The University of Iowa and AFSCME Local 12
Labor Management Committee Meeting
April 19, 2011
Present: Shannon Bartlett, Josey Bathke, Andy Cooper, Michelle Dixon, Dee Gansemer, Suzanne Hilleman, Joe Marron, John Stellmach, Gary Stockinger
Absent: David Bergeon, Tim Cook, Todd Taylor
Guest: Cathy Barrett, Keith Becker, Lyra Dickerson, Mark Hale, Nancy Kroeze
Confirmation of intent of parties to promote communication: Per the contract these meetings are to be a forum in which to communicate on items that may be of interest to both parties. Both parties agree to communicate about non-grievance matters. This month the FMCS representatives could not be here but they will continue to attend provided that they serve a valuable purpose- to help us communicate, provide feedback and help us improve.
Review Summary of January 2011 meeting minutes prepared by University of Iowa
January minutes accepted with no revisions.
(There were no February or March minutes- meetings did not occur)
Presentation
Web Accessibility Project by Mark Hale, ITS
The Web Accessibility Project is a joint project of the CIO and Vice President for Strategic Communication to make the services, programs, and activities offered by UI through the Web accessible to persons with disabilities. These modernizations with benefit many users and make information more accessible to everyone. More and more documents are delivered electronically, and the techniques to make accessible electronic documents will be important. Federal law will soon place web accessibility on the same footing as physical accessibility. There are 60 people on the committee to talk about specific technical issues.
This would be beneficial for people with sight issues. Their computers may be set up to read a web page to them- accessibility has to do with how the system reads. It can separate headers from the text. Videos for people with impaired hearing would be made readable. These changes would be accessible to mobile devices as well.
Parts of the project:
- Policy- A policy will be created to set the accessibility standards for campus web pages.
- Governance- A joint steering committee from the CIO Office and VP Strategic Communications, with the support of a campus-wide technical advisory committee.
- Better web publishing environment- Adoption of modern content management systems which make it easier to create accessible web sites, including assessment and improvement software tools.
- Web publishing support- A web accessibility coordinator providing leadership, consulting, and assistance on accessibility and web standards. New web resources on best practices. Training for all parts of the web community: content providers, site designers, applications developers, and media producers. Training for faculty identifying best practices for academic sites.
Goals for this fiscal year:
- Get policy, new servers, and support position in place
- Complete initial assessment
- Start training activities
Goals for next fiscal year:
- Major migrations to new servers, and repairs to existing sites
What you can do:
- Learn more about accessibility (webaim.org)
- Help get the word out to people who create web content or design web pages or write web applications
- Suggest other audiences who should hear about the project
Send questions about the Website Accessibility Project to-
Mark Hale (mark-hale@uiowa.edu) or call 335-5825
Todd Weissenberger (todd-weissenberger@uiowa.edu) or call 384-3323
Information requests of 90% data
January 2011-
Total # of employees working at 90%: 388
No additional hours: 61
.1 to less than 10 hours: 89
10 hours to less than 20 hours: 140
20 hours or more: 98
February 2011-
Total # of employees working at 90%: 385
No additional hours: 110
.1 to less than 10 hours: 117
10 hours to less than 20 hours: 118
20 hours or more: 40
New Business
AFSCME received a report that workers at Oakdale are being forced to use their personal cell phones to contact supervisors while on the job. There doesn’t seem to be a land line available for their use and their radios are out of range. The worker that mentioned this problem works for custodial FM. That will be looked into further. The potential solution is to provide a land line for the workers in that area.
AFSCME asked for an update on layoffs. It was stated that there are 5 merit staff on the Document Center plan that got their Letters of Intent in February. There are no other plans for layoff at this point. There are still about 14 that received intent letters and that includes the 5- ½ of the 14 are UIHC and ½ are University employees. Lyra helps these employees with contract transfers when possible. The question of bumping rights came up and it was said that there are many factors involved depending on the position and there is ongoing conversation about this, re-evaluating etc….
University would like an updated list of contact information for members, e-board members, and new stewards as well as any changes to LMC members by June 1 so that the website can be updated.
The next LMC meeting will be May 17, 2011 2-3:30 PM; 202 USB