UFF-USF

UFF/USF Chapter Meeting

June 8, 2007

CDB’s

In attendance: S. Dorn, B. Welker, J. Martin, S. Ramírez Wohlmuth, M. Kaplan, M. Klisch, J. Noonan, B. Frank

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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. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are a new faculty member or professional employee at USF, please accept my and the chapter’s welcome. The United Faculty of Florida is your union, and we’re glad you’re here. We hope you find USF a congenial place to work, and we hope to see you at a chapter meeting sometime this fall.

If you have not worked or studied at a unionized university, you should know a few things about the United Faculty of Florida:

• The United Faculty of Florida represents us and our colleagues at all Florida public universities, 8 of the community colleges, and one private college because most faculty at Florida’s public universities chose union representation in an election in 1976, and faculty have chosen UFF at several points since.
• The United Faculty of Florida bargains on our behalf for a single Collective Bargaining Agreement that protects the rights of everyone in the unit. The collective bargaining agreement includes provisions on academic freedom, intellectual property, promotion and tenure procedures, annual reviews, salaries, sabbaticals, and many others. To the right, you can click to read the current Collective Bargaining Agreement and “reopeners” that have covered salaries between 2004 and the present.
• The United Faculty of Florida has the legal obligation to enforce the collective bargaining agreement. When the university has violated the contract, the chapter can represent individuals in grievances. This avoids the expense of lawsuits and can often resolve issues informally.
• The faculty union also operates in a democratic manner. The USF chapter has biweekly meetings during the year, when all members present at the meeting participate in decision-making. The USF chapter also holds annual elections for officers and for representatives to the statewide governing body, the United Faculty of Florida Senate.
• The United Faculty of Florida also represents faculty interests in public, educating the public and policymakers about how higher education works. We successfully fought a 2005 state legislative bill that would have damaged academic freedom, and the statewide union is committed to improving higher education funding and insulating universities from untoward political pressures.

JOINING: You do not automatically join the union. You need to fill out a form and send it in (campus mail address: 30238 USF Holly Drive) to join and start dues deductions. There are some specific benefits of membership (including two professional liability insurance policies), but the most important reason to join is to work together to protected our shared values and interests.

UFF/USF Chapter Meeting

July 6, 2007

CDB’s

In attendance: J. Martin, P. Terry, B. Welker, S. Wohlmuth, C. Dee, S. Dorn, M. Kaplan, B. Barnett, K. de la Peña McCook, F. Ottanelli

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June 20 chapter meeting, 12 noon
CDB’s, 51st and Fowler Avenues

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The chapter’s resolution and my e-mail to the bargaining unit yesterday prompted several e-mails to me in the evening and overnight, and a few have asked why the union chapter isn’t officially recognizing a possibility of budget problems and at least looking at a worst-case scenario. So here is my individual (not chapter) analysis:

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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.

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UFF/USF Meeting

June 22, 2007

CDB’s

Present: S. Dorn, M. Klisch, B. Welker, G. McColm, S. Lang, J. Noonan, R. Weatherford, S. Wohlmuth, B. Frank.

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This week I spent several days at the Florida Education Association’s summer leadership institute, generally a set of meetings and workshops for elected officials of the union’s locals across the state (along with other professional development, which this year included instructional strategies, behavior management, and investigating mold problems in buildings). The vast majority of those at the workshops are from K-12 unions, which represent teachers, school counselors, school psychologists, and a few other professional certified groups. In many counties, FEA also represents support professionals, those whom most students would recognize as teachers’ aides, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, maintenance crew, and others who in Florida are generally known as education support professionals, or ESPs.

Among the various things I learned is that in one regard, the UFF-USF chapter has more in common with the support professional bargaining units than with the certified units in terms of representing employees in disparate jobs and very different interests and perspectives. The challenges range from contact (if you want to talk with a maintenance staff person, you first have to find out where they work, and it’s usually not at a shed in one district office) to the various interests and needs that can diverge. University faculty and professional employees differ in many ways from school bus drivers,* but I quickly recognized the stretch in representing such a diverse bargaining unit, since it’s the challenge we face at USF. We represent approximately 1800 faculty and professional employees, from visiting faculty and student advisors to Distinguished University Professors, from non-tenure-track faculty who spend 125% of their time teaching to full-time researchers, from those who identify themselves primarily as serving a community through a regional state university to those who identify themselves primarily as members of their national disciplinary organizations.

Unlike the support professionals in K-12 unions, we can’t split representation by job group, because the interests and identities aren’t so easily classified. But talking with some of the ESP leaders (mostly teachers’ aides, including a wonderful woman who works in the room next to my wife), I’m realizing that the same internal organizing issues exist at both levels, and we can learn a thing or two from the ESPs. If they can successfully represent everyone’s interests, we must, too.

* Two friends of mine who are married are a university faculty member and a school bus driver, so they’re obviously not that different!

June 8 chapter meeting, 12 noon
CDB’s, 51st and Fowler Avenues

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