Uncommon
Sense
The Newsletter of the United Faculty of
(an FEA [AFT & NEA] affiliate)
Volume 12, Number 2 Fall, 2004
The Voice of the
University Professional
A New Contract!
The bargaining teams for the USF Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida and the USF Administration have “tentatively agreed” on a new contract, which now has to be ratified by the USF Faculty (those within the Bargaining Unit) and the Board of Regents. Faculty within the Bargaining Unit should soon receive mail ballots on the contract, along with a description of the contract; both the old 2001-2003 contract and the proposed 2004-2007 contract are on-line via our web-page http://w3.usf.edu/~uff. The Chapter strongly urges all members of the Bargaining Unit to study the proposed contract, and strongly urges faculty to vote for the new contract.
Getting a Contract
It has been a long and sticky road.
The United Faculty of Florida has bargained and enforced the contract
since 1976. The result was a series
of contracts up to the 2001-2003 Combined Bargaining Agreement, whose terms and
conditions were repudiated by all the new Boards of Trustees in perfect
synchrony on
While all the Boards (save
Before bargaining started, the USF Chapter of UFF conducted a survey of
the bargaining unit, to guide bargaining.
For example, respondents preferred across-the-board and merit raises over discretionary raises.
UFF’s Bargaining Team was led by Chief
Negotiator Bob Welker, of the Accounting Department. He was assisted by
As both UFF and the Administration noted in 2003, one thing that had to
be in the contract was a new grievance process, since under the old process all
appeals went to the Regents, who were no more. The last level is arbitration, in which an impartial
outsider rules on the case. The
Administration wanted to restrict access to arbitration; since arbitration is
the ultimate tool in enforcing the contract, the union refused to agree. This was the logjam UFF Chapter
President Roy Weatherford broke by descending on the Board last November with
sharp language and sharp handouts.
After that, bargaining was less impassable crevices and more thorny
thickets, so regaining most of the old contract was a slow process. In May, the contention over salaries
moved the Administration to make its proposals public; they wanted a complicated
system with many discretionary parts, and they wanted to cut summer pay. Despite the media buzz, the union team
stood by the faculty’s preference for merit and across-the-board raises, and in
defense of summer pay. Ultimately, the UFF team got most of this year’s pay
raise (which was more than the Administration’s original proposal) as
across-the-board and merit, with some discretion, and summer pay
intact.
The resulting contract is a reasonable compromise, and if necessary, a
good place to start another series of contracts. We recommend its ratification.
The New
Contract
This newsletter and mail ballots are going into campus mail
about the same time, so if you are a member of the bargaining unit, you should
receive a ballot package within days.
If you do not, contact us at uff@cyber.acomp.usf.edu. Ballots are due at the union office by
Thursday
The hot points were grievances (Article 20) and salary (Article 23). Oh, and union privileges (Article
3).
A grievance is a formal
complaint that the contract has been violated. Under the old contract, a grievance
leads first to a “Step 1” hearing at USF; if that doesn’t work, the grievant can
demand a “Step 2” hearing in Tallahassee; and if that doesn’t work, and if UFF
agrees, the case goes before an impartial arbitrator. Now that the Regents are gone, we need a
new system. The proposed system
is: first, an informal attempt to
resolve the problem, and then, if necessary, a formal hearing at USF. If that doesn’t work, and UFF agrees,
arbitration is next. Unlike the
grievance procedure in the personnel rules, a grievant will have UFF’s assistance (whether or not the grievant is in the
union). One point that has not
changed: USF is to follow the
principle of “progressive discipline,” i.e., a first or second offense does not
lead to draconian punishment.
This brings up another item that has not changed: Section 1.2A says that the contract
takes precedence over personnel rules.
And to prevent faculty from being victimized as a result of the
reorganization, Section 26.2 says that faculty keep the tenure, rank, etc., that
they had before the reorganization.
And now, about money. In the past, raises were what the
Legislature allocated for state employee raises, minus the money for promotional
raises. Since state employees got
promotional raises by other means, our annual raises were low, even for
The reorganization means that the Legislature no longer allocates money
for raises: raises are bargained and fixed in the contract. This is what the Community Colleges do,
and that’s one reason why UFF has been able to get better raises for CC
professors. (Another reason is that
more CC professors join the union: larger membership translates into better
bargaining resources.) In the
future our raises should get better.
Finally, in order to function, unions bargain for “privileges”:
collecting dues by payroll deduction, using classrooms and listservs, etc.
One way to badger a union is to attack a privilege during bargaining; the
privilege the USF Administration attacked was release time. Running UFF is like running a large
department (or small college), and the union needs course releases for faculty
who do administrative work – just as a department or college does, and for the
same reasons. In this case, the
badgerment didn’t discombobulate things
much.
We got the old contract, plus improvements, in the face of incredible
resistance. We recommend ratifying
it...and planning for the next cycle.