Reconstructed Minutes from CBAC Luncheon
January 28, 2004

Jack called the luncheon meeting to order about approximately 12:40pm and thanked participants for attending.  Attendees introduced themselves to the group.  Jack and Ted provided a brief update on bargaining, discussed the current situation regarding the Administration’s unilateral salary increase initiative involving approximately $1.8 million, the forthcoming bargaining survey(s), and asked attendees for guidance on bargaining over salary issues.

The following comments were offered:

• We should focus on benefit costs to faculty, e.g., allocate salary to offset co-pay cost increases.
• There is too little money to address real problems in faculty salaries; don’t “bless” the Administration’s charade that this is a meaningful salary increase by negotiating a plan.
• There is too little money to address compression or inversion in any serious fashion. The money shouldn’t be addressed to these.
• The money should be used to offset benefit cost increases so that faculty members don’t lose ground to these.
• Standardizing teaching loads across campus should be considered as a bargaining goal.
• We need a task force to provide input very soon.  See the www.uff-ucf.org web site for proposals.
• There should be a hierarchy of salary problems to which available funds should be directed.  There was a discussion about a “bucket metaphor” where spigots at different levels addressed different salary issues. A “pipeline metaphor” with adjustable valves was also suggested.
• Data on faculty losses to other schools, turnover, would help to make the case for salary increases. Legislators aren’t convinced there is a faculty salary problem. They won’t fund meaningful salary increases until they are convinced there is a problem.
• What doesn’t show is the demoralization among faculty members who are not leaving. They may be immobile for various reasons, but when their efforts aren’t rewarded, they begin to wonder “why bother making the effort?”
• The survey should pose the questions on priorities not in terms of what folks think the bargaining team should do, but in terms of what they are willing to work on. This helps to get across the idea that the team is not some hired staff with nothing else to do (or “something other” or “a thing apart” from the faculty), that volunteer efforts are critical in all this.