Present | Present | |||
President Forrest Hasty | Vice President Corey Mathisen | |||
Past President Mohammad Dehdashti | Treasurer Gene Hicks | |||
Secretary Laura Lyons | Director Heather Gardner | |||
Director Jason Hedeen | Director Kevin Joyce | |||
Director Mike Kruse | Director Blake Nelson | |||
Director Jason Radde | Director Mark Trogstad-Isaacson | |||
Director Victor Vasas | Open Director position | |||
Executive Director Dana Wheeler | ||||
Call to order
Meeting was called to order by President Forrest Hasty at 3:35 pm.
Agenda
Motion to approve the edited agenda by Jason Radde, Mike Kruse seconded the motion. Motion passed by unanimous Teams vote.
Secretary’s report (approval of prior meeting minutes) (Laura Lyons)
The minutes from the July and August board meetings were reviewed. Jason Radde made a motion to approve the July and August minutes; Mike Kruse seconded; motion passed by unanimous Teams vote.
President’s report (Forrest Hasty)
- Annual Meeting
Not as many people as last year, but up to about 97 people at one point. Even post-COVID we will hopefully continue a virtual meeting so non-Metro members can easily participate.
2. MGEC Board news
- Steve Oswald resigned from the board, leaving a director vacancy for the remainder of his term (through Dec. 2022).
- Executive Committee
Met in Sept. to discuss building updates, potentially hiring Donna as Kari’s backfill (see ‘staffing update’ below), and COVID-19 vaccination attestation forms and impacts on members.
- Staffing Update
- Executive Administrative Assistant
As discussed during the August board meeting, Dana reached out to Donna Blackwell, who was in the top three candidates in 2018 when MGEC last filled this position. Donna is interested in the position on a part-time, contractor basis, so Forrest, Corey, Laura, and Dana had an informal informational interview with her on Sept. 23rd. The board discussed her qualifications and contract details.
- As a contractor, Donna will pay her own taxes, FICA, health insurance, retirement funds, etc. Her contract would include MGEC providing pro-rated vacation time and holidays.
- Contractor salaries can be higher than staff salaries to accommodate this: Kari is currently at $39.25/hr and Bob was at $35/hr. Forrest and Dana proposed starting Donna at $35/hr, with an increase to $39.25 after six months of satisfactory job performance.
- She prefers to work from home as much as possible. We have an MGEC-specific cell phone and phone number that Kari used and a laptop that Kari is still currently using. Both could be provided to Donna as work equipment.
- Kari is currently working ~15-20 hours per pay period, so Donna being part time will be able to help with those duties but not much above that.
Afterwards, Jason R. made a motion that Forrest may make an offer to Donna for the open position, and the signed job contract between the MGEC President and Donna will be provided in the next meeting packet following the contract being signed by both parties; Victor seconded. Motion passed by unanimous Teams vote.
While talking with Donna, Dana put up two new position descriptions: one administrative with an applicable salary range and one for labor relations. He added Corey on the two job posting websites so Corey should be able to receive all applications too, as another set of eyes. Once MGEC has a signed contract with Donna we’ll take down the assistant posting. We will leave up the labor relations posting.
- Executive Director
Dana is interested in stepping down sometime in the near future. In the meantime, he’d like to keep working full time, taking half the time as vacation.
To fill the work load gap this will cause, Dana began reaching out to other labor organizations to let them know we posted a labor relations position. Two people at another union(s) had general interest but said they could not commit right this moment. Some folks at a City expressed interest.
- Nominations/elections
Annual election date is November 2, 2021. Nominations closed Sept. 24th – see Nominations Committee below for ballot details.
5. Communication Practices
- Recurring problem of MGEC emails going to members’ junk/quarantine
- Jason R. made a motion to keep using Constant Contact and not use MailChimp (negating the board’s July 26 communications motion), Laura seconded. Motion passed by unanimous Teams vote.
- Use of personal versus work email was discussed but no changes were made.
6. Other relevant topics:
- Safety Boots
Contract language says employer should provide safety equipment, including footwear (without setting a price cap). If contract language prevails, as it should, the $125 limit will no longer be applicable. Some employer responses have been to say ‘ok then we’ll provide the boots.’ It is unclear how they will change the current boot-buying process to do so.
- Board meetings
We anticipate meetings will stay entirely virtual at least through summer 2022, considering how winter 2020-21 went with COVID-19. If we return to routine in-person meetings, board members will still have the opportunity to attend virtually, as was the case pre-COVID-19.
Committee Check-in
- Communications/Social Committee (Corey, Gene, Heather)
- Once hired, Kari’s backfill will draft written member communication for review by Dana and/or the President prior to being sent to members.
Action items:
- Committee will decide a Chair, and Co-chair if desired.
- At Executive Board’s request, the Communications Committee will meet quarterly to review the website and bring any updates to Dana/Executive Administrative Assistant.
- Promotional/Recruiting Committee (Kevin, Blake, Corey, Mohammad, Victor)
In her continued part-time status while we backfill her position, Kari is still contacting new represented non-members with new-to-MGEC information. We should reach out to these new staff with more “face-to-face” interaction in addition to Kari’s initial email.
Kevin is working with MnDOT HR to set up a meeting with the MnDOT grad engineering development committee.
Action items:
- Committee will split a list of new represented non-members up by which board member or local representative will contact them. (This may require routine Committee meetings to follow-up on outreach progress and assign new represented non-members outreach as hiring picks up again.)
- Will go to MnDOT grad engineer meeting? There’s an in-person grad meeting that we could send folks to too. Kevin and Jason H will follow-up with Des about the date/schedule.
- Technology/Education Committee (Corey, Heather, Jason H., Kevin)
No updates.
Action items: Continue reviewing P.E. class reimbursement requests as they come in.
- Legislative Committee (Laura, Forrest, Jason R., John Siekmeier, Mark, Dana)
No updates.
Action items:
- Continue updating other policies to reflect current practices.
- Jason R. to lead efforts to update the lost time policy to better reflect current board practices and norms.
- Member Advocacy Committee (Dana, Forrest, Mark)
- See arbitration update in Executive Director’s Report.
- Negotiations Committee (Dana, Corey, Forrest, Blake, Jason R., Jeff Southward, John Siekmeier, Kevin, Mike, Mohammad, Thomas Villar, Victor)
- MGEC last negotiated with MMB on September 2. The Committee narrowed the list down to about 6 ‘asks,’ while MMB proposed COLAs of 1.25% for FY22 and 23. After MMB proposals repeatedly focused on MGEC dropping its proposals, without MMB providing reasons for wanting to drop the proposals, MGEC proposed that the process move to mediation. MGEC suggested each side decide six to eight remaining proposals that were important to that side to be the focus for mediation. MMB agreed, and two mediation dates are now scheduled for Nov. 23 and Dec. 7, 2021
- The MN Legislative Subcommittee on Employee Relations (SER) is meeting this Friday (October 1) at 1 pm to consider approval of MAPE and AFSCME tentative agreements.
- Finance Committee (Gene, Blake, Jason R., Laura, Mohammad, Victor)
- The finance committee met with Dana’s financial advisor, Rob Johnson at Fidelity, on September 1st. He was insightful but due to potential conflicts of interest the Committee agreed to talk to another advisor(s). A meeting with another advisor, Mike Englund at Northwestern Mutual, is scheduled for October 5th.
- Jason R. reached out to several financial advisors along with Mike Englund, and some have no interest in advising MGEC due to various reasons: we have limited assets for them to manage, we have a revolving board that may change its finance/investment goals routinely, and we do not have a written plan defining our financial goals. Such a plan is highly recommended so board members can ensure they are being fiscally responsible with members’ money, and so financial advisors can determine appropriate investment selections.
- The board agreed to wait until a financial advisor is found to make decision on what to do with MGEC’s building.
- Nominations Committee (Hannah Braatz, Heather, Mohammad, with Dana’s help)
- Nominations for vice president, treasurer, and four director positions closed on Sept. 24th. The nominations committee met on Sept. 27th to discuss the ballot. Their suggestion:
* Move to a method where candidates are not paired; rather, use a top-one/top-four voting method.
* For VP, the three candidates will be listed, either randomly if the software allows, or alphabetically by last name. The candidate with the highest number of votes will win.
* For the four directorships, the eight candidates will be listed, again either randomly (preferred) or alphabetically by last name. The four candidates with the highest numbers of votes will win if at least one is not from MnDOT.
If the top four are all from MnDOT then the top 3 MnDOT candidates will win and the top non-MnDOT candidate will get the fourth directorship position, to satisfy MGEC’s constitutional requirements.
* Other reminders: make sure there’s a blank name spot.
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- Make sure the software doesn’t let voters pick the same name 4 times.
- Other committees MGEC Board used to have:
- MGEC retirement committee members met with other unions in the Public Employees’ Pension Committee (PEPC) to look at retirement proposals. Recently organizations are calling for this committee to resume meeting.
- Engineering committee met with public/private unions and brought concerns to the MN Board of AELSLAGID (Architecture, Engineering, Land Surveying, Landscape Architecture, Geoscience, and Interior Design)
Executive Director’s Report (Dana Wheeler)
- Arbitration update
- Update on COVID arbitration case that staff could not accrue vacation and sick leave while taking COVID-leave: MMB lawyer on the arbitration maintained that MGEC misinterpreted federal law. MGEC sent a letter reiterating that MMB violated our contract, re-explaining federal law and how it relates to MGEC’s case (see August 2021 Board meeting notes for details), and stating that while we appreciated the leave, MMB needs to update our contract appropriately in the future. MGEC withdrew the grievance after sending the letter.
- COVID-19
- COVID-19 vaccination or weekly testing attestation policy went into effect on September 8th. MnDOT send Dana day-long Laudermill hearing meetings for Oct 4th and 5th for MnDOT MGEC employees who have not met the policy.
Treasurer’s Report (review of monthly finance report) (Gene Hicks)
Report reviewed.
Past President’s Report (Mohammad Dehdashti)
Vice President’s Report (Corey Mathisen)
Adjourn:
Kevin left at 5:03 pm; Heather left at 6 pm.
A motion was made to adjourn by Blake Nelson, Jason Radde seconded. Passed by voice vote at 6:28 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Laura Lyons Dana Wheeler
Secretary Executive Director