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 Jan. 7, 2003, when they gained their full legal powers.  They also refused to recognize UFF as the faculty’s bargaining agent.

     While all the Boards (save Gainesville’s) have recognized UFF as the faculty’s bargaining agent, they are demanding entirely new contracts so that the continuity with the old contracts is broken.  While UFF is still litigating to restore that continuity (which has important legal ramifications), UFF is bargaining new contracts.  To date, only FAU has a contract.

     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 Susan Greenbaum of Anthropology (who left to become President of the Faculty Senate), Mark Klisch of Counseling, Kathleen de la Pena McCook of LIS, Steve Permuth and Art Shapiro of Educational Leadership, and Keith White of St. Petersburg.  There were about forty 2-hour meetings with the Administration team (each meeting requiring many hours of preparation).  (Compare that 80 hours with the 75 contact hours of two brand new 3-credit-hour graduate courses.)  We are grateful to the union team for their efforts, which were entirely on their own time.

     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 noon, November 18.  The old contract and the new contract, and a description of the changes, are all on-line at http://w3.usf.edu/~uff; here are a few important points.

     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 Florida.

     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.