THE
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
STAFF
SENATE
(NORMAN
CAMPUS)
Wednesday,
June 18, 2008
Chair Beth Gatewood called the meeting
to order at 1:31 p.m. in the Scholars Room of the Oklahoma Memorial Union.
Officers present — Beth
Gatewood, Chair; Linda McCarty, Chair-Elect; Kathy Gross, Recording Secretary
Officers
absent — Betty
Love, Immediate Past Chair
Staff present —
Barbara Perry, Administrative Coordinator
Representatives present —
Hourly Employees Council: Diana Fitzpatrick, Ed Fontaine, Donna Stephens, Kim
Haddad, Carolyn Irons, Troy Schmidt, David Kizer; Informational Staff
Association: Michael Goodwin, Debi Gentis, , Lisa Bowles Debbie Copp, Elaine
Bradshaw; Organizational Staff Council: Sandi Emond, Jannie Porter, Matt Berry; Administrative Staff Council: Sue-Anna
Miller
Representatives absent — Hourly
Employees Council: Robert Murphy, Jack Shoopman, Melanie Wilburn, Dee Hayes; Informational
Staff Association: None; Organizational Staff Council: Cathy Brister, Tami
Kinsey, Cathy Trujillo; Administrative Staff Council: Robbie Wahnee
Guests present — Nancy
Matthews, Department of Mathematics; Lezlie Pilkington, Administrative Affairs;
Linda
Smith, Price College of Business; Julius Hilburn, Human Resources; Terri
Sarsyski, Human Resources; Dick Trim, Office of Compliance; Kris Glenn, CART
PRESENTATION BY KRIS
GLENN, CART
Kris Glenn from CART
introduced himself and said he was there to encourage participation in the June
19th “Dump the Pump” day.
He said Cleveland Area Rapid Transit would be providing free bus rides
on the 19th with the hope that people would get out of their cars and take the
bus to work, to school or to do errands and shop. A free t-shirt would be given to all passengers. To end the day, a rally, complete with
prizes, would be held from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Andrews Park. Kris reminded people that faculty,
staff and students could always ride free of charge. Route schedules are posted on the Web.
CHAIR’S COMMUNICATIONS
Chair Beth Gatewood
reported that she met with Vice President for Executive and Administrative
Affairs Nick Hathaway. The budget
was discussed. She reported that
there would be a 1% budget cut to the FY09 budgets. She said it appears the FY2010 budget will be difficult. Beth said Blue Cross/Blue Shield will
be recommended as the new health care provider at the June regent’s
meeting. She said Nick encouraged
Staff Senate and the member groups to keep abreast of the discussions of Health
Care Contribution Strategy Committee.
She said it would be a good idea to have Julius Hilburn or Nick Kelly
attend some of the member group meetings to give updates.
ACCEPTANCE OF MINUTES OF
MAY 21, 2008
On motion by Matt Berry, the minutes of the May
21, 2008, meeting were accepted as written.
OTHER
COMMUNICATIONS
Organizational
Staff Council: President Elect
Sandi Emond said OSC met on June 5.
Nick Hathaway was the guest speaker. Many of his remarks concerned the budget outlook. OSC officer elections were finalized.
Administrative Staff
Council: President Sue-Anna Miller reported that
ASC met on June 17. The group
elected a member to fill an upcoming vacancy on the Staff Professional
Development Committee and discussed the extended sick leave proposal. President Elect Robbie Wahnee described
her ideas for programs for next year.
Informational
Staff Association: President Michael
Goodwin said ISA held their annual spring meeting on June 11. They discussed the Angel Food Ministry program
and decided to continue with that program in the fall. They would like to share information
about the program and get more people involved. The group elected and filled vacancies for ISA council
members and Faculty and Staff Senate representatives. They also discussed the ESL proposal.
Hourly Employees Council: President Diana Fitzpatrick reported that HEC met on June
11. Guest speakers were Robbie
Wahnee, Myla Bryant and Terri Hartley.
HEC discussed an email received from an hourly employee inquiring about
the possibility of going to a four-day work week, but did not take any action
on the subject. Their next meeting
is scheduled for July 9.
STANDING
COMMITTEES
Personnel Policies
Committee: PPC chair Linda Smith
said PPC met on May 30 for a year-end celebration. Officers were elected.
Margaret Vennochi was elected chair.
MISCELLANEOUS
Linda McCarty announced
a service for OU Credit Union members. June 26 from 3-5:00 p.m. will be shred day. The Credit Union at the Lindsey
Branch will have a chipper truck available to shred papers, CDs, DVDs, hard drives
and video tapes.
REPORTS
The
following reports were linked to the June agenda:
Staff Senate
Foundation account report.
Annual
activity reports from University council and committee representatives: Administrative Coordinator Barbara
Perry said that Dan Hough, Staff Senate’s representative on the Patent Advisory
Committee, had passed along information that the PAC had not met this past
year.
OLD BUSINESS
Further consideration
of recommendation from Personnel Policies Committee regarding use of extended
sick leave: The proposal was linked
to the agenda. Associate Vice
President Julius Hilburn attended the meeting to provide additional information
regarding this issue. Julius said
OU had a unique approach to sick leave, vacation and paid time off. He said OU started using the new
management system in the early ‘90s as a way to try to get employees
responsible for managing their leave and to address issues with the Oklahoma
Teachers’ Retirement System. The
paid time off granted is to be used to cover personal absences, doctors visits
and incidental time for illnesses as well as vacation days. One of the handouts provided was a memo
from President Boren dated July 5, 1996.
President Boren stated in that memo that 12 days of the paid leave accrual
are intended to cover incidental sick leave. However, Julius said, over time, people began to look at the
amount of paid leave they received solely as time for recreational or
discretionary time off. Julius
provided competitive data: the
annual median accrual reported by CUPA-HR is 21 days for first year employees
and 30 days for ten year employees.
OU provides annual accrual of 27 days for first year employees and 33
days for ten year employees.
Julius said he did not find any data on how long you must wait before an
employee accesses an extended sick leave program. He thought a 5-day waiting period would not be unusual.
However, Julius said anything that is done to allow people to more quickly
access their ESL account will have a financial or productivity cost to the
University because you are increasing the amount of time a person can be
compensated without being at work.
A handout was also
provided with information on the number of employees with ESL and the average
paid leave of those employees.
About 11 to 15% of employees (hourly and monthly) with less than 80
hours of paid leave have some ESL.
The employees who are most likely to have ESL tend to be those who have
enough paid leave to meet the waiting period presently required by the program. Regarding the waiting period for
hospitalization, Julius said that used to be an exception, and you did not have
to meet a waiting period if you were hospitalized, but the policy was changed
(see President Boren’s memo of July 5, 1996). Time is included in the accrual to cover those types
of incidences.
Members commented that
last year we had gone through changes to react to market changes and we were
now paying for our health care. We
have changed and are not doing things the way we did in years past. Our health insurance has changed
dramatically since the policies of 1991 and 1996. The changes being suggested might be a way to help ease some
of the financial burden when an employee is out for an extended illness. Another member remarked that our
benefits keep disappearing. He
said we had been guaranteed paid medical insurance for retirement. That had been taken away – the
promises made were not going to be fulfilled. He had heard that if you are
within one or two years of retirement, you will get your paid medical
retirement and after that, it will be broken down by years of service and
percentage. He said we were asking
for a little bit for all that had been given up. Another member commented that many look at ESL as a waste
and don’t feel they will ever use it.
They would rather take time off than let time roll into it. She asked if that was good for
productivity.
Julius said he looked at
sick leave as an insurance policy.
It is there if you need it and if you don’t, then you are fortunate not
to have an incident. In
organizations where sick leave and vacation are separate, you still come up
with that issue. When you leave
the organization, you may leave a bank of time sitting there. It is the same with ESL. (For those in the Oklahoma Teachers’
Retirement System, they can get additional service granted for a certain amount
of hours in their ESL account upon retirement.)
Addressing retiree
medical insurance benefits, Julius said none of us ever thought we’d be paying
$1,000 a month to cover a family.
Ed Fontaine said he understood it was a changing world, but the paid
medical retirement was the single best recruitment tool the trade shops had,
keeping 40% of their shop in place and that was lost January 1. Julius said there was an active group
looking at the retirement issue and said no decisions had been made. Beth reminded the group that at last
year’s forum, President Boren said he wanted the promise made to current
employees followed through. But
she said there has not been a recommendation and that is why Nick Hathaway
recommended all the member groups keep abreast of what is going on with that
committee.
Beth drew attention to the response that
had been received from the Tulsa Staff Senate supporting Item #1 of the proposal. She said they had reworded it to read
three days, not 24 hours, but Tulsa did not support Item #2 of the
proposal. At last month’s meeting
HEC gave their support to the proposal, and OSC President Cathy Brister
forwarded an email stating unanimous support from OSC for the proposal. Beth then called on ASC for a report.
President Sue-Anna
Miller said ASC had the benefit of having Tulsa’s recommendation to include as
they considered the proposal. ASC
did not support Item #2 of the proposal.
They felt there would be difficulty in administering Item #2
fairly. They discussed Item #1
extensively. They felt 7 days was
too long, and 3 days was too short.
ASC favored 40 hours.
Because of the work schedules of some departments, (i.e., 10-hour work days),
they discussed FTE and passed the following recommendation: In the event of an illness, an employee
must use 40 continuous hours based on a full time FTE of paid leave or leave
without pay before accessing accrued extended sick leave.
Debbie Copp said ISA did
not have the advantage of having Tulsa’s recommendation which she agreed made a
lot of sense. ISA voted
unanimously to accept the recommendation without the word “scheduled.” Debbie said every group with the
exception of ASC thought that three days was a reasonable amount of time. She suggested that the same apply to
all illnesses including hospitalizations. She made the following motion: “In the event of an illness, an employee, who has a 100% FTE
appointment, must use 24 hours of paid leave before accessing accrued extended
sick leave. For those with
appointments less than 100% FTE, the amount of leave time will be adjusted
based on the FTE. Send the motion
back to the Personnel Policies Committee for endorsement.” The motion was seconded. A member asked if Item #2 would be
deleted from the proposal. Debbie
said she thought Item #2 could potentially be discriminatory and did not want
her name attached to such. There
was consensus to strike item #2. The
motion passed on a show of hands. Linda
Smith, Chair of the Personnel Policies Committee said although PPC was not
scheduled to meet again until September, she would convene the PPC and report
back to the July Staff Senate meeting.
NEW BUSINESS
Election of Staff
Senate Chair-Elect for 2008-2009:
Nominating Committee Chair Linda McCarty thanked her committee members, Ed Fontaine, Anna Love,
Jannie Porter and Sue Anna Miller.
Linda said they were recommending Diana Fitzpatrick for the position of Staff
Senate Chair-Elect for 2008-2009.
Beth called for nominations from the floor. There were none.
Debbie Copp moved to accept the nomination by acclamation. The motion was seconded and passed
unanimously.
Election of Recording
Secretary for 2008-2009: Linda said
they were recommending Elaine Bradshaw for the position of Staff Senate
Recording Secretary for 2008-2009.
Beth called for nominations from the floor. There were none.
Debbie Copp moved to accept the nomination by acclamation. The motion was seconded and passed
unanimously.
Approval of
recommended nominations to University and campus councils, committees and
boards: The list of recommended nominees was
linked to the agenda. Matt Berry
moved to accept the slate of nominees.
His motion was seconded and passed on a voice vote.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Beth announced that the
deadline to sign up for the Standing Committees was June 27.
Beth said she had
received information from Karen Buntin regarding a Crop Walk on September
28 to stop hunger for Cleveland
County. It will benefit Food and Shelter for Friends. If member groups would like to participate in the
program, contact the Staff Senate Office for additional information.
ADJOURNMENT
As there was
no further business, the meeting adjourned at 2:44 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Barbara
Perry
Administrative Coordinator
Kathy Gross
Recording Secretary