Union Meeting, Thursday

Union Meeting, Thursday May 15, Noon

Full contract bargaining 2009, Budget crisis looming, What better time:
Let’s Build our Union at SJSU!
Bring a friend, Bring your ideas, Bring lots of enthusiasm!
Featuring special guest speaker:
Russell Kilday-Hicks
SFSU CSUEU Chapter President, Editor, University Employee Newsletter
May 15, Thursday, Noon to 1pm, Clark Hall Room 100H, “The Fish Bowl”
Refreshments will be provided
Please RSVP to Steve Sloan
steve.sloan@sjsu.edu
408/605-0692

Day two at CA Demo Convention

Very long and fascinating day
I am updating my Flicker Feed with well over 250 new photos today. I have no time to edit or label them. I am too tired to write more as well, so here they are for now.

[More coverage on my twitter feed]

[More convention photos on Flickr]

Southbay Labor News

From South Bay Labor Council

Community Budget Working Group Re-Convenes January 12th
The second Community Budget Working Group Meeting has been set for 9:30am, January 12th, at the Northside Community Center, 488 N. 6th Street. At the meeting, the group will discuss feedback from the analysts who looked at the generated ideas.

Your participation will ensure that recommendations made to the City reflect the concerns of all San Jose residents. We hope to see you there.

City Budget Training January 7th
Next Monday, January 7, Working Partnerships Policy Director and former City Budget Director Bob Brownstein will provide a training covering the nuts-and-bolts of the City’s budget. The training will be at Working Partnerships’ offices at 2102 Almaden Road at 7pm.

Technorati Tags: San Jose, ssloansjca

Andy Stern at GC 2007

For me one of the most exciting things about General Council is hearing the stirring speeches given there. Andy Stern is the president of the Service Employees International Union, the largest and fastest growing union in the United States and Canada. He is also an author and I read his book, A Country That Works. It is a great book.

I am not at General Council or work today. I became ill on our vacation and after working long hours at GC over the weekend I ended up sleeping 13.5 hours last night. I guess I crashed.

Virginia Tech Thoughts

My Opinion: We need to do what we can to reduce stress and tension
I don’t think we do enough to reduce stress at SJSU and tension is often unnecessarily high on our campus. A campus does not have to be as tense as ours is. With a little effort we could make it much more pleasant and less stressful for students to get an education at SJSU. It seems to me that reducing student frustration, stress and anxiety is not a high enough priority on our campus.

For example:

• I believe the hassles students have to go through to get enrolled at SJSU are incredible and inexcusable.
• When students at SJSU have problems it is not clear to students where to go to get their problems resolved. Getting solutions at our campus can be like navigating a maze of disconnected groups that do not talk to each other. For example, today students at SJSU had to pay fees. Many of them created tickets in our “Help Desk” ticketing system asking to get their fee paying issues resolved. Since the university does not have one ticketing system for the entire campus the only resolution we could give our students was to point them in the direction of another help desk who we thought could help them.
• In our computer lab in Clark Hall there is a print station. You have to pay for prints when you use the computers with a card that you have to add value to. But, there is no place in the lab to add money to the card. Try telling that to a student who is in a rush to print a paper before a class.

At the time I am writing this I do not know what set this guy off in Virginia
But, in my heart, I think there is a lot we could be doing to reduce stress at SJSU. It may cost a little bit to fix these stress points. But, it is worth the cost. Life is so short, and so precious.

Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, Campus Life, Virginia Shootings, CSU, California State University, San Jose, ssloansjca

On one hand

On one hand and on the other hand
This video from MoveOn.org talks about the war.

Are you ready for a disaster?

Should disaster strike we university employees may be the only thing standing between life and death for university students and/or our fellow workers. Are you ready? Next week the university is offering Campus Emergency Response Team Training. It is free! Now that you know about it, how can you not go? What if someday your decision to not go to this costs another person to be hurt or worse?

Russell’s birthday celebration

Russell’s birthday celebration
After work on Friday we drove up to Oakland to celebrate Russell’s birthday. Russell is a good friend as well as being the chair of the staff union’s communications committee. As I have written before, Russell is a very inspiring union leader. He is very dedicated to the labor movement, the community and his family. He is also a musician. Here he is shown getting ready to blow out his candles as his wife Sarah looks on.

Ergonomics and Safety Seminar

Ergonomics and Workplace Safety Seminar
This one hour course on the morning of Tuesday, Dec. 5th, for employees includes an overview of preventative ergonomics and safety measures for employees who work in an office setting, and an introduction to the universities injury reporting and workers’ compensation program. More info here.