Podcast with SJSU Professor Gus Lease

September 29, 2005, A conversation with Gus Lease, Looking at the labor movement in the California State University System.

To listen to audio, click here --> MP3 File Here
SJSU Music Professor and good friend Gus Lease has been with SJSU since 1950. He joined the California State Employees Association (CSEA) before it was a union. This union now does not include faculty, but then it was an association that everybody who worked at the university could belong to, including managers. He describes how the association evolved and discusses the upcoming statewide CSEA meeting, General Council.

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SBLC and OPE Endorsement Interviews

Next week the South Bay Labor Council will be interviewing candidates for the Sunnyvale City Council, Foothill-De Anza CCD, Cupertino Union School District, and the City of Palo Alto. All union members are encouraged to attend and join the discussion of the candidates responses. Dinner will be provided. Please call 408.266.3790 to RSVP or for further information.

Thursday, September 22

6:00 - Sunnyvale Seat 1
Tim Risch
Anthony Spitaleri

6:30 - Sunnyvale Seat 3
John Howe
Nancy Smith

7:00 - Sunnyvale Seat 2
Darab Ghaffary
Christopher Moylan
Pete Richards

8:00 - Foothill - De Anza CCD
Paul Fong
Laura Casas Frier
Julia E. Miller
Bruce Swenson

Friday, September 23

6:00 - Cupertino Union School District
Pearl Cheng
Lynette Lee Eng
Ben Liao
Gary McCue
Susan McGhie

7:00 - City of Palo Alto
John Barton
Norman Carroll
Peter Drekmeier
Sanford Forte
Karen Holman
Harold "Skip" Justman
Larry Klein
Danielle Martell
Jack Morton
Roger V. Smith
Victor Frost

Open enrollment for SJSU folks

The Benefits Open Enrollment period for 2005 is September 15 through October 31. This is the time to change your health or dental coverage, add dependents to your coverage, or enroll in the Health Care and Dependent Care Reimbursement Accounts for 2006. Check the Benefits pages of the Human Resources website www.sjsu.edu/hr for more information. The Open Enrollment Worksheet and the HCRA/DCRA Enrollment Form is on the Human Resources website under Forms. Bring your completed forms to the Human Resources Office, 3rd floor of the UPD Building. Please call your Benefits Representative or the Benefits Information line at 408-924-2270 with questions.

Be sure to visit the Benefits Fair on September 29, where you can talk to our various vendors and your Benefits rep in person!
Start Date/Time:9/15/2005 08:00:00   End Date/Time:9/30/2005 17:00:00 PST

The price of truth

"Fear not the path of truth, for the lack of people walking on it," Robert Kennedy.
It is easy in the present to praise folks in the past who were willing to stand up for truth in the past and suffered the consequences for it. We see their courage but pay no cost for honoring it. We safely celebrate Galileo, Martin Luther King, Caesar Chavez and at SJSU, Tommie Smith and John Carlos. It is easy in retrospect to pay respect to these folks who stood up to the establishment, the then existing administration, when we are not in their time. It is easy to sing their praises when doing so is safe.

The real challenge is in the present, to suffer the consequences for speaking the truth when it costs your job, a better job or the wrath of your boss and/or coworkers, or worse. That is the measure of courage, in my opinion. Courage is standing up for the truth when doing so is not the easy path. Courage is standing up for the truth when standing up for the truth costs you. Too many times in my university career this is exactly what I have seen happen, good people suffer in academia for standing up for the truth. This has been happening in academia since the days of Galileo. This happens still.

Definition of a Supervisor (and a lead employee)

This is for California State University (CSU) Employees. This is from California Government Code, Section 3580.3 I believe violation of this constitutes an unfair labor practice.

3580.3. "Supervisory employee" means any individual, regardless of the job description or title, having authority, in the interest of the employer to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibility to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action, if, in connection with the foregoing, the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment. With respect to faculty or academic employees, any department chair, head of a similar academic unit or program, or other employee who performs the foregoing duties primarily in the interest of and on behalf of the members of the academic department, unit or program, shall not be deemed a supervisory employee solely because of such duties; provided, that with respect to the University of California and Hastings College of the Law, there shall be a rebuttable presumption that such an individual appointed by the employer to an indefinite term shall be deemed to be a supervisor. Employees whose duties are substantially similar to those of their subordinates shall not be considered to be supervisory employees.

This section defines and expands upon the duties of both a supervisor and a lead employee. The key part of this that defines a lead is that the lead's duties shall be "of a merely routine or clerical nature." If you feel you have been assigned inappropriate duties, or are being managed by someone who has, you should contact a union steward.

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