UFF-USF

A few years ago, Parking Services stopped using Social Security Numbers in managing its accounts. Last month, a faculty member was asked for her SSN to get a new ID card. She e-mailed the chapter, which asked the administration to look into it. The response today from Sandy Lovins, Associate Vice President of Human Resources:

We did find out that the Card Center was taking social security numbers in order to generate an ID card (it was a field required in the system that they are using). However, we’ve been able to configure a change in their system and feed required information in from the GEMS system so that social security numbers are no longer needed. The Employee ID number is now officially being used. No longer will the Card Center staff be asking for social security number.

The UFF membership form now gives the option of providing the employee ID instead of the SSN, but includes the SSN option because many faculty know their SSN but not their employee ID. One of the concerns about asking for Social Security Numbers in public situations (whether in parking services or at a card center) is that they are public: You’re in a line, and someone asks you for the SSN. Anyone else in line could overhear your name and SSN, and then they have what they need to generate a false identity. If you are asked for your SSN at USF in a public context, gently refuse to, explain why not, and insist on using your employee ID instead.

Update (2/21/08): Administrators have contacted the chapter in the past day to indicate that all of the individuals affected were in the College of Medicine, and that the timeline indicated in USF’s response was an estimate of HR as to when they could be reasonably sure the switch in processes would be complete. We’ve suggested creating intermediate benchmarks before the end of the fiscal year and will update this entry or write a new one when more information is available.

This morning, the St. Petersburg Times made available the state’s operational audit of USF for the last fiscal year, which essentially is a checkup on the university’s basic financial operations. There are a number of items you’d expect (the university needs to do a better job of checking up on the commissions that vendors owe it, check up on residency of students, P-Card controls), some items that affect employees in reimbursable costs (university-subsidized cell phone usage, or travel reimbursement per diems), and then a surprising finding:

Our test of termination pay for 5 employees who terminated during the 2006-07 fiscal year disclosed that 1 employee of USF Health had not been paid for unused leave. Subsequent to audit inquiry, the employee was paid for 92 annual leave hours totaling $1,818, 134 days after their termination date. A further review of USF Health records disclosed that as of June 8, 2007, an additional 12 employees who terminated between July 14, 2006, and March 19, 2007, had not been paid accumulated annual leave totaling $38,794. Of the 12 employees, 2 still had not been paid amounts due as of November 13, 2007.

In other words, the university did not pay attention to the leave time owed faculty who retired, resigned, or otherwise left their jobs. This was one of 13 findings in the operational audit, and USF’s Chief Financial Officer Carl Carlucci promised to fix all of them. Here is the order of the issues that he said USF would address, and the implementation dates:

• Travel Per Diem (finding 10), June 2007
• Imprest Bank Accounts (finding 1), January 2008
• Access To Business Applications (finding 11), January 2008
• Student Fees (finding 5), March 31, 2008
• Competitive Procurement (finding 8), March 31, 2008
• Information Technology – Application Environment (finding 13), March 31, 2008
• Decentralized Collections (finding 6), April 30, 2008
• Cell phones (finding 10), April 30, 2008
• Tangible Personal Property (finding 2), June 30, 2008
• Auxiliary Vendor Contracts (finding 3), June 30, 2008
• Auxiliary Credit Union Contract (finding 4), June 30, 2008
• Purchasing Cards (finding 9), June 30, 2008
• Leave Pay on Termination (finding 7), July 31, 2008

In other words, retiring employees owed a payout for leave time are at the end of the line, the very lowest priority, and the implementation date for fixing this is after the end of the current fiscal year.

In a meeting of the American Federation of Teachers executive committee today, AFT President Ed McElroy and Secretary-Treasurer Nat LaCour announced their decisions to step down at the end of their current terms (i.e., this summer). An e-mail sent out by McElroy indicated that Executive VP Tony Cortese intends to stand for re-election (not run for president).

In fall, the USF College of Education’s student advising services had an awful choice to make: to lay off a receptionist or an advisor. The college laid off the receptionist, and now students face a large poster explaining how to make an appointment, instead of a friendly face to help them immediately:

Credit: United Faculty of Florida, 2008. Please contact Sherman Dorn for permission to reprint. (There will be no fee charged, but we need to keep track of reprintings.)

On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of the Higher Education Act reauthorization. Changes include raising the authorized cap for Pell grants. The bill did not include a federal version of David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights.

Read the rest of this entry »

Australian unions have one great answer on Youtube, but let’s be specific about faculty in Florida, beyond things that unions in general have fought for (minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, the Family and Medical Leave Act, health and safety laws, etc.):

• Protection of academic freedom
• Intellectual-property rights
• An annual evaluation system whose specific guidelines department faculty determine
• An independent advocate in Tallahassee (e.g., defeating the Baxley bill in 2005)
• Phased retirement
• A watchdog over the Florida Retirement System
• Anti-discrimination language that includes sexual orientation
• A grievance system to resolve disputes

If you haven’t already, join UFF today.

The group of plaintiffs in the lawsuit over the Board of Governors’ constitutional authority refiled their lawsuit Monday in Tallahassee. The judge in the case had ruled early in January that the plaintiffs, including the Board of Governors, did not have standing to sue in state court.

This lawsuit is about tuition authority (a crucial question this year!) but more generally about who controls Florida’s universities. In 2002, the United Faculty of Florida supported the constitutional amendment that created the Board of Governors, as faculty were tired of seeing legislative politics deciding educational issues. If the Board of Governors wins this lawsuit, future decisions may have political overtunes, but we will see far less of the shenanigans of the past decade, where legislative influence and not educational need determined whether new schools were built, and on which campuses.

A decision is not going to happen for several months at the lower-court level, and any decision is likely to be appealed until the Florida Supreme Court decides the issue.

In talking with legislators, it’s crucial to explain how budget cuts at USF affect students and the general public: For students, cuts result in larger classes, fewer courses offered, larger problems in scheduling classes needed for graduation. And that’s for the students who are admitted; USF will have to turn away more students as a result of cuts. As the St Petersburg Times reported earlier this week, the universities will be shutting out more students as the peak of the baby boom echo reaches adulthood over the next few years.

Editorial boards around the state have commented recently on higher-education budget, including the Tampa Tribune, the St. Petersburg Times, and the Florida Sun-Sentinel, and reporting on the consequences of budget cuts continues in the Times, Palm Beach Post, Miami Herald, and elsewhere.

When you talk with legislators, always explain the real-life consequences of budget cuts for students and those who will not become students because of the cuts.

UFF-USF chapter meeting
February 8, 12 pm
EDU 413 (Tampa campus)

1. Agenda amendment/approval
2. Envelope stuffing!
3. Reports
4. Other business
5. For the good of the order

Some recognition is due several administrators at the University of South Florida for recent actions or consistency:

• A dean who worked to help faculty protect the tenure process in a college
• A dean and associate dean who helped find a grant-funded position for a professional employee who otherwise would have been laid off
• An administrator who took time to address the personal needs of individual faculty in a unique crisis
• A chair/director who protected tenure-track faculty research time in an emergency schedule shuffle
• Lakeland-campus academic administrators, who have continued to teach regularly-scheduled courses in their home departments.

The individuals in the first four cases are not named in part to protect confidentiality and in part to recognize that there are plenty of correct decisions made quietly by faculty committees and administrators. A faculty union’s job is to protect due process and faculty interests, and the chapter will point out where its perspective differs from that of the administration or BOT, but there are also plenty of correct decisions made.