UFF-USF

FIU’s draft plan released today differs from USF’s and UF’s in two significant ways, process-wise:

• The timeline gives several weeks for key stakeholders to respond to the specific proposals
• The timeline is for reductions over three years, not a single year, using university resources to buffer programs in the first few years.

Substantively, FIU would close a number of academic programs, and it looks like more faculty jobs are at risk than at USF, unless they can be saved through attrition.

The following is from the May 15 layoff process timeline under notification periods:

Faculty ‐ Minimum 90 days notice or end of current semester if in teaching capacity (no later than 15 days following the official close of Fall Semester) [emphasis added]

The collective bargaining agreement stipulates that “where circumstances permit,” the layoff notice for in-unit faculty and professional employees should be six months for those with less than 3 years’ service and one year for everyone else. There are important exceptions: those in visiting lines and on soft money do not have a right to notice of nonreappointment when either the immediate visiting term ends or grant support ends. But given the extensive unrestricted assets of the university (even if one accepts at face value every claim made by USF yesterday) and the relatively small number of those anticipated to be laid off from the UFF-USF bargaining unit, we think these are precisely the circumstances that permit the default layoff notice.