UFF-USF

UFF/USF Chapter Meeting

January 11, 2008

In attendance: J. Martin, S. Ramírez Wohlmuth, E. Odgaard, S. Permuth, B. Welker, E. Mitchell, C. Jevitt, L. Gonzalez, M. Klisch, S. Tauber, F. Burgos, J. McBrien, M. Barnett

Adoption of the Agenda: The agenda was adopted as distributed.

January 29^th Referendum:

This will not directly affect higher education, but it would be devastating to local economies and probably to local school boards, police, fire, etc. as communities scramble to make up funds lost. There was much discussion on this topic.

Chapter Elections: Schedule and Nominations:

An election schedule was adopted where nominations will be due by January 31, 2008, along with statements by the candidates at the same time. The stuffing of election materials into the envelopes to be sent out to the membership will take place at the February 8^th chapter meeting. Those ballots will be due back to the chapter office by Wednesday, March 5, 2008. The ballots will be counted at the Friday, March 8, 2008 chapter meeting.

State Budget; USF Budget:

Would the chapter take a stance on the budget situation? Yes; the chapter unanimously passed a resolution:

“UFF statewide should support the proposal that higher education’s portion of the national budget be proportional to that of K-12’s portion of the national budget.”

Discussion on budget situation here turned to other local issues, such as:

Nursing, where late assignments and setting guidelines for workload issues are two areas that a nursing departmental committee is now going to address; and the Instructor Promotion Track, where statistics are proving to be misleading in the summary-by-sections – one instructor taught 44 sections in one semester?!

How did the AAUP report that USF got a 2.1% raise? UFF is investigating this – some possibilities include different times of salary distribution. Also, neither bonus data nor summer data is included in the official USF Budget.

After more discussion on the local budget situation, another resolution was made, seconded and passed unanimously:

“Before the University cuts summer school, USF should allow departments to explore alternative funding sources for summer 2008.”

Reports:

Bargaining:

No response on impact bargaining with no further bargaining session set.

Grievances:

Discussion on successful grievances, and a few potential new ones.

Membership:

The chapter will spend money on the project to hire graduate students in applied anthropology to investigate how UFF/USF functions and could therefore gain new members.

Treasurer:

The chapter has money.

NEA/AFT Conference:

S. Dorn will speak at the conference, held March 28-30 in Washington, DC. Chapter will support 6 to 7 members to attend.

Other Business:

The University and the PBA have gone to impasse in their bargaining.

Florida A & M University got ‘dinged’ for not paying overtime.

G. McColm will be reminding folks who were interested in writing articles. He also thanked S. Dorn for the list he sent to the fac-activism list earlier in the morning.

E. Mitchell let everyone know that 2008 will be the year of membership. Every non-member will receive an invitation to join. Michael Moats is working on the UFF Tallahassee website; please send any suggestions to him.

Good of the Order:

Further discussion on bargaining tactics.

The next meeting is scheduled for January 25^th IN LAKELAND.

Respectfully submitted by Jana Martin.

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