SEIU Steering Council
July 14, 2007
SEIU Steering Council
July 14th, 2007
DRAFT NOTES
Present: Kim Cook, Sandi Conrad, Nancy Gerber, Kathy Yasi, Cathy McPeek, Donna Horne, Sue Winn, Linda Ramuta, Angela Taylor, Roxanne Pera, Karen Hart, Gilda Turner, Paula Hall, Sisi Harry-McDade, Kat McGunagle, Debbie Knighten, Shawn Harris, Maggie Valtierra, Jane Elfering, Kathy Miller, Linda Anthony, Barbara Frost, Sherry Schleufer, Kathleen Harty.
Kim Cook: Welcome and Intro
Nancy Gerber: Going over agenda
Maggie: Table topics, Getting to know you…
- Paula Hall: Feeling with being united with other family child care providers….doesn’t feel alone, learns from others, friendships.
- Angela Taylor: Tell us your first thoughts when you heard we were unionizing: First thoughts were fear…what were they going to do to her.
- Donna Horne: Describe your funniest SEIU Union Trip: The first one I did because I didn’t fly…Linda Bremer had to go with me, it was fly in go to hotel, work all day with no food or water, up till 12 and up again at 5 a.m.
- Debbie Knighten: How did you feel on your first visit to Olympia? Tracey Rogers was with me and scared to death so just watching Tracey in itself was fun to watch her get out of her shyness and goes all over Olympia.
- Shawn Harris: What does SEIU stand for? Service Employees International Union.
Nancy Gerber: We belong to a bigger family, short brief on yesterday’s meeting.
Donna: Future campaigns, we need to be active. We are going to support Gregoire, Sen Craig Pridemore, Not supporting Initiative I 960 (Tax fairness coalition) and ARE supporting EHJR 4204 Simple majority for schools.
Cathy McPeek: E board training on culture. We need to identify with SEIU and become connected with them socially, emotionally, etc, etc. Passing out purple things…lint rollers, notebooks, cleaning supplies, Sandi Conrad demonstrates how to use the purple items….
New chant we learned: “Childcare united will never be divided. “
Nancy suggests sharing the new chant with the Center group in the other room.
Karen Hart: Talks about staffing. We have a million dollar loan that we need to pay back. We borrowed money to get our campaign going and so the dues we first receive will be in September. We also had to pay the state over a million to get the dues deduction system up and running. So, we basically need to now figure out how to be as sufficient as possible.
Staffing: Local 925 Staff:
Communications/Press, Robo calls, Literature, Website: Gretchen Donart and Karen Hart
Contract Negotiations: Kim Cook
Political Strategy: Tricia Schroeder, Adair Dammann
Web person/ Vancouver person: Sophia Gonzalez
Political Strategist/Local and National: Kursten Holabird
New Organizing: Brooke Lather, Twila Slind, Kito Alvarez, Shirley McElroy, Zola Ezekiel
Logistics Support: Irene Eldridge, Becky Cowan, Eldean Montgomery, Linda Laurel, Miriam Richardson.
Early Learning Division Staff Structure:
Member Support Department: Nubia Lopez (Licensing, pay, award letter, problems)
Organizers: Maggie Valtierra (Mid State)
Sherry Schleufer (East State)
Gilda Turner (South King County and Southwest)
Lisa Beaulaurier: (North King County and Northwest)
Early Learning Division Director: Karen Hart.
Sisi Harry: Talks about the group “Embrace”. This is a group of providers who are joining together to help train providers of color on how to become leaders. Party/meeting is July 28th in the IBEW bldg. 206-322-3010 to RSVP. This is a diversity party.
Karen, Sherry, Nancy speak about how important it is to get the Spanish speaking providers more involved, how to make them all feel more comfortable coming to meetings, how to communicate better with them.
Up coming meetings and events: These are Regional meetings.
East State: Sept 22nd (with Sherry). SEIU would like at least one member from the executive board to attend each meeting. This meeting will be in Ritzville.
King Co: Sept 22nd (Gilda and Lisa).
Northwest: Oct 6th
Southwest: Oct 20th
Mid State: Nov 10th
Next Steering Council meeting will be: November 3rd, 2007.
Lunch Break: We went and had lunch with the Center Directors/teachers and discussed among us how many things we really have in common and what their goals are in negotiating their future contract.
Break into groups by Region to discuss our future goals:
Political Goals: Tricia Schroeder
Walks/Shifts: 2008 is a Presidential year, huge year for walks/shifts and phone banks. We will also be re-negotiating our second family child care provider contract so, 2008 will be a huge year for us and there will be a lot of work for us to do as far as walking, knocking, and phone calls.
COPE: we have to get more people to fund and send money in so we can use COPE money to send in to get people to support us. Last year our COPE goal was $6,000, we achieved it and actually received 7,000. The average contribution was $15-$20 per person. 350 people (family child care providers) roughly gave to COPE last year.
Membership: New list we are getting every month from the state. Now we know who our members are every month. Now we can go to orientations each month to try to get new members to join that way as well.
Southwest Region: Roxanne Pera, Angela Taylor, Cathy McPeek, Shawn Harris, Kathy Miller:
Membership:
We have 400 members now. We potentially could have 2500 providers. Our minimum goal is to get 200 more to join but, our ultimate goal is 300.
Shifts / Walks: Our goal is 100 shifts
COPE Goal: 100 people to give $20 each totaling $2000.
King County: Shifts 20, Cope 400 people for 36.00 each, Membership Goal 400 people.
Northwest: Shifts 50, Cope 200 people, Membership Goal 400 members.
Mid-state: Membership 300 members, Shifts 60, COPE 75 people $1500 total.
East: 40 shifts, Cope 1501.50, Increase membership to 800.
Total Goals among the Regions: Membership 3600, Shifts 270, COPE People 1175, Cope money $7,520.
Food Program Issues: Still hard to reach licensed exempt providers who are out there partly due to turnover, etc. We need to set a goal for how many providers to sign up for the food program. People can only receive food program money if you provide the care in your home. 2000 providers do this service now. This number is out of 6000 licensed exempt providers that we have totally. Our goal to get exempt providers signed up will be 450 providers. Our goal will be the same for the training incentive.
Negotiated Rule Making: We need WAC’s that are clear, easy to understand, intent of WAC’s should be clear. They should make sense for everyone. Goal in 2008 for Negotiated Rule Making is to put something out on the website about it, talk about it at regional meetings as well. People need to bring up things about it, be more open and talk about it, give support to Negotiated Rule Making team members. This is a long process, and they need our support and back up. Support each other!!!
Contract Enforcement: The problem in the state right now is the payment increase. People are getting invoices that don’t have the correct amount on them. The state needs to fix this problem. The letters that are coming out do not have the correct infant rates in several regions. The state has admitted this problem yesterday for the first time finally. We have told them they need to be fixed by the 20th of the month or the state needs to send out emergency checks, if they are not correct on the 20th I (Karen Hart) thinks we should do an action on the governor. Karen thinks we should all send the governor a fax action or something like this. If it’s not fixed, we should make the state pay us with interest.
Winnable Issues:
1. We need a committee (to start in January) to work on Health Insurance and other kinds of Insurance issues in 2008.
2. We should work on dealing with some specific Licensors and Supervisors and their issues.
Debbie Knighten: when we talk to a licensor, they document every single thing we say. We need to get the word out to providers to start documenting anything and everything to protect themselves. You should also know to call someone who can come to your home to be a witness upon licensing visits.
Sue Winn: We need to look at communication issues. People still aren’t getting the message. We need another committee maybe that can come up with ideas on how to reach people to let them know what we are doing, and how to get involved.
Karen thinks each region when they are having meetings, they should come up with some plans on how to reach out to people. Leader cores should be reaching out to people.
Nancy Gerber: Brings up CSO issue where they want her to collect 70% of the co-payment from the non custodial parent. Karen says we are not going to discuss this at this meeting, we don’t have time but it should certainly be a goal for 2008.
How to build the Union by organizing: We need to empower people to fix their own problems ultimately. Everything we do is about strengthening the members’ power.
Grievance Investigation Agreement: This form will be online and the member can actually download one online and fill the form out themselves. The member has to take responsibility.
Sherry: FLOW OF MEMBER CALLS:
As providers you have always been the first line of contact for all of our members. Our member support department is where we want phone calls to go. They will be tracking calls coming in and out. If you get calls you can answer questions, then you should call Nubia at the Member Support Department phone number to let her know you just helped a member with a question. This is also a good way to keep track of what’s going on out there, what issues are surfacing where, etc. it will also give us the head’s up if certain things are going on in certain areas, then perhaps we need to do an action of some sort to stop it.
The Circle of Power! (Group problem)
MSD
Karen
Organizer
Leaders
Group Action
AGENDA FOR NEXT REGIONAL MEETING:
We want to offer some STARS training at regional meetings to get more people to attend. We also think we need to offer some more training with more time at future meetings. Some session with what’s going on with Negotiated Rule Making that Angela could give us a little report perhaps.
Some success stories
Some skits, chants, laughter!