Minutes - August 19, 2004

These minutes were approved at the UT Staff Council meeting on September 16, 2004

Members Present: Pat Alfano, Mack Andrews, Alison Louise Brown, Oscar Carmona, Melba Catchings, Johnnie Conley, Marlis Dagg, Patrice Fox, Phil Gavenda, Royce Gehrels, Freida Golden, Mark Gonzalez, Christy Habecker, Charlotte Harris, John Hibbitts, Tom Horn, Marcus Horton, Greg Howard, Kim Johnson, Amy Jones, Elizabeth Korves, Liz Landeros, Sonja Lane, Lynn LeCropane, Debra Madden, Suzanne McIntyre, PG Moreno, John Nelson,Chuck Pearson, Billie Pierce, Albert Puga, Jorge Puig, Jo Ann Richmond, Leslie Saucedo, Craig Schroer, Anna Sergi, Sandra Sleeper, Didi Smith, Sheril Smith, Jerry Spillar, Barbara Thompson, Jennifer Trost, Alayna Wadleigh, Erin Waneck, JR Watson, Sara Jackson Watson, Shane Williams, Cynthia Wilson, Glen Worley, Gabby Yearwood

Members Absent with Notification: Yolanda Alsaco, Philemon Brown, Alanna Burney, Tara Carlisle, Laura Davis, Neil Fahlund, Linda Frost, Phillip Guerrero, Bert Herigstad, Gayle Hight, Margaret Hill, Noah Lowenstein, Kathy Romberg

Members Absent: Vickie Amidon, Augustin Collazo,Julie Cunniff, Rick Garza, Phillip Hebert, George Hughes, Dreya Johannsen, Frank Simon, Olen Smith, Teresa Williams

Guests:

Quorum: 75 filled UTSC representative places divided by 2 - 38 (for quorum)

Call to Order:

Chair Glen Worley called to order the regular meeting of the UT Staff Council at 2:05 p.m. on Thursday, August 19 in Main 212. 50 UTSC representatives were present.

Announcements:

Welcome new members: Jennifer Trost, interim representative for District 571 (VP - Public Affairs)

Next meeting is Thursday, September 16, 2004 from 2-3:30 p.m. in Main 212.

Chair's report:

Grievance Policy

Kyle Cavanaugh informed the Chair that the new Grievance Policy would be rolled out this month as any other policy. There will be presentations to the vice presidents and deans, and a presentation in the HR Forum. Monica Reed, who sometimes attends our meetings as the HR rep, will be the 'Dispute Resolution Officer.' She is bilingual.

Check 21

Check 21 or Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act goes into effect on October 28. This allows banks, credit unions, etc. to stop transporting original paper checks and, instead, to transmit electronic images of the checks. This will reduce the time for a check to clear from days to hours. Please inform your constituents of this as many people write checks at the end of the month, even though we don't get paid until the first working day of the month. For more information please see the URL: http://www.consumersunion.org/finance/ckclear1002.htm

EAC July 2004 meeting notes

Officer election results for the next year:

• Chair: Sandee Goertzen, Administrator Service Officer, and UT Dallas
• Vice Chair: Pep Valdez, Director of Internal and External Communications, UT Medical Branch
• Secretary: Janet Cole, Administrative Coordinator, UT System Administration
• Historian: Glen Worley, Manager, Library Services, UT Austin

Dan Stewart, Executive Director Of Benefits Administration for UT System, reported that UT System is already testifying before legislative committees, and that this could be a difficult legislative session for UT. He also urged all EAC representatives to communicate with their component HR departments as to the topics and issues discussed at the EAC meetings.

Guest speaker: Angel Cruz, ITS Security Directory, UT Austin

UT components must protect 'data at risk'

• Credit card and bank numbers
• SSN’s
• Patient records
• Donor records
• Research data
• Homeland security data

Mr. Cruz pointed out that cyber threats really exist. Examples:

• Bandwidth hogs - e.g. file sharing programs
• Computer viruses or worms
• Cyber terrorism - 100,000 attacks made every day on UT Austin systems. 80% of these come from inside the system. There is a need to move to professional management of mission critical systems. The era of student-run computer networks or systems is ending. Employees need security awareness training. Technical staff also needs better training.

UT Austin strategy is to develop "islands of protection" with firewalls around valuable data such as student records. Another strategy is intrusion detection.

Spam blocker: Setting up a campus wide spam blocker is difficult because of the wide areas of interest on campus, however, UT Austin has been testing a spam blocker called Brightmail and plans are to implement this on a campus-wide basis in the future.

Wireless: Wireless Internet is like a postcard; anyone can read it. UT may evolve a policy that would forbid sending sensitive information on a wireless network.

Report from the UT System Student, Faculty, Staff Campus Life committee concerning UT Police:

UT Police applicants must meet higher standards for admission into the UT Police academy than other police departments. Must have 60 hours college credit, 20 hours credit and two years of military service, or 30 hours credit and one-year experience as a UT guard. Because of this, other law enforcement agencies recruit heavily from UT Police.

Education assistance initiative update:

EAC is still interested in recommending to the regents that UT System develop a system wide education assistance benefit that would be open to all UT System employees. Currently some components, like UT Austin, offer this, but not all. After some discussion concerning the difference between statutory tuition and designated, or discretionary, tuition; it was decided that, due to the recent tuition increases,now was not the time to ask the regents to develop a system-wide plan for some amount of tuition assistance for employees. The EAC will continue working to develop a recommendation at a more appropriate time. There was also some discussion of researching what be necessary to implement an employee-funded scholarship fund for employees and/or their family members.

Wellness program: UT System is working to develop a system-wide wellness program.

Jim Sarver, Director Employee Group Insurance

Good news concerning benefits: Life insurance premiums decreased by 17%. Debit card option for those who use flex funds. Flex funds can be used for co-pays, over the counter drugs, and anti-smoking aids such as patches or gum.

Bad news (Additional issues): The total cost of the plan continues to see increases such as Physician and in-patient fees of 12%, and Prescription costs by 15%. UT Select premiums increased by only 4.5%, but this is because UT System absorbed part of the increase. Everyone should expect that premiums would continue to increase in the future. Why?

• More utilization of health care
• Drug prices increasing
• Medical technology prices increasing
• Increasing amount of large claims. Example: Half a million dollars for one premature baby
• Unlimited lifetime benefit

Legislative front: UT System will ask for a special increase for group insurance within the UT appropriation request, however, last session the appropriation for UT group insurance was cut by 14%.

What can UT System do to reduce costs of benefits?

Possibilities

• Disease management programs
• Wellness programs
• Retiree issues – retirees at the individual level may someday be asked to pay for some of their coverage
• Employees and at the individual level may eventually have to pay for some coverage
• Consumer driven plans - let organizations set health care costs, but usually has high deductibles - not a desirable strategy

Texas A&M benefits study

A legislative mandated study, due in August, would examine whether or not Texas A&M System should be absorbed into the state employee benefit program, rather than maintain its own program. Jim Sarver’s guess is that A&M will keep its own benefit program.

Dan Stewart, Executive Director Of Benefits Administration for UT System

Comments on tuition assistance for employees: Need collaborative guidelines for all components and consensus building with component HR departments and the Chief Financial Officers for each component.

Deloitte and Touche will conduct the first ever system-wide audit in FY 2005. They will be on component campuses over the next year to observe. The audit is scheduled for publication in FY 2006.

Question was raised about the Grievance Committee, and whether it was going to monitor the new grievance process. The Chair stated it would be up to the committee to choose to do that or to disband.

Vice Chair's report:

Status of committees

The Vice Chair reported that all of the committee information is updated and posted to the UTSC website. Everyone has been assigned to a committee of their choice. Guidelines similar to Robert Rules of Order, describing the role of committees, behavior, and information on reports is available at www.rulesonline.com. Please refer to Article IX that addresses Committees and Boards.

The Vice Chair also recommended that committee chairs issue reports two weeks before the executive committee meets so there is time for review.

Workload on committees has been an issue. This will be evaluated to find if the distribution of issues should be changed.

The Vice Chair reminded the UTSC to notify the recorder in the event of an absence to the regularly scheduled meeting.

The executive committee plans to post to the UTSC website a FAQ concerning the role of committees and chairs.

Recorder/Secretary:

Minutes from the previous meeting:

The minutes of the July 15 meeting were approved.

Committee Reports:

Standing Committees:

Committee on Committees - Craig Schroer: PRC transportation committee nominees still needed.

Issues Committee - Didi Smith: No new issues to report to UTSC

Working Committees:

Facilities Committee: Sheril Smith

Re: Proposal #2004-16 – Suggested Locations for Trash Cans

Committee Recommendation

The Facilities Ad Hoc Committee recommends that the UTSC write a letter to Capitol Metro (copy to UT Parking & Transportation), requesting that additional trash cans be placed at two locations along the bus routes: one at the NW corner of San Jacinto and 21st street bus stop and one at the bus stop just west of this corner, on the north side of 21st street, also a bus stop.

Basis for Recommendation

1. Trash accumulates at these two bus stops due to no nearby trash cans.
2. Facilities Committee member Mark Gonzalez has spoken to Capitol Metro and they are willing to furnish trash cans along bus stops at our request.

The Facilities Committee continues to work toward placement of trash cans in the other two areas of concern, along the sidewalk south of Jester ResHall and along Speedway in front of the Sanchez building. We will report back on this at our next meeting.

Motion made to write letter to Capitol Metro; motion passed.

Re: Proposal#2004-9 – Mowing Down Wildflowers at Pickle

Committee Recommendation

The Facilities Ad Hoc Committee recommends that the UTSC write a letter to John Daude, Physical Plant, asking that they consider adopting a "mosaic mowing plan" to allow for the different wildflowers to bloom at different times of the year to promote ecological and wildflower diversity. This would mean designating part of the field for early blooming flowers like bluebonnets, part for mid-summer and part for late summer and fall. Everything would be mowed in spring, except the area for early bloomers, while maintaining control of the rest of the grounds. Then, this mowed area would be allowed to grow without mowing for summer flowers.

Basis for Recommendation

The University of Texas at Austin Physical Plant's mission is to develop and maintain an exceptional physical environment and to provide benchmark services to support the University's educational and research goal of transforming lives for the benefit of society.

Also because the J. J. Pickle Research Campus consists of 476 acres with almost one-half in open unimproved fields, there is adequate space to maintain a variety of wildflowers at different times of the year.

Facilities Committee member Charlotte Harris contacted Stephen Kelley who is in charge of grounds maintenance and mowing in this area. One of his concerns was that mowing not wait until grass/weeds get too tall and cause difficulty mowing or the added trouble of mowing around bluebonnets. His other concern was keeping snakes and fire hazards reduced. Mr. Kelley stated that any recommendations be routed to John Daude at Physical Plant.

Charlotte also contacted Dr. Mark Simmons at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center. Dr. Simmons is a restoration research ecologist. He stated that you must have mowing to encourage wildflowers to grow rather than weeds, but that timing is everything. He recommended that mowing not be done in the area where bluebonnets bloom until late May, and that we consider adopting a mowing plan as listed above. In this way, the Physical Plant staff that is responsible for mowing could choose one area to allow bluebonnets to grow through the end of May, while mowing the remaining areas earlier in spring. Then, the areas mowed in spring would be allowed to have mid to late summer blooming flowers, while the bluebonnet area gets mowed.

Recommendation accepted.

Ad Hoc Committee: Legal Benefits Committee: Gabby Yearwood - Report

Re: Proposal # 2004 – 13 Staff Legal Benefit, Elective Coverage

Committee Recommendation:

The Ad Hoc Committee recommends that the UTSC request the Office of Human Resources make a legal benefit available to UT Austin employees at the earliest time possible.

Basis of Recommendation:

The Ad Hoc committee found several reasons why this benefit should be made available to UT-Austin employees.

1. No cost to employer. Meaning that offering this benefit to UT Austin employees would not be an expense to the University or to Human Resources.
2. Cost to employees. In surveying different companies costs ranged from as low as $8-$12 per person and under $20/family.
3. Limited resources needed to provide. The committee found that Human Resources offices at comparable institutions did not have to devote a lot of resources either in initially providing the benefit nor in maintaining the benefit for employees.
4. Benefit offered at comparable institutions. Several institutions offer this benefit at a scope that would be similar to UT Austin:
   • Emory University in Atlanta
   • University of Michigan
   • University of California
   • University of Idaho
   • Colorado University
   • North Carolina State University
5. Other institutions offering legal benefit
   • EANES School District
   • City of Austin
   • Miami Dade County
   • AT&T
   • FedEx
   • Lowe's
   • Target
6. Benefit would be optional. This benefit would operate like other benefits currently offered to UT Austin employees such as vision and dental. Employees would be given an option to enroll as opposed to
   mandatory or compulsory enrollment.

Types of services provided to subscribers

• On-line and telephone legal services
• Financial planning
• Identity theft
• Immigration assistance
• Will and estate planning
• Court representation
• Document preparation
• Family law
• Civil lawsuit defense

*Almost all providers noted that employees were not allowed to use the legal service to sue the institution providing the benefit i.e. UT-Austin employees would not be able to sue the University.

Selected Companies Providing Legal Service

• ARAG <http://www.araggroup.com/>
• Hyatt Legal Plan <http://www.legalplans.com/>
• Pre-Paid Legal Services <http://www.prepaidlegal.com/>

Result:

The UTSC voted to have the Chair write a letter to HR suggesting that they consider offering an employee-funded legal benefit, though this would mean that HR would have to send this suggestion on to UT System.

New Business:

Tom Horn reminded UTSC that copies of the surveyed salaries report from 2000 that examine the Buck study from 1997, as well as the KPMG study that evaluated UT as an employer are available for review in the library.

The Chair made available for review by the UTSC the letter written to President Faulkner regarding issue 2004-7.

Adjournment:

The meeting was adjourned at 3:05
The next meeting of the UTSC will be September 16 at 2-3:30 in Main 212