UFF-USF

Dear colleagues,

Earlier this month Governor Crist recommended budget cuts that would gut the state university system — 6.2% of general revenues that were appropriated in the spring, with more than a third of Crist’s recommended cuts coming from higher education. The legislature will start a special session in early October, and the lobbyists that our statewide affiliate hires (the Florida Education Association) have told United Faculty of Florida officials that legislators need to hear from us NOW to forestall damaging cuts and to start a conversation about the long-term funding needs of higher education in Florida. Last month, I said that I would e-mail you again to ask for us all to call legislators, and here’s that second e-mail.

Why you should call

Let me put it bluntly: I expect that faculty and professional employees will be laid off if the governor’s cuts become reality. Even if you are tenured and protected, the people you work with will be vulnerable. Even if in-unit faculty and professional employees are spared the worst of budget cuts personally, staff layoffs will harm the people we work with, and layoffs anywhere at USF will erode our work environment. I have been told and am convinced that the governor’s recommendations would violate Florida law if the legislature enacted them, but I do not want UFF to have to test that claim in Florida’s courts. I want the legislature’s budget cuts to be appropriate, to treat higher education as the underfunded resource it is, and to protect existing programs.

One person cannot convince legislators to protect higher education in the special session. I have spoken with a number of area legislators and staff, but they need to hear from you . If we work together, we can convince legislators to make reasonable decisions, and we can begin a conversation about what higher education needs in the long term.

Don’t be silent: Call today.

The issues

When you talk with legislators using your personal cell phone or personal computer and personal e-mail account, explain how the cuts affect students. Even before cuts, Florida has the second-highest student-to-faculty ratio in the country (above Louisiana, but no one else). We know how projected budget cuts have already harmed students and faculty, as the administration has tried to save money before the special session:

• More than 50 classes are noticeably larger this semester than they were a year ago. Several classes at USF have ballooned to more than 400 students.
• At the start of the semester, USF’s online course management system had a capacity to handle 800 students at a time, but the system had more than 1100 students at a time trying to use it.
• Library hours and the online course system’s technical support hours have been cut.

We also know what the effect of cuts will be in the future:

• The university will be unable to provide a full list of summer courses, delaying graduation for students who rely on summer courses and who are required to take summer courses.
  
• The university will be unable to hire the new faculty it needs to teach students and conduct cutting-edge research.
• The university will be unable to pay faculty what is necessary to retain the teachers and researchers who already are at USF.
• Library subscriptions will be cut, subscriptions to journals that USF researchers need for cutting-edge research.
• The university will be unable to replace the employees it will lose over the next year. Students will have longer waits to see advisors.

You do not need to mention the governor’s recommendations. I won’t. Emphasize how cuts will affect students and the future of Florida, ask for minimal cuts, and emphasize that existing programs should be protected, even if that means delaying or curtailing new initiatives.

Should you mention “revenue enhancements” (i.e., raising taxes in some way, such as eliminating some of the sales-tax exemptions)? That has to be on the table for the long-term future of the state’s colleges and universities, but it won’t be part of the special session. I’ll probably mention something about “protecting higher education this year so we can talk about enhancing it in the next few years,” but I haven’t seen any convincing arguments either to mention it or not to mention it.

How to call

Looking up legislators. If you do not know who is your state senator and representative, you can look them up with your home 9-digit zip code at http://tinyurl.com/3bouxq

Finding contact information. State senators are listed at http://www.flsenate.gov/Legislators/ and representatives at http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Representatives/representatives.aspx

Calling them. Use your cell phone or your home phone. (Do not use university equipment or resources either for phone calls or e-mail. ) During business hours, call the district office (Tallahassee offices are second-best this week). Have notes on what you intend to say. Be brief. Be polite. Thank the staff member for listening.

But above all else, call your legislators this week.

Sherman

With the lawsuit filed by Bob Graham and Lou Frey (and later joined by the BOG), pending budget cuts, and talk of tuition hikes on the horizon, there needs to be some general discussion of university funding in Florida. As far as I can tell, there are six sources of revenue for universities:

• Public funding
• Tuition
• Donations
• Grants and contracts
• Auxiliary units
• Patents and licensing

You may consolidate some of these categories or split one or two, but that’s essentially it. Because the rough political consensus in Florida has been that undergraduate students pay approximately 25% of the costs of their education, raising student tuition even a significant amount can only pay for a modest increase in a university’s overall funding. At the consultation Wednesday, administrators confirmed that a 5% tuition hike in the spring would fill less than 1% of the 4% expected cuts, and I think the state’s university presidents made that point in front of legislative committees last week. Over time, larger hikes can change the funding mix, but it won’t reap a miracle.

The same modest change is possible growing endowments, but for a different reason: people give foundations money for specific purposes, and unrestricted endowment donations are less frequent than either I or foundation officers would prefer. The result is that unless there is a specific goal and donors willing to give money to something like a an endowment for sabbaticals or bridge funding*, increasing the endowment is less likely to benefit general faculty salaries than to raise the next library or provide a stipend to a small number of faculty in endowed chair positions. The library benefits everyone, but so does a stronger sabbatical and leave program and better general salaries.

Contracts and grants are important, but even indirect costs are short-term benefits, evanescent if hit rates decline. And a surprising amount of indirect costs are absorbed in animal care. And investigators are unhappy with how post-award administration works at USF.

So while I expect tuition to go up, and I’d love there to be a successful capital campaign that raises money for new library facilities and endowments for sabbaticals and bridge funding, any of those decisions can only be part of a broader mix to support higher education. A substantial part has to come from a more secure base of public funding.

The following was sent to the members’ e-mail list:

Dear colleagues,

As you prepare for the start of the fall semester, I want to welcome you back and provide you information about the state budget and expected mid-year cuts. (more…)

Sent to the bargaining unit yesterday (July 6):

Dear colleagues,

Most of you have seen Provost Khator’s e-mails Tuesday and yesterday [see the relevant website for documents] regarding the state university system chancellor’s request for each university to draw up plans to reduce budgets by 10% over the next two years, soliciting faculty and staff input on ways to manage this budget reduction exercise.

Today’s USF chapter meeting of the United Faculty of Florida (the faculty and professional employees union) approved a resolution on the budget crisis, one that is below my signature. The resolution states the chapter’s official position on the state’s threat to reduce university funding in a way that will cut existing programs and services: Cuts to existing programs should be unnecessary, and much of what may be drawn up at the state level may be inconsistent with existing state law regarding budget reductions. I understand that the administration at USF and other universities have to respond to the request of the chancellor for a plan, but there is no need for faculty to panic.

(more…)

The chapter’s May 17 e-mail newsletter from the chapter is now available online. Topics include a report of union-administration discussions about protecting e-mail, Weingarten rights, and the differential tuition bill in front of Governor Crist.

The May 3 e-mail newsletter of the chapter is available online. Topics include faculty preventing themselves from appearing inadvertently as a star on Youtube and national trends in contingent academic labor.

The chapter’s April 19 e-mail newsletter is available online. Topics include the UFF Senate Meeting report. (The UFF Senate is the official policy-making body of the United Faculty of Florida.)

The USF and UFF bargaining teams signed an agreement on the 2006-07 reopener Friday, April 13, 2007, as well as a brief memorandum of agreement on a study of parental leave. The reopener text is available online.

As I told the faculty union team in the past few days, I admire their fortitude through the year, and I consider this agreement an intermediary step towards addressing many of the issues raised in bargaining. The team during 2006-07 has included the following members:

• Robert F. Welker, chief negotiator (COBA)
• Mark Klisch (Counseling Center for Human Development)
• Jana Martin (Library)
• Kathleen de la Peña McCook (Arts and Sciences)
  
• Steve Permuth (Education)
  
• Arthur Shapiro (Education)
  
• Sonia Wohlmuth (Arts and Sciences)
  

UFF-USF – USF Board of Trustees Collective Bargaining Agreement 2006-2007

Vote on Your 2006-2007 Collective Bargaining Agreement at the union meeting on Friday, April 20, 2007, between noon and 1 pm, at Tampa campus in EDU 258 during the regular chapter meeting.

The United Faculty of Florida at USF and the USF Board of Trustees negotiators reached “tentative agreement” on the Salary Article and the Benefits Article of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) on Friday, April 13, 2007. Additionally, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed that establishes a process to explore the development of a Paid Parental Leave program. See the text online at http://uff.ourusf.org/connections/REOPENER.doc.

All faculty and professional employees in the bargaining unit are eligible to vote to accept or reject the new CBA. If you vote “yes” to ratify, the new Agreement provisions will take effect immediately. Promotion Increases will be retroactive to 8/7/06, Merit Increases will be retroactive to 10/1/06, and Market Adjustment Increases will be retroactive to 1/2/07. Competitive Pay Increases have already been distributed.

If the unit votes “no” to ratify, negotiators must return to the bargaining table to renegotiate an agreement which is satisfactory to you. The UFF bargaining team and executive officers urge you to vote “yes” on this new CBA. A large faculty vote will convey to the Board of Trustees that we, the faculty, are seriously interested in our professional futures.

Due to the protracted process of bargaining this contract, timeliness in ratification is important if employees are to receive the salary increases before the end of this spring 2007 semester. For this reason, all voting will take place at the next meeting of the UFF-USF Chapter, from noon to 1 p.m. on Friday, April 20, 2007 at Tampa campus EDU 258.

Much of our past Agreement has remained in place, and the complete text of the proposed changes to the Agreement is available online.

The proposed Agreement affects the terms and conditions of employment for Faculty, Librarians, and Other Bargaining Unit Members, and the Highlights are as follows:

(more…)

The chapter’s latest biweekly newsletter edited by Greg McColm is now available. Linked to it are two documents related to the e-mail issue:

• Arts and Sciences’ computer committee report on the matter
• Arts and Sciences’ guidelines on administrative interventions on the college’s e-mail server