[Previous entry: "GEO Constitution"]
11/12/2004: "Meeting notes"
GEO Meeting Notes 11/10/04
Report-back from CWA:
CWA has agreed to cooperate with GEO, although we will not proceed to an official affiliation at this point. We will work together for the next 3-6 months before making a decision on this. The CWA National has agreed to fund Abbey (the local intern for CWA) one day a week to work on GEO. Unfortunately, Abbey will be gone for the spring semester, though if any GEO members would like a part-time job, CWA would be happy to train someone to get paid for 8 hours of GEO work and some extra time with the CWA local.
CWA recommends that we spend most of our time building the organization by speaking individually with grad students on campus. We will begin recruiting organizers from all departments who will then speak individually to members of their own department about GEO, attempting to build our membership base.
CWA wants us to see this project as a long-term commitment. We face serious obstacles first with the state laws and second with the University’s Conditions of Cooperation, which explicitly exclude us from recognition as a union. In order to officially unionize, we will have to change this by taking a request to the Board of Trustees. We will not be able to successfully petition the Board of Trustees, however, until we can demonstrate mass membership.
CWA also suggests that we might want to focus on establishing a grievance procedure, which we do not currently have outside of departments. We decided to continue our major focus on dental and insurance for now, but we will also begin investigating the grievance procedure issue.
Contacts with other orgs and health care reportback:
Adrianne made contact with organizers at several other universities while researching our health care plan. In particular, some GEO members from the University of Michigan are interested in visiting Bloomington to do an organizer training. She will invite them for January if they are available at this time.
Membership meeting on Wednesday:
We will have a membership meeting next Wednesday to update people on the affiliation process and to recruit volunteers for the organizing drive. Ursula will develop a flyer and a handout. Ursula and Adrianne will speak, and Amos will lead the question and answer section. Adrianne will send out an email about the meeting.
Constitution:
We will continue to take comments, and we will incorporate some of the comments we have received thus far. The constitution will remain a draft until January, when we elect representatives.
Replies: 1 Comment
on Monday, November 7th, Jeff Welty said
this is a test comment -> linked from http://www.indiana.edu/~geo/news/archives/00000013.html