Employee Assembly Benefits and Policy Committee Meeting

TermAY 2018-2019
Assembly/CommitteeEmployee Assembly Benefits and Policy Committee
Date10/18/2018 2:00pm
Location401 PSB
AgendaFile bpc-20181018.docx
Meeting Packet
Audio Recording
Minutes

Introductions  - Each attending member introduced themselves.

Tarek Chams – chair

Chari Fuerstenau

Michael Hint

David Hiner

Ellen Miller

Anne Sieverding

Kathy Sheils (on phone)

 

 

Tarek suggested we work on some “loose” Roberts Rules just to maximize our time.  If we’re aware of the general rules, he will facilitate and jump in to keep us on track.  He passed out some basic ground rules for committees.

 

For the next two months we’re going to meet on the 3rd Thursday.  Tarek will put on our calendars.  There was discussion that once we begin reviewing various proposals, we will likely need to meet 2x/mo.

 

Allan Bishop (AVP for Human Resources) and Lauran Jacoby (Sr. Consultant, Staff & Labor Relations) will generally come to these meetings.  Our charge is to work cooperatively with them.  If we seek something, we should work with them to accomplish change rather than moving to a resolution for the President.   There was a question as to whether we might have some conversations without HR in the room.  The group is free to talk among themselves outside of the meeting.  In addition, there was a suggestion that we invite Allan and Lauran to each meeting, but apprise them from meeting-to-meeting as to whether our topics would generate discussion/questions/etc. where it would be helpful for them to attend. 

 

We have bylaws; we can propose changes to them as we go along.  This is a new committee since we combined two former committees (Benefits & Personnel Policy).

 

Tarek mentioned that his hope was that we would discuss an issue in the meeting and then a few folks would work on it outside of the meetings to move it forward, so we can have multiple issues being reviewed at the same time.  

 

We discussed Tarek’s data on vacation days and holidays at peer institutions.  There was a request to expand the data to include all the Ivy Plus (at least undergrad) by adding Stanford, MIT and Duke (Duke is Big 10).   An attendee stated that Gordon Barger (Senior Director, Benefits Services and Administration) recently commented that half of Cornell’s employees are millennials who do not come here with plans to stay for many years.  That fact supports our potential request to provide increased amounts of vacation time sooner than the 10 year mark.   

 

Request -- Could we set up a Yammer or similar way for us to exchange ideas outside of the meetings?

 

Action Items: 

  • Create Yammer Group
  • Schedule brainstorming session 11/1 at 2pm
  • Block future meetings: 11/15, 12/13,  and 1/17

Associated Resolutions