7/3 UAEA Email + Interview Packet
Hi all,
I have a couple of updates this week.
July 4th Holiday: Tomorrow is Independence Day, a City of Tempe holiday. Please don’t come to work if you’re not scheduled. Thank you to those who need to work tomorrow to keep our City functioning.
If you’d like to see fireworks, there will be a fireworks display and drone show at Diablo Stadium tomorrow evening between 5 and 10pm. See details here.
UAEA Email Updates: UAEA’s Executive Team has changed s
everal email addresses based on election results. You can see the new emails on our website.
Leah Sergeant: Switching from vicepresident@uaeatempe.com to leah@uaeatempe.com.
Brittainy Nelson: Switching from membership@uaeatempe.com to vicepresident@uaeatempe.com
Jeremy Hopf: Switching from jeremy@uaeatempe.com to membership@uaeatempe.com.
Using UB Time: As of July 1st the union needs to document any member’s use of UB time. We are working with HR and IT to finalize a policy and will share details as we have them. For most members, the only time you’ll need to use UB time is when you attend member meetings and only when the meeting time (including travel) is longer than your scheduled lunch. I have updated the member meeting rsvp to allow members to indicate if they will need UB time to attend. Including travel, our member meetings usually take 1.5 hours. If you only get 30 minutes for lunch, for instance, you will probably need to ask for 1 hour of UB time to cover both the length of the meeting and travel time to and from. If you get an hour for lunch, you’ll probably need 30 minutes of UB time, and so on. Based on my current understanding of policy, we will be able to send you UB time in advance of the meeting and you will be able to put it in Peoplesoft - you will be paid at your normal hourly rate but the hours will be deducted from our hours bank.
Please note that UAEA has limited control over these hours. HR controls where the time is distributed and needs several days to make changes - we cannot guarantee we will be able to send the UB hours to you if you do not rsvp in advance. I will figure out how long we need and relay that to members soon- one option might be dropping UB time into people’s time banks now if they plan on attending meetings and taking it back at the end of the year if it was not used.
July Member Meeting: Our next meeting will be July 17th (3 weeks from today), 12-1PM at the Tempe Transportation Center’s Don Cassano Room. You can rsvp here. Please note that due to above changes in union business usage, we believe we will need rsvps one week in advance. Based on member feedback, the board is also discussing mixing up some of our meeting food - this meeting may just be pre-packaged snacks/drinks like nuts, beef sticks, fruit snacks, granola bars, chips, and what not that can be stashed in your desk or city vehicle. This probably won’t be a consistent thing - we’re just trying something new.
Blood Drive: Tempe is holding its next blood drive this coming Thursday, July 10, from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at the Tempe History Museum Community Room. I’ve been giving blood at these events for a few years now and strongly encourage members to do the same - it’s a great way to give back to the community. I know that a lot of people don’t like giving blood so Vitalant has an extra incentive - besides entering you in a raffle for a Volkswagen Beetle, you also get Vitalant points every time you donate. After 2-3 donations you’ll have enough for a gift card from a variety of vendors like Amazon or movie theaters. I don’t think this is the only reason to donate but it’s a nice extra perk - you essentially are being paid both by the City and by Vitalant when you donate. One final benefit - Vitalant also gives you information about your blood after they process it - they can give you a heads up on possible disease or low iron levels more frequently than the city's annual wellness checks.
Email Survey: I have created a new survey for members to anonymously provide feedback on the emails I send out each week. I want to make sure the information I provide is useful and relevant - I also want to make sure it also is approachable and that the length isn’t too daunting. If you want to see specific things in future emails, please fill that out and I will review the feedback. As a reminder, we have a number of active surveys if you would like to provide organizational feedback - you can view them all on our member feedback page (password is “uaea2024”).
Interview Prep Materials: I’m excited to end this email by introducing two new tools exclusive to UAEA members, an Interview Preparation Guide and a UAEA resume template. These tools were developed to assist UAEA members navigate the Tempe interview process - the guide goes into extensive detail about the interview process, applications, answering questions on interview panels, and prepping resumes or cover letters. The resume template is meant for members to plug their information into - it is a short but professional way to summarize your work experience, regardless of the job you have.
These are first drafts and may evolve over time based on member feedback. If there are certain aspects of the interview process that are confusing or you’d like more help with, please let us know - it may be a few months, but we’ll update these documents if people have specific requests that we think will improve the overall quality. We don’t currently have a place on the website to store these materials but will create a link soon - in case you lose this email we also are working on a 2-page summary of UAEA benefits which you can print or save to your desktop - that will have a link to these documents as well.
Please note that these documents are meant to be exclusively read and used by UAEA members. The Exec Team can’t stop anyone from sharing with non-members but we strongly advise people to not do this - we want exclusive perks for union membership and think useful career advice is one place we can shine. Our longterm goal is to make UAEA members the best internal applicants on every interview panel and give you all the most opportunities for professional advancement.
Enjoy your holiday, everyone!