[GSA Council] Payment to directors and execs

Sat Dec 12 04:25:07 PST 2015

Hello Ribal,

I do not also like the idea of sending emails back and forth. I do not wish to send another email on this subject matter. You said earlier that you were leaving it to Councillors and the finance manager decide. I asked if anybody had any objection, but you seems to be the only person that has an objection.

You stressed that it is not your decision to make yet stated clearly in your earlier email that “it does not seem like it would be the proper procedure to disburse the bursaries for December before the meeting in January”. As part of your roles and Responsibilities you should not be pointing anyone in a particular direction that we should not be paid. As council chair you should not cause any reasonable apprehension of bias. The finance manager is not supposed to take permission from you to disburse the bursaries.

Jawad raised the point about payment of bursaries and Korosh asked the question about payment of December bursaries for executives and you said that it has already been approved. I confirmed this from Korosh.

I do not cherry pick or choose rules to follow. The intention of the bursary policy was for executives to be paid in case of, not being able to have a council meeting because of not achieving quorum. I do not know why you did not highlight “In case, of not being able to have a council meeting” but highlighted “because of not achieving quorum” in bold.

It is quite clear what quorum is "According to Robert's Rules”. On the other hand “Robert's Rules of Order is a guide for conducting meetings and making decisions as a group”. It is therefore not proper to apply Roberts’s rules to a meeting that was moved or skipped.

It is not the fault of execs that the December regular meeting was skipped and execs should not be punished for it. Moving a regular meeting to a special meeting does not make it a regular meeting. You cannot have a December meeting in January. The bursary policy did not envision a situation where the regular meeting was skipped because of a regular meeting date falling on a holiday.

I do not see any reason why executives should not be paid according to the bursary policy. I will assume that there is no intent to make me cancel all my holiday plans. I am already having a nightmarish experience. We should not be making a simple matter complex.

I wish you to have a happy holiday.

Regards,
Alex Ocheoha

________________________________
From: Ribal Abi Raad <abiraad.ribal at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 2:05 PM
To: Alex Ocheoha
Cc: Vivek Khatri; Mathilde Mbom; gsaconcordia at lists.resist.ca
Subject: Re: [GSA Council] Payment to directors and execs

I don't really like the idea of having to send e-mails back and forth. If you could refrain from twisting the facts for your arguments Alex that would be great. The bursary policy is pretty clear:
 "In case, of not being able to have a council meeting because of not achieving quorum, the applicant would get paid without any assessment, because of the above mentioned reasons."

In case it is still not clear, the part I'm referring to is the one that is in bold, mainly the large font. The December meeting was postponed, and by definition in Robert's rules of order:
"According to Robert's Rules, a quorum is the minimum number of voting members who must be present at a properly called meeting in order to conduct business in the name of the group. "

You cannot pick and choose the rules you wish to follow, so it's either all of them or none of them. I would like to stress that it is NOT my decision to make, and I know that. I was asked by Vinay what the proper procedure should be, and I gave my input. Whether you like it, agree with it, feel personally offended is not my concern. The end decision is neither mine nor any of the executives. Councilors will decide on the disbursement of the bursary. As I have mentioned before, I am not a big fan of the "back and forth" scenario via e-mail.

Regards,
[https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=aYWJpcmFhZC5yaWJhbEBnbWFpbC5jb20%3D&type=zerocontent&guid=214ca476-faf9-4426-8948-4aedcb819de6]ᐧ

Ribal Abi Raad

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 2:33 AM, Alex Ocheoha <alex_ocheoha at hotmail.com<mailto:alex_ocheoha at hotmail.com>> wrote:

Hello Vivek,

All decisions are supposed to be made during meeting or in the absence of a meeting there has to be a written resolution signed by all directors. If all directors send their resolution by email it cannot be referred to as online voting.

The only person that has said that it is not "proper procedure to disburse the bursaries for December before the meeting in January" is the council chair who has left it to the Councillors and finance manager to decide.

Regardless the bursary policy is clear, it there is no meeting or no quorum, executives are paid.

@If anybody objects to executives or a particular executive being paid their December bursary based on the bursary policy that person should state.

Thank you.

Regards,

Alex Ocheoha

________________________________
From: Vivek Khatri <simple2v at gmail.com<mailto:simple2v at gmail.com>>
Sent: Wednesday, December 9, 2015 10:43 PM
To: Mathilde Mbom
Cc: finance at gsaconcordia.ca<mailto:finance at gsaconcordia.ca>; Alex Ocheoha; gsaconcordia at lists.resist.ca<mailto:gsaconcordia at lists.resist.ca>

Subject: Re: [GSA Council] Payment to directors and execs

I thought Alex told that online voting was against the law for some reason, when I brought the online voting motion earlier.
Anyways, I vote for the motion and request the other councillors to do so too.

Thanks & Regards,
Vivek Khatri

On Wednesday, December 9, 2015, Mathilde Mbom <mathildembom at yahoo.ca<mailto:mathildembom at yahoo.ca>> wrote:
Here is a motion to help out in this situation:

BIRT that the execs be awarded their December bursary  on or after December 26, 2015.

The motion needs a mover and a seconder (and it won't be me for either).
Since this will be an online vote, all Councillors (active and inactive ones) must cast their votes for the vote to be valid.

Mathilde
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android<https://overview.mail.yahoo.com/mobile/?.src=Android>

On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 17:11, finance at gsaconcordia.ca
<finance at gsaconcordia.ca> wrote:

All said and done I am not at liberty or it is not in my task to make a decision. Decision makers are the GA, Council and Executives in that order. Someone has to decide and then tell me to pay. That's my job :-)

Thanks,

FM

On 09-Dec-2015 3:42 am, "Alex Ocheoha" <alex_ocheoha at hotmail.com> wrote:
Hello everybody,
I believe that the bursary policy has anticipated situations such as these and is quite clear in dealing with this. I do not see why we should spend so much time on this.
1. The Bursary policy states: “However, GSA also recognizes that students may live in precarious financial situations and that political involvement should not be a privilege, this is why the GSA offers compensation in the form of bursaries to executives members.”
People have already made travel plans and other plans for the holidays. Some people will also have their rent and other bills to pay at the end of December. Most organizations usually pay their employees earlier in December to make money available for those that go on holiday or celebrate Christmas. I do not know if this has come up because of someone I already know, who may want to vote against my December bursary in secret. The secret ballot makes the person’s motive look more suspicious, because people usually become more transparent when they anticipate legal challenges.
2. I just want to discuss the disbursement of the current bursary. After having looked at the bursary policy, I personally do not see anything in particular that states that executives should get paid for two months. There are two items in the policy that I have highlighted concerning the disbursement
= I made it clear to the other executives and the Finance Manager that the November 28 council meeting only approved the payment of the November bursary. The executives will not get paid for 2 months and will only get paid after the December 26 or at the end of the month.
3. "Allow for executive who choose to request monthly bursaries be awarded if councils accept their monthly reports.
= All executives opted for the monthly option and have been paid by the monthly option.
4. Since there was no approval of any December reports, it does not seem like it would be the proper procedure to disburse the bursaries for December before the meeting in January.
The bursary policy states: In case, of not being able to have a council meeting because of not achieving quorum, the applicant would get paid without any assessment, because of the above mentioned reasons.
= The December council meeting will not hold because it falls on a holiday. If there is no meeting executives get paid without assessment.
5. Since the council meeting date was changed, and therefore there was no loss of quorum, there should not be any bursary awarded to the executives for December, until the December meeting which will be held in January.
The motion that was passed in the August 29, 2015 meeting states: “BIFRT In the event of items being tabled in the agenda of the monthly council meeting, a second council meeting is to be held on a date determined by doodle (same Sept 6 deadline) within one week after the monthly meeting. . . . . “

Whereas there will be no meeting in December all items meant for the December council will be tabled to the early January Council meeting.
Whereas the August 29 motion states that the meeting should be held within one week of the monthly council meeting a motion was passed in the October 4, 2015 meeting to convene the meeting on Saturday, January 9, 2016.
=However, January is a new month, a new year and a new semester. This meeting to be held on January 9, 2016 cannot be called the December Regular Council meeting. It has never happened before in the GSA or anywhere is the world to call a meeting held in January a December meeting.
6. Since there was no approval of any December reports, it does not seem like it would be the proper procedure to disburse the bursaries for December before the meeting in January.
= The reports cannot be assessed or approved because the GSA will not be having a regular council meeting in December. The proper procedure will be to abide by the policy and disburse the bursaries.
7. And: "The attribution of a bursary is contingent to the evaluation of the Semester Report of an executive member and any executive evaluations, if they were provided."
= Executives already opted for the monthly bursaries and have been submitting monthly reports, which were approved.
8. There is one more section that indicates the amount of money to be disbursed in each semester which is as follows, but it does not seem as binding as anything else:
The bursaries are to be allocated by semester. The amounts for each semester represent an amount of 1100$ per month which goes as follows:
The Bursary policy states: “A member of the Executive Committee who wishes to obtain a bursary must first provide to the Council, no later than the beginning of July (for summer semester) no later than the beginning October (for fall semester), and no later than the beginning of February (for the winter semester), an Action Plan for the semester at hand.”
= If an action plan has been submitted it covers the entire semester. The amount payable for the fall semester (September to December) is $4400. An executive who requests monthly bursaries still has to be paid $1,100 for December.
9. Ideally, the scenario that would be more prudent would be to make sure a meeting is called before the vacations or wait in January (the following month) as they would normally do for any other month, but then again it is up to the discretion of council.
= Council has already passed a motion not to have a meeting on December 26, 2015. I do not see any urgency in calling a meeting during the holidays or during the exam period.
I do not see any reason not to have a break. Executives also deserve a break. This is beginning to look like someone just realized that we will be paid without assessment.
The bursary policy came up because of somebody that disappeared and did not show up not for people that show up and actually work. Worker deserves their wages.
I hope that this resolves this bursary disbursement. We have a lot of work to do in January so it would not be ideal to start the year by spending a lot of time on discussions about bursaries.

Regards,

Alex Ocheoha

________________________________
From: Gsaconcordia <gsaconcordia-bounces at lists.resist.ca> on behalf of Ribal Abi Raad <abiraad.ribal at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 9, 2015 2:22 AM
To: finance at gsaconcordia.ca; Gsaconcordia at lists.resist.ca
Subject: Re: [GSA Council] Payment to directors and execs

Hello Vinay, hello everyone,

I just want to discuss the disbursement of the current bursary. After having looked at the bursary policy, I personally do not see anything in particular that states that executives should get paid for two months.There are two items in the policy that I have highlighted concerning the disbursement

"Allow for executive who choose to request monthly bursaries be awarded if councils accept their monthly reports.

In case, of not being able to have a council meeting because of not achieving quorum, the applicant would get paid without any assessment, because of the above mentioned reasons."
Since the council meeting date was changed, and therefore there was no loss of quorum, there should not be any bursary awarded to the executives for December, until the December meeting which will be held in January.

And: "The attribution of a bursary is contingent to the evaluation of the Semester Report of an executive member and any executive evaluations, if they were provided."

Since there was no approval of any December reports, it does not seem like it would be the proper procedure to disburse the bursaries for December before the meeting in January.

There is one more section that indicates the amount of money to be disbursed in each semester which is as follows, but it does not seem as binding as anything else:
The bursaries are to be allocated by semester. The amounts for each semester represent an amount of 1100$ per month which goes as follows:
Summer Semester (June to August): 3300$
Fall Semester (September to December): 4400$
Winter Semester (January to May): 5500$

Ideally, the scenario that would be more prudent would be  to make sure a meeting is called before the vacations or wait in January (the following month) as they would normally do for any other month, but then again it is up to the discretion of council.

The reason why I am sending this is because I do not want to take the responsibility of any action against the current rule and regulations. There seems to be a great devotion towards detail at the GSA, and I do not want to break this rule. This is why I would leave it up to the councilors and the finance manager to decide on what is to happen.

Finally, if I seem to have made a big deal out of an insignificant matter, excuse the inconvenience.

Regards,
[https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=aYWJpcmFhZC5yaWJhbEBnbWFpbC5jb20%3D&type=zerocontent&guid=cee9d78e-42b9-47d2-ba12-27d1d22cab26]ᐧ

Ribal Abi Raad

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 2:07 PM, finance at gsaconcordia.ca <finance at gsaconcordia.ca> wrote:
Hey Ribal,

Bursary policy please. Also Korosh did not sign the attendance sheet so do i pay him or not for Nov 28 Council meeting.

Vinay

[http://gsaconcordia.ca/GSA_Logo_normal.png]
Finance Manager
Graduate Students Association
Concordia University
2030 Mackay · Montreal · QC · H3N 1J1
Phone 514.848.2424.x7900 · f 514.848.7904

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On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 9:53 PM, Ribal Abi Raad <abiraad.ribal at gmail.com> wrote:
It is in the bursary policy. I'll send it over wine I'm home.

On Monday, 7 December 2015, GSA Manager Finance <finance at gsaconcordia.ca> wrote:

I did not see the signature of Korosh on the last month's attendance sheet. So I guess he will get paid for Dec only.

Further, the council minutes does not say anything on the Dec pay, so could you guide me to the exact point in the by-law or any other authentic and authorized documents that says execs gat paid for Dec? I need something to prove this.

From: Ribal Abi Raad
Received: 12/7/2015 5:44:56 PM -05:00
To: GSA Finance Manager
Hey vinay, you will have to pay lorosh for the meeting he just attended, unless he actually has signed in for the one before that.
The executives should be paid for November and December. Since rupinder officially resigned, she should not be paid for December.

I hope that answers your questions.

Regards,

On Monday, 7 December 2015, GSA Finance Manager <finance at gsaconcordia.ca> wrote:
Hello,

I have written the cheques. Please sign them.

I do not know about Korosh, so Ribal how much do we pay him.

As for the bursary for November to execs, it has been done with Rupinder being paid for last month as well. For december I do not know, Ribal you have yet to answer.

Thanks,

Finance Manager,
GSA, Concordia
T: +1-438-993-1767

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