UFF-USF

Time & Place. The Chapter Meeting was held at Perkins Restaurant just east of USF Tampa.

Attendance. Ten UFF members, including eight members of the Council, and one guest..

Minutes. Minutes from the May 19 meeting approved.

President’s Report and New Business. Two items from other unions.

• The GAU. The GAU requests financial assistance.
  • Motion made and seconded to make $ 1,200 available to GAU in return for approximately 50 hours of volunteer labor assistance. Motion passed.
• The SEIU. The SEIU is conducting a card campaign to organize adjuncts at USF.
  • Motion made and seconded to send the following open letter to the USF Community via a Biweekly Extra. Motion passed, and the letter is as follows:
    

    Like many leading universities, USF relies increasingly on adjunct faculty to teach many courses. Adjunct faculty range from people with particular skills and experiences that they can bring to the classroom to enrich students’ education, to people who can teach classes relatively inexpensively. Many adjunct faculty are paid a fraction of what permanent faculty are paid per course, and typically lack benefits, promotion opportunities, teaching resources and support, and opportunities to interact with colleagues. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) seeks to represent USF adjuncts in bargaining and grievances. Currently, USF faculty and professionals, USF staff, and USF police are represented by unions, and all three are represented by those unions because at some time, faculty and professionals, staff, and police voted in favor of being represented. The SEIU is seeking a similar election so that adjunct faculty will be able to decide for themselves whether they would like to be represented by SEIU in bargaining and grievances. The United Faculty of Florida Senate resolved last spring to cooperate with the SEIU campaign, and the USF Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida supports the SEIU campaign and the right of adjunct faculty to vote on whether to be represented.

Reports.

• Grievances. The Grievance Committee will meet next week. In addition, UFF while hold an event to attract more members. Discussion of outstanding grievances.
• Communications. The articles on salaries and GEMS will wait until new salaries are posted in GEMS.
• Political Education. Political activists from several unions will meet next week.
• Membership. New Faculty Orientation will be on August 7.
  
  The Travel Scholarship program was modified and clarified:all UFF members except those on the Executive Committee and those who received a scholarship during one of the two previous terms are eligible. However, each recipient must acknowledge partial support by UFF in presentations and publications, and write a short description of the research / scholarship / creative work for the Biweekly.

These minutes respectfully submitted by G. McColm on 4 June 2017.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 4th, 2017 at 9:56 pm and is filed under Meetings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.