UFF-USF

Yesterday, the United Faculty of Florida finished its ratification. The Board of Trustees have just ratified the 2008-09 Collective Bargaining Agreement in its regular board meeting.

Q. What are the downsides of doing away with the one year individual contacts?

A. UFF representatives heard the BOT representatives state in bargaining that they consider the one-time letter to have the same legal meaning as a contract, and the chapter will hold the university to that shared understanding.

Q. I can’t vote at the times or locations you suggest. Is there a way I could vote by absentee ballot or proxy?

A. The chapter is balancing the need to hold a ratification vote promptly against the need to give in-unit faculty and professional employees a broad opportunity to vote on the tentative agreement. For this ratification, we do not have the option for absentee ballots or proxies.

Q. I am applying for tenure/promotion this year. Do the tenure/promotion provisions of this contract apply to next year?

A. This contract applies to THIS YEAR ONLY, 2008-09. Bargaining for a contract starting August 7, 2009, will begin early in 2009. Having said that, the promotion raises have been stable for a number of years, and it is in no one’s interest to have a dry (raiseless) promotion.

Q. What does the inclusion of librarians in promotion language mean for promotions to associate/full professor?

A. The language is inclusive: promotion raises are applied in the same manner for those promoted to associate professors and associate librarians, or for those promoted to full professor and librarian.

Q. In a general way can you describe how the 1.0% monies will likely be used and who might ultimately receive them?

A. Discretionary mean at the discretion of the administration—at their SOLE discretion. The university has already distributed approximately $400,000 since July 1—if ratified, this tentative agreement would make active disputes about those distributed funds thus far this fiscal year moot. With the rest of the discretionary authority, the university administration can do whatever they want—not distribute it at all, distribute some or all evenly to all in-unit employees, distribute some as raises and some as bonuses, even give the rest of the authorized money to a single in-unit faculty member. Discretionary truly means discretionary, and as long as the university does not violate other provisions of the contract or the law (e.g., discriminate on the basis of sex, race, or other suspect categories), it has the freedom to do what it wants with the authority.

Q. The summer cap is $12,000 per course. Does that still mean that each class is still compensated at 12.5% of the 9-month salary as long as that value is below $12,000. Also I take it to mean that the cap is $12,000 per course, not $12,000 overall if someone teaches two courses.

A. Summer teaching is 12.5% per 3-hour course, up to $12,000 per course (not for the summer). If someone’s 9-month salary is $80,000, and that person teaches two three-hour summer classes, then he/she would earn $10,000 per class for a total of $20,000.

Q. When do the raises start, and are they retroactive to the beginning of the year?

A. The raises will be effective shortly after ratification. The 2% raises are easy to calculate, but the merit raises will require some attention to detail. At bargaining on Wednesday, the Trustees’ representatives anticipated that HR would finish the calculations and have the raises entered in early January. The raises will be going forward, not retroactive.

Q. Is everyone in the bargaining unit eligible for raises this year?

A. There are a few groups who are not eligible: those who were hired after May 1, 2008; those who have already submitted resignation letters or received letters of nonreappointment; those who did not receive an overall satisfactory evaluation on the last annual review (2007 or 2007/08, depending on your review cycle); those in visiting positions; and those on soft-money positions where the grant budgets don’t allow for raises (but USF should be watching to make sure those budgets do allow raises).

A summary of changes to and the full text of the tentative agreement are now available on the CBA ratification page. Voting-station days and times will be available by the end of the day.

After the two sides reach a tentative agreement in collective bargaining, each side must go through a ratification process. For the union, that means a vote open to all employees in the bargaining unit (whether members or not), with information about changes in the collective bargaining agreement available to all employees.

The exact dates and times for balloting on the one-year tentative agreement reached on Wednesday are not yet set, but on the Tampa and St Pete campuses, they will probably be in front of or in the library, and they will probably be late in the last week of classes. Information on the tentative agreement will be on the ratification information page early next week, as well as elsewhere.

The USF Board of Trustees and the United Faculty of Florida are pleased to announce they have reached a tentative agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement. Details will be forthcoming early next week

As I explained at the Faculty Senate meeting this week, the Trustees’ non-response to our second proposal on the sabbatical floored me. It is in their own interest to increase the number of peer-reviewed sabbaticals, as something of value to both the university and faculty, as efficient, and as a guaranteed retention mechanism. According to the Tampa Tribune, the one-month cost of operating the new student center is more than $100,000, a figure that flabbergasted the student newspaper’s editorial board That one month of utilities on a single building is half of the marginal costs to USF of running the current sabbatical program described in section 22.3 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Which is better for research productivity? The Trustees missed an opportunity to be good managers as well as establish better relations with the faculty.

You can read the Article 22 proposal presented March 7, 2008 to make your own judgment about the proposal.

Here are the five proposals that UFF-USF placed on the table in written form October 24, 2008, and November 5, 2008:

• Memorandum of Understanding proposal #1, proposed October 24, 2008
• Memorandum of Understanding proposal #2, proposed October 24, 2008
• Memorandum of Understanding proposal #3, proposed October 24, 2008
• Article 23, UFF-USF proposal 7A, proposed November 5, 2008
• Article 23, UFF-USF proposal 7B, proposed November 5, 2008

The UFF-USF Chief Negotiator made clear that all of these options were acceptable to the UFF.

Update: The BOT team has made the November 5 bargaining session minutes available.

Yesterday afternoon, I heard from the Trustees bargaining team that the Trustees did have a response to the UFF’s proposed Memorandum of Understanding. The next bargaining session will be this Friday, 3-5 pm, in location TBA.