February 2002

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On Wednesday, January 30, general membership meetings were held at noon and at 5pm on the Santa Rosa campus and at 2:30 on the Petaluma campus, with Two Rock employees attending at Petaluma, to discuss and vote on the Tentative Agreements reached between SEIU and the District. These TAs were signed on Monday morning by both teams and posted on the SEIU web page on Monday afternoon. Employees known to be on scheduled leaves were contacted and provided with ballots or urged to attend.
After presentations of the agreements by all members of the team and our Field Representative Steve O'Keefe, members cast ballots. Five service fee payers elected to become members in order to vote.
The next morning at 9am, three members of the Elections Committee met, after announcing the time and place over e-mail, and counted the ballots. The result was ratification, with 149 votes for yes and 2 votes for no.
Out of 432 filled positions, 275 people are members, bringing our membership percentage to 63.65%.

We worked hard to win a fair contract and now we have to work hard with our community to make sure the bond measure passes. Our thanks to the faculty and to the Central Labor Council of the North Bay for their solidarity in helping us win this contract.
Our community wants the College to be able to provide the resources necessary to meet its educational needs. We need more facilities and improvements to the infrastructure to keep up with growth and demand, and we need Measure A to pass to reach these goals. Dr. Agrella has pledged that staffing needs will be addressed with general funds made available as a result of the success of the bond measure.
The CAC strongly urges all Local 707 members to encourage their families and friends to vote “yes'' on Measure A and if at all possible help get out the "yes" vote.
If you are interested in volunteering, call Steve O'Keefe at 545-7349, x104. You will find plenty of union members working by your side, and we hear pizza is provided!

Time to clear up some misunderstandings. At the vote on Wednesday, Election Committee members checking people in found that a number of service fee payers did not understand that they were not members and, therefore, not eligible to vote.
At the time of implementation of the legislation requiring school employees to either pay a service fee for representation or become members, a number of people opted to do nothing. The default was that anyone who did not actually choose membership became a service fee payer. Dues payers, who are members as a result, have 1.35% of their gross salaries deducted monthly; fee payers have 78% of that sum, or approximately 1.053% of their gross salaries deducted monthly.
Anyone who discovered a "mistake" and signed a membership card at the general meetings was given a ballot; anyone who wants to become a member now can do so by leaving a message on the Stewards' Shop voicemail (522-2758), and someone will get a card to you right away.
We know there were some resentful feelings when the implementation of Agency Shop was initiated. We are hoping that classified employees are so pleased with this recent Agreement and are aware how much solidarity was demonstrated by organized groups such as the All Faculty Association and the AFL-CIO Central Labor Council that they will see the importance of joining together in mutual effort through membership.

At the end of February, SEIU is taking our grievance about the issue of determining our work hours to arbitration. We will be represented by our Field Representative, an attorney from the law firm retained by SEIU, and a steward from our unit.
The arbitrator will take a close look at Article 6 of our Agreement and will hear arguments from the District and SEIU to come to a decision about this issue.
As SRJC seeks to expand its services and its offerings at more than three sites and over a seven­-day week, little could be of greater importance to our unit than this arbitration hearing.

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