April 2003

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NEGOTIATIONS UPDATE
Shirley Davis

The Voluntary Time Off (VTO) Interest Survey, SEIU's proposal, and the Seniority List were the topics of discussion at last Friday's negotiations meeting.
VTO Interest Survey - Karen Furukawa, District Team, reported the data on the responses to the interest survey. The report included a list of the comments and suggestions along with the following statistics:

Shirley Davis, SEIU/Classified Team, added a further breakdown of the data to reflect the following: SEIU Proposal: The District Team requested more time to work through the proposal presented by SEIU.

Seniority List - See following article. The next negotiation meeting is scheduled for Monday, April 21st.

SENIORITY LIST
CEC

Karen Furukawa reported that the Seniority List for classified employees will be distributed by April 15th and be available to employees for review at select locations at the Petaluma and Santa Rosa campuses as well as the Public Safety Training Center in Windsor. Employees will be granted a reasonable amount of release time to review this list during normal working hours. However, employees should still inform his/her supervisor if leaving the work site.
SEIU will have a copy of the Seniority List available at the SEIU office located in Bussman Rm #1472. The SEIU office schedule would be as follows:

Individuals may request a copy of their own individual employment history on which the Seniority List was based, by emailing a request to or by phoning Jackie DeLap in the Human Resources Office, extension X4954. If you plan to stop by the Human Resources Office to pick-up your own history, you need to bring your photo ID.
Employees who disagree with data displayed on this List are invited to complete a Request for Research form that will be attached to a letter each employee will receive. These forms must be submitted by May 7 to the Office of Human Resources.

ANNUAL REPORT TO FEE PAYERS
Ann Samson

Fee payers have expressed irritation at having to make a trip to the post office to pick up a report from SEIU. The report to fee payers is the result of a U.S. Supreme Court decision referred to as the Hudson decision (which must be the name of the appellant). Unions representing fee payers must annually report the use the union puts to the fees they pay. Because they have 30 days from receipt to challenge this report, the union must ascertain the date on which they received the report, hence the certified mail with return receipt requirement. SEIU Local 707 is simply complying with the law.

STEWARD'S CORNER
Ann Samson

Recently, Local 707 adopted the International's policy of ensuring that the members who advocate for you as stewards do so as a result of membership selection. The most obvious way to select stewards is to elect them. Our newly revised bylaws do not cover this process, and both the stewards and the Classified Executive Council want to know how you would like to see this process described and carried out.
Here's some background: As long as I've been at SRJC (since June 1989), our contract has specified six stewards, with released time to perform their duties of 16 hours per month. We currently have five stewards who have volunteered, been trained by Local 707 professionals, agreed to ongoing training, and been appointed by the CEC: Zoe Forbes, Financial Aid; Bob Peterson, Bookstore; Ann Samson, English; Esther Soto, Environmental Health and Safety; Virginia Zola, Facilities Operations. Ann Sebastian, who works only a few hours a week in Tutorial, has recently resigned from this function. As you can see, we have no steward at either Petaluma or Windsor, but we have large membership percentages at both sites. Stewards represent any unit member (SEIU member or fee payer) who requests representation in areas of wages, hours, and working conditions.

Some basic questions that need to be addressed are as follows:

In order to publicly select stewards, we will need to revise the bylaws, which will need to be approved by the general membership, and then hold whatever selection process we decide we want, during whatever period we have determined in the bylaws. At present, elections are to be held in April and/or May.
Please check the appropriate boxes below to let us know how you think stewards should be selected.
Detach and return this tear-off to the SEIU MAILBOX in Bailey Hall by April 28, 2003.

Steward candidates should: Comments/additional suggestions:



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