff health care pool; Rives said NO because we are "not employees." Asked if it would be cheaper if we *were* considered employees so we could do this, Rives said no. We need to research this to find out if it really would be cheaper or not; if so, we can say IU is wasting money. (Admin will be reluctant to acknowledge us as employees for fear of what that might mean for unionization. Note: IRS considers us employees!) Elizabeth will find out the name of this Physics rep and contact him to see if he's interested in working with us.
B. GPSO seems to be seriously considering mandatory insurance for all grad students--would this make people angry? Would require non-SAAs to buy into a plan that would be considerably more than the current voluntary plan.
C. Action--when and whether or no.
Budget actually voted on in May, per Paul Rohwer; not a good time of semester for an action. March 29 meeting of SAA committee a better time; how would this affect the negotiations for the specific changes?
We tend to see the specific changes as less important (at least to us as a union movement) than the big-picture issue of the university not funding the increase in the first place, of being shut out of the most significant decision, etc., which would mean we should have an action. Hopefully we can still be involved in the negotiations, but it's a question of priorities.
We decided to take this question to the members via an online "vote" (or survey, or whatever). Adrianne and/or Ursula (?) will contact Jeff to see how quickly he can put this up; only GEO members will be able to vote and only we will be able to see the results. We will send this out right away, but can't count on everyone to participate before Spring Break. The question will be some version of: "Do we prioritize negotiating specific cuts or do we prioritize challenging the administration over the cuts themselves?" (Adrianne & Ursula will work out final wording.)
We will also announce two open planning meetings for this action (assuming we have it)--i.e. our regular steering committee meetings on March 20 & 27. Adrianne will get rooms for these so we can have a chalkboard to brainstorm on and so people can find them easier.
We did some brainstorming about creative ideas for this action, including: bringing children to dramatize the problem of dependent coverage, or photos of children on signs; using dental signs as well, maybe a slogan: "what happened to dental?"; bringing medical props--crutches, bandages, slings, etc.; putting x-rays on signs.
(I don't know if we said this, but we need to find out where this meeting takes place and when, exactly.)