FSU Works Because We Do!
2007-2010 Collective Bargaining Agreement
United Faculty of
Florida (UFF) is the organization for
higher education
faculty and professionals in Florida.
Collective Bargaining News
Status of 2010-2013 Negotiations
Starting in January 2010, the UFF and BOT bargaining teams undertook a review of the entire faculty contract. Both teams agreed to follow the Interest-Based approach to bargaining (IBB), sometimes also known as "collegial" bargaining. In IBB, both sides try to educate the other side about their goals and interests, identify areas of convergent interests, and jointly develop solutions. This is in contrast to the traditional positional bargaining style, in which each side makes proposals and counter-proposals, often trying to conceal their real interests. The UFF believes that the IBB style of bargaining is better suited to a university environment, where both sides share many common interests, including a desire to serve the interests of students, maintain high academic standards, recruit and retain the strongest possible students and faculty, and generally make our University one in which we can all take pride.
In the IBB process the two bargaining teams function as a single committee. The process starts by members listing "problems" that each side would like to solve, then listing the "interests" of each side that will affect the acceptability of any proposed solution to the problem, and then listing "brainstorm" ideas for potential elements of a solution to the stated problem. Interests are classified as either convergent or divergent. Brainstorm ideas are classified as either mutally acceptable, or unacceptable. Finally, the two bargaining teams piece together a joint proposal made up of brainstorm elements that are acceptable to both sides. This process works well when there are many convergent interests. Otherwise, it may fail, and the two sides must then revert to positional bargaining.
This year, so far, the IBB process seems to be working. However, it is slow. We have signed tentative agreements on the following:
- Preamble
- Memorandum of Agreement on Parental Leave
- Memorandum of Agreement on Winter Break
- Memorandum of Agreement on Promotion Increases, One-time "Bonus" Payments, and Extension of Administrative Discretionary Salary Increase Authorization
- Article 2 Consultation
- Article 6 Nondiscrimination
In order to be able to reach closure on a contract, both the UFF and the BOT teams agreed to narrow the scope of bargaining to a subset of the original list of problems they identified. The problems currently under IBB discussion include:
- How can we assure that contractual improvements for NTTF faculty do not accelerate the growth in the ratio of NTTF to TTF?
- How can we balance the needs of the faculty while ensuring all curricular requirements are met within budget constraints for the summer?
- How can we set a friendlier and more professional tone?
- How can we recognize and reward sustained superior performance on the part of our full professors?
- How can we ensure that teaching assignments are done equitably, and perceived as such, as the University is forced to make do with fewer and fewer faculty members?
- How can we ensure that the contract allows for appropriate action regarding misconduct and incompetence?
In addition, the following general topics are still on the table:
- Revisions to Article 23 Salaries, including the idea that President Barron has mentioned publicly, for a one-time special salary payment.
- Revisions to Appendix J Criteria and Procedures for Promotion of Librarians. A committee of librarians has produced a new UFF draft, which is under review by the BOT team.
- The Non-Tenure-Track-Faculty (NTTF) reclassification project. The joint labor-management committee has been meeting regularly, and is nearing completion of a draft Memorandum of Agreement that would govern this process.
In order to reach convergence this year, the UFF agreed to postpone IBB discussion of several other problems, and the BOT agreed to postpone discussion of other problems in which they have an interest. However, some of these problems may end up being addressed as a by-product of other topics that are under discussion, including revisions to Article 23 and the Non-Tenure-Track Faculty (NTTF) reclassification project.
Please provide your thoughts on bargaining issues to Professor Ted Baker, the UFF-FSU faculty bargaining team's chief negotiator (baker@cs.fsu.edu). For more detail, see "How can you help?" further below.
Summary of 2009-2010 Negotiations
On Wednesday, 10 December, the UFF and BOT bargaining teams signed a tentative agreement on Article 23 (Salaries) and a new Memorandum of Agreement to continue the Parental Leave benefit through 30 June 2010. Links to the signed agreements are provided below.
These agreements have since been ratified. Agreement was also reached on the following items, earlier in the process:
- Winter break. This recognizes a formal leave-with-pay.
- Voluntary separation agreement. This provides a financial incentive for individuals in a certain age window to retire.
- Parental leave continuation for fall term 2009.
- Promotion raises for fall 2009. This allowed the faculty members who were promoted this year to received salary increases.
- Non-Tenure Track Faculty Reclassification Project. We made a lot of progress on this, but there remained many details that needed to be worked out, so we agreed to create a joint subcommittee to continue work on it.
That concluded a year of negotiations, during which the UFF and BOT also explored possible changes to several other areas of the contract without reaching agreement. Both sides agreed that it would be best to continue the status quo contract and postpone further discussion of those open issues for the next year's contract.
- The BOT agreed to drop its insistence on capping summer teaching pay at $8000 per course. Summer teaching pay would remain at 12.5% of base pay for 9-month faculty.
- The BOT agreed to drop its insistence that new faculty members not be eligible for the payout that existing faculty members may receive for unused sick leave upon separation from the University, and drop its insistance on making continuation of the paid parental leave program conditional on elimination of the sick leave payout benefit (which would also impact faculty members who do not make use of paid parental leave). The UFF made clear that it supports the paid parental leave program.
- The UFF agreed to allow up to 0.25% in administrative discretionary salary increases (such as counter-offers) for fiscal year 2009-2010, and drop its insistence on bargaining starting salaries this year.
- The UFF agreed drop its insistence on establishing a minimum ratio of tenure-track faculty to students, continuing multi-year appointments and honorific working titles (such as “Research Professor” and “Teaching Professor”) for non-tenure-track faculty members in certain existing classifications, for this year. A joint study committee will continue to work on details of a framework already agreed on continuing multi-year appointments and honorific working titles, in the context of introducing new specialized non-tenure-track faculty classifications.
For historical perspective, we have left posted the following UFF and BOT proposals from this now-completed round of bargaining. In each document, underscores indicate proposed new language and strikethroughs indicate proposed deletions. In some cases the changes are shown relative to the existing CBA, and in others the changes are shown relative to the preceding BOT proposal. Different colors of text may reflect changes made at different times.
Please remember that theses documents present an incomplete picture. It is not possible to fully comprehend bargaining developments from these proposals, each of which provides
only a snapshot of one side's bargaining In particular, sometimes the UFF bargaining team finds itself forced to either back down on something it hoped to achieve, in order to reach an overall agreement with the BOT, or forced to take an extreme position on some issues that it feels the BOT cares a lot about, in order to show that the UFF will not reach an overall agreement until the BOT soften's its position on something the UFF views as important to the faculty.
< 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).
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: 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. 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!
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. 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: 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. 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 seek 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%. The UFF was very reluctant to agree to this increase in the
cap. However, we agreed to it, for the following reasons: 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.
The following links lead to archived documents that
contain more detail on the history of negotiations.
Article UFF Proposal BOT Proposal
Preamble
1 Oct 2009 - complete, showing proposed new paragraph
9 Oct 2009 - BOT counter
Article 8 - Appointments
1 Oct 2009 - full article, proposed changes shown
relative to current CBA.
9 Oct 2009 - BOT counter
Article 11 - Evaluation File
9 May 2009 - partial, showing
only section to which changes are proposed to current CBA
(no BOT counter)
Article 17 - Leaves
8 June 2009 - full article,
proposed changes shown relative to current CBA
9 Oct 2009 - BOT counter
Article 23 - Salaries
1 Oct 2009 - full article, proposed changes shown relative to current CBA.
9 Oct 2009 - BOT counter
Article 28 - Miscellaneous Provisions
1 Oct 2009 - partial,
showing only new section proposed for addition
(no BOT counter)
Appendix K - Promotion of Non-Tenure-Track Faculty
11 June 2009 - proposed new
appendix, showing changes relative to a previous proposal
9 June 2009 - previous BOT counter
Summary of 2006-08 Negotiations
How can you help?
Other frequently asked questions:
How does the UFF set its bargaining priorities?
How is the UFF bargaining team chosen?
What happens if the UFF and the FSU administration fail to reach agreement on a contract?
Why does the UFF oppose administrative discretionary salary increases?
What is wrong with counter-offers? Isn't this a fair way for
a faculty member to earn a pay increase?
So why does the UFF agree to allow any administrative
discretionary salary increases?
Why did the UFF agree to raise the ADI cap to 1% in the 2007-2010 contract?
For historical information