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Collective Bargaining News

Summary

Following an Interest-Based Bargaining (IBB) approach, the negotiations between the UFF and the FSU Board of Trustees (BOT) for a new faculty contract covering academic years 2007-2010 produced agreements on the following revisions to the contract articles and the following memoranda of agreement (MOAs).

How can you help?

Please contact Ted Baker (644-5452, baker@cs.fsu.edu) if you are interested in the collective bargaining process, and are willing to volunteer some time in support of the UFF collective bargaining effort, or just want to voice an opinion. If you have an issue or set of issues about which you are strongly concerned, help yourself and your colleagues by volunteering to develop those issues. We can use help in researching the views of the faculty on issues we should bring to the bargaining table, researching what is being done at other universities, and in developing supporting data to convince the FSU administration to take action.

Other actions you can take:

  • Keep yourself informed about the progress of collective bargaining, and about bargaining issues.
  • Express your views to the President and Board of Trustees, and to the public at large, regarding current bargaining issues. The hardest issue has been the problem of low faculty salaries at FSU, including problems with the cost-of-living, compression, inversion, and market inequities.
  • Join the UFF. We know that the faculty supports the UFF, from the overwhelming certification vote, but the administration interprets the low number of dues-paying members as a sign of faculty apathy. By joining you express the strongest form of support.

Other frequently asked questions:

How does the UFF set its bargaining priorities?

If you have an issue that you would like to see addressed in the next contract, please contact the bargaining chair (see "How can you help?" above) or another UFF officer, and be sure to complete the periodic on-line UFF surveys.  We rely heavily on surveys.  The bargaining team also consults with the UFF executive council (elected and appointed officers of the UFF FSU chapter).  The UFF chapter grievance chair is consulted regarding any issues that have come up recently in grievances and were not resolved well. The UFF chapter officers solicit faculty views via open luncheon meetings, and e-mails. Members of the bargaining team and executive council forward views from individual e-mails and conversations with other faculty members who are interested in expressing their concerns and priorities for bargaining.

How is the UFF bargaining team chosen?

The bargaining team is made up of faculty volunteers, appointed by the UFF chapter president.  We like to rotate the membership of the team. If you are interested and willing to serve, please volunteer!

What happens if the UFF and the FSU administration fail to reach agreement on a contract?

Title XXXI, Section 447.403 of the Florida Code specifies a process for resolving impasses between a public employer such as the FSU BOT and a bargaining agent such as the UFF. The process involves review by a special magistrate, who makes a recommendation. The parties may choose to accept the recommendation, or not. If not, the next step is a hearing by the responsible "legislative body." For the State University System, that body is the Florida Board of Governors, but the BOG has delegated that authority to the FSU Board of Trustees. Therefore, the BOT would be in the position of dictating an imposed settlement. The UFF believes the BOG transfer of this authority to the BOT is not constitutional, but if/when that is taken to court it might take years to resolve. In either case, either the BOT or the BOG would impose a settlement.

Why does the UFF oppose administrative discretionary salary increases?

The UFF has generally agreed to allow some salary increases based on administrative discretion, in order to reach agreement on an entire contract.  However, the UFF believes that the determination of salary increases by administrative discretion should be limited to a few exceptional cases, for the following reasons:

  1. It amounts to individual bargaining, which is the antithesis of collective bargaining (the reason we have a union).
  2. On our polls, the bargaining unit members have consistently indicated that they do not want salary increases allocated in this fashion. In every poll we have conducted, there has been strong support for three main categories of salary increases: cost-of-living, merit, and market equity. There has has been miniscule support for administrative discretion.
  3. Administrative discretion tends to be inequitable. Such increases go to only a few members of the faculty. Though we believe abuses at FSU have been rare,  so far, the system invites abuses based on university politics and personal relationships between individual faculty members and administrators.  We have seen what we believe to be examples of such.  Also, historically, such raises have not been equitably distributed between colleges.
  4. Unlike other negotiated salary increases, the administration is not obliged to actually give out administrative discretionary increases.  That is, the contract might allow 1%, but the administration might award much less, say 0.3%.

What is wrong with counter-offers? Isn't this a fair way for a faculty member to earn a pay increase?

On the one hand, the UFF recognizes that job offers are the strongest kind of evidence of prevailing market salaries. On the other hand, we do not want to see every faculty member compelled to solicit outside offers in order to prevent his/her salary falling behind inflation. That is bad for morale, and an obstacle to faculty recruitment and retention. A faculty member who concentrates on building his/her CV to apply for jobs has no stake in his/department and the University, and will short-cut teaching and university service. We feel it is ethically wrong for a faculty member to solicit an outside offer, especially pro-forma offers from friends at other institutions, solely for the purpose of justifying a salary increase at FSU. Moreover, ethics aside, a faculty member who reaches the point where she/he feels compelled to look for outside offers should logically accept the offer and leave, or lack credibility if she/he needs to solicit another offer. It is a shame when excellent faculty members leave the University, and ironic when the university ends up paying more than it would have cost to retain them, in order to recruit replacements.

So why does the UFF agree to allow any administrative discretionary salary increases?

The UFF does recognize the need for a way to handle special cases, such as salary increases to retain a valued faculty member who is being recruited by another university, but for the reasons above we week contractual language that limits salary increases based on administrative discretion to just a few exceptional cases, where such discretion is required.

On the other side, the administration would prefer that all salary increases be entirely according to their discretion. The have perfectly understandable reasons for this preference. The University can stretch its budget by only giving increases in places that administrators deem needed or most useful, to settle lawsuits ("settlements"), retain faculty members who threaten to leave ("counter-offers"), reward those who please them ("special achievements"), and motivate those who might otherwise refuse to accept a particular assignment ("increased duties and responsibilities"). There is no need, from this view, to spend anything on the majority of faculty members, who work hard, do not threaten to leave, and agree to their assignments without complaint.

However, the law gives the UFF, as the elected sole representative of the faculty at FSU, the exclusive right to negotiate terms and conditions of faculty employment. Foremost among such terms and conditions is salary. Allowing administration discretion over salary increases amounts to a waiver by a union of its right to bargain salaries. While public employees are not permitted to strike, and can be required to work under a unilateral imposed settlement if impasse is reached in negotiations, such an imposed settlement cannot legally include discretionary salary increases if the union does not agree to it. Therefore, a union will hold off agreement on any discretionary increases until it is otherwise satisfied with a contract, and will not include any discretionary raises as part of its position at impasse; to do otherwise would be to waive its right to bargain.

Therefore, agreement to any discretionary salary increases is an important bargaining chip for any public employee union.

The FSU BOT bargaining team has demonstrated that it places high priority on administrative discretion in salary increases. As a condition for providing 0.9% in merit salary increases in 2006, they insisted on an increase of 0.45% in new discretionary increases, including 0.2% in a new category called "Dean's Merit" increases and an increase from 0.25% to 0.5% in the cap on traditional administrative discretionary increases under the authority of section 23.9 of the CBA. In bargaining for 2008-2009 salary increases, they insisted on increasing the cap again, to 1%.

Why did the UFF agree to raise the ADI cap to 1% in the 2007-2010 contract?

The UFF was very reluctant to agree to this increase in the cap. However, we agreed to it, for the following reasons:

  • It appeared to be a necessary concession to reach agreement on the 3% retention adjustment, which we believe every faculty member wanted.
  • The administration wanted to expand the category to include equity adjustments. The UFF has long bargained for a systematic program to correct market inequities, and thereby also other forms of salary inequity. However, given the budget reductions forced on the university over the past two years, and given the likelihood of additional reductions in the near future, we were forced to concede that allocating significant additional funds (beyond the 3% retention adjustment) for a university-wide market equity adjustment program is not practicable in the near term. Under these circumstances, it seems to be in the interest of the faculty to allow the colleges that have internal resources to address inequities as they are able.
  • The FSU admnistration was willing to agree to more specific language regarding the criteria and procedures for administrative discretionary increases, which the UFF hopes will favor equity and discourage abuses.
  • The UFF chose to trust the presentations of the administration's representatives, that they intend to apply this discretion equitably, and will not abuse it.

The new contract includes stronger provisions for providing documentation to justify individual cases of administrative discretionary increases. The UFF will monitor this evidence, and consider it when the ADI issue comes up in the next contract negotiation.

For historical information

The following links lead to archived documents that contain more detail on the history of negotiations.