Draft agenda, chapter meeting, January 22
Noon, SOC 384, Tampa campus
Chapter Secretary Greg McColm has created a bargaining-update page for the chapter, collecting proposals laid on the table starting with the first collective bargaining session of 2010.
UFF finished its ratification vote this week, and the overwhelming majority of ballots cast were in favor of ratification. The Board of Trustees meets Thursday, January 21, for its ratification vote.
Attendance.
There were seventeen people in attendance, including thirteen of the Chapter Council, making a quorum of the Council.
Agenda & Minutes.
The Agenda and the minutes for December 4 were approved.
Chapter Elections.
The Election Committee proposed the following schedule:
It is noted that this presumes that the Chapter will meet on the Fridays February 19 and March 26.
Chapter Meetings.
The schedule of chapter meetings this semester is to be determined.
Chapter Council Meeting.
The Chapter Council is to approve chairs and members of standing committees.
UFF Senate Meeting.
The UFF Senate will meet in Orlando over the February 13, 14 weekend.
Grievance Committee Report.
Grievance moratorium in effect.
Treasurer’s Report.
The Chapter is paying out new member refunds. The President notes that as the Chapter now has over 400 members, there will be 16 UFF Senate seats.
Bargaining.
Discussion of Bargaining items.
Communication Chair’s Report.
Communications still being overhauled.
Recess into meeting as a Chapter Council.
The Chapter Council held an open meeting, and reports the approval of the following chairs of standing committees:
These appointments are for terms ending the first Chapter meeting at or after April 1. The Chapter Council will meet again jointly with the Chapter on January 22.
Good of the Order.
Discussion of the situation of contingent faculty.
These minutes respectfully submitted by G. McColm on January 9, 2010.
See the ratification page for information on both the Memorandum of Understanding and all sorts of ways to ask questions. Below are the questions submitted to the anonymous question-asking site for the chapter. Last update: 6:45 pm, January 2. There are currently two questions in the anonymous queue we are waiting for administration answers on.
Are those currently in phased retirement eligible for the retirement incentive plan?
The administration has told us that those currently in phased retirement are not eligible for the retirement incentive.
Can I sign up for the retirement incentive program and also use phased retirement?
We haven’t asked the administration this specific question, but given the certainty of a separation date and the “no guarantee of future employment” item, the answer is almost certainly no: you’d have to choose between the retirement incentive program and phased retirement.
What if a large number of colleagues in my department take up the offer? Will I be left covering an enormous load?
The draft program guidelines gives the university the right to defer retirement/separation in the program for up to a year, and the university would probably stagger retirements in such a situation to enable a smoother transition.
Why isn’t USF Polytechnic listed as a participant in the retirement incentive program?
The Memorandum of Understanding gives discretion to the university over this type of detail, and the central USF administration decided that each unit with a separate line in the state budget would make its own choices about participating at all and setting aside money.
Can the administration pick and choose who it accepts for the retirement incentive program?
The draft policy makes clear that on each participating campus, it will be the timestamp of application submission that divides those accepting the package from those who are not accepted.
What the administration has talked about are the end of spring, summer, or fall 2010. It’s the specific dates that aren’t yet set by the admin, but it’ll be in May, early August, or late December. The individual faculty member or professional employee in the faculty salary plan would choose among those options.
Eligible employees will be receiving all the official information very shortly after ratification is completed, if the Memorandum of Understanding is ratified. If you receive the packet, with an application, you’ll have it for a few weeks before a very short time window in which to submit it (a few business days). We have heard that submissions will be accepted either in person or electronically.
The $5000 sum is on top of the annualized salary.
Salary would be annualized — converted to a 12-month equivalent. 9 month faculty would receive 133% of salary plus $5000. 12-month faculty would receive 109% (81.8% times 133%–the first converts the 12-month back to the 9-month by the contract conversion formula) plus $5000. This is a formula (and a decision) within the administration’s discretion. The program is voluntary; faculty who think that the program does not benefit them do not have to sign up for it.
Draft agenda, UFFUSF chapter meeting
January 8, 12-1:30 pm, SOC 384
This morning’s Tampa Tribune quotes me in a story about a website allegation regarding football coach Jim Leavitt, and while it’s generally correct about what I said, it has a few things garbled.
Here is the relevant passage from the article:
Sherman Dorn, head of the union that represents USF’s faculty, is pleased the school is conducting an investigation into the alleged incident and doing so with a committee based outside the athletic department.
He said transparency and thoroughness are important in this type of investigation.
“If there is as a serious allegation, then there should be a serious investigation,” Dorn said. “It should be done in the same way the university conducts a serious investigation of misconduct by a faculty member. The thing to keep in mind is this is a report by a Web site that has statements [supported] by one or two observers. It’s certainly appropriate for the university to investigate. There may be something to it, or maybe not.’
The correct statements in that passage (or the reasonably close ones) come from the following parts of the phone conversation I had last night with the reporter:
I don’t remember saying anything explicitly about transparency, and I did not say anything about who was conducting the investigation, because I had no knowledge of who was going to conduct the investigation. Having said that, I do in fact agree that the people conducting it should be outside the athletics department. That’s true for any investigation of allegations. For most of the investigation procedures I am aware of (whether regarding research misconduct, discrimination, or violation of human participant guidelines), there is first a determination of whether there are sufficient grounds to conduct a full investigation (to avoid spending lots of time on frivolous allegations). If the preliminary investigation suggests there is something to the allegation, there is a more complete examination of the issue. I don’t know whether that two-step process will be followed in this case, because “football coach grabs and hits player” is not a common allegation, so there hasn’t (yet) been a chance to write a procedure for this.
It would not have been correct for the university to fire a coach based solely on an allegation, in the same way that the university should not fire staff or faculty based solely on allegations of misconduct.
Attendance.
There were eight people in attendance. There was not a quorum for the Chapter Council.
Minutes.
The minutes for November 20 were approved.
Election Committee.
Steve Tauber will chair an election committee, and Lynn McBrien will be a member. Other members may be appointed.
Membership.
We have new members.
Meetings in January.
The Chapter will meet on January 8 and 22, and during January we will set a schedule for the rest of the semester.
Union Solidarity.
We have requests from two fellow unions for support and assistance.
Referenda on Governance Documents.
The votes on the Constitution and Bylaws amendments were tabulated:
Effective immediately, the constitution and bylaws are so amended.
Reports.
These minutes respectfully submitted by G. McColm on December 5, 2009.
Attendance.
There were twelve people in attendance. There was a quorum for the Chapter Council.
Minutes.
The minutes for November 6 were approved.
Membership.
We continue to gain new members.
UFF-USF Applied Anthropology Report.
Two graduate students conducted a study of two USF departments to gain a perspective on faculty attitudes towards UFF.
Several proposals were made from the floor.
Ratification of Amendments to the UFF-USF Chapter Constitution and Bylaws.
Voting will be conducted via VotingPlace.Net, and the results will be downloaded and computed at the next Chapter Meeting on December 4.
Article 10 on Annual Evaluations.
Discussion.
Reports.
Good of the Order.
Discussion of the flexibility of interpretation of Roberts Rules.
These minutes respectfully submitted by G. McColm on November 22, 2009.
In October, the chapter meeting recommended a number of technical amendments to the chapter’s constitution and by-laws. The draft is linked below:
Proposed chapter governance document amendments
An online referendum on these amendments will start later today and run through noon, December 4, 2009, and members will be contacted by e-mail to start the balloting. The amendments will be ratified or fail in two pieces, for the constitution and the bylaws, respectively. Ratification requires approval of two-thirds of those voting.