UCW-CWA Local 3865 E-Board Minutes
20 January 2007 — UT-Chattanooga, Chattanooga, Tennessee

In Attendance: Tom Smith, Pres.; Pat Kerschieter, VP-Knoxville Chapter; Shela
Van Ness, VP-Chattanooga Chapter; Susan North, Treas.; Tom Anderson, Legislative Comm. Chr.; Fritz Efaw, At-Large Member; George Helton, Winn Clark

Pres. Tom Smith called the meeting to order at 10:30 a.m..

Financial Report: Susan North submitted the financial report. A few new line items have been added for accounting purposes. See report attached to these minutes. The E-Board voted unanimously to roll over the CD that comes due in the next few days.

Election of E-Board Members. Pres. Tom Smith reported that we need to have elections to fill or resolve two at-large vacancies on the E-Board. The board members will be elected to complete the current three-year term, which will be up at the end of 2008. Announcement of the vacancies and request for nomination will be published in our next newsletter. Following a 2 month nomination period, the election will take place at scheduled chapter meetings. Additionally, we will include nominations for the CWA Convention Delegates.

An election commission of Shela Van Ness, Sandy Hicks, and Wes Knott was appointed to oversee the election.

Organizing Program; In the absence of organizer Cameron Brooks, Pres. Tom
Smith gave the organizing report.

During 2006 our union gained between 185 and 190 new members, resulting in a net growth of 130-150. The plan for 2007 is to use targeted phone calls and face-to-face contact to continue the goal of assessing all workers.

George Helton moved that we approve an organizing program that continues assessments using targeted phone calls by members of the organizing committee.
The goal is to talk to 3000 new members and to add 250-300 new members.
The motion was seconded by Tom Anderson and approved unanimously.

Legislative Report: Tom Anderson, legislative committee chair, reported on the meeting with State Rep. Harry Tindell from Knoxville to discuss our legislative goals. He also presented the Legislative Committee’s 2007 Legislative Program.

The Legislative Committee proposed to submit only a bill for payroll deduction this year, while working to lobby for fair pay raises within the frame work UT (and hopefully the Governor’s budget) will lay out: a 5% increase.

Final decision will not be made until the Governor presents his budget proposal in mid-February.

We discussed what the Union’s position should be on raises for the coming year. George Helton proposed that we take a position that includes four points:
1) a mandatory, across-the-board COLA (cost of living adjustment) equal the inflation rate;
2) no merit pay without a compression adjustment equal to that received by other state workers last year;
3) an across-the-board floor equal to the total percentage of payroll increase times $30,000 (i.e., if the total pool is 5%, the floor will be $1500);
4) no merit pay without a clear and transparent process for evaluating performance and distributing raises.

Shela Van Ness seconded the motion and the board approved it unanimously.

Susan North moved that we postpone setting a lobby day until have seen the governor’s budget proposal and had an opportunity to check the Speaker’s calendar. We will poll by e-Board via e-mail in late February to set a date for early to mid March. Winn Clark seconded the motion and the board unanimously approved it.

Up-coming CWA meetings: There will be a meeting of CWA Public Sector unions in Jackson, Mississippi, March 4-7, 2007. We have no budged money for this meeting. If anyone wants to attend, we’ll have to raise the money to pay their expenses. Susan North will head up a fund-raising effort. The International CWA convention will be held in Toronto July 16-17. We will decide on delegates and funding at a later e-board meeting.

In closing, we began a conversation about ways to function better as an organization. We felt we need to tighten up our function generally. We determined that the first step should be to write job descriptions, consistent with our by-laws and CWA by-laws, for each officer and for Cameron Brooks, organizer, and for an office manager. (Wes Knott is currently performing these functions without pay, but we anticipate that eventually, we will need to formalize this position.) The board anticipates that this will be an on-going conversation.

The meeting adjourned at 12:30 p.m.

Minutes submitted by Susan North.