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Dear colleagues,
At last week’s second bargaining session (on Thursday, August 14) we made even more progress on Article 17 (Leaves) and I think that we are very close to agreement. We also took a baby step in our salary negotiations—the administration has moved from 1.7% raises up to 1.8% raises (combined across-the-board and departmental merit). Here is a more detailed summary of what transpired.
Article 17 (Leaves)
At our last update, we let you know that the administration has agreed to our proposal that FSU:
- Allow two paid parental leaves instead of one.
- Allow both members of faculty couples to take a leave for the same child.
This week we got them to agree to two more things that we have been insisting upon:
- Drop the requirement that faculty wait two years from the end of one parental leave until the start of the next one.
- Allow faculty who took less than their permitted six months of leave under the existing system to use the remainder of their unspent allotment for a second paid leave.
Under the existing system, most faculty were never able to take their full six months of paid leave because a provision in the CBA limits faculty with teaching assignments to one semester off.
There’s only one more sticking point: the administration insisted that 24 weeks is as high as they can go. The fact is that 24 weeks is a shorter leave than our existing policy of six months. We proposed staying with six months, or 26 weeks.
Article 23 (Salaries)
The administration upped their offer a bit; we came down a bit more. Honestly, it’s going to be a disappointing year, largely thanks to the legislature, which clearly would rather invest in new buildings than in keeping faculty up with inflation. Here are the details with the changes since August 11:
| BOT offer August 14 | UFF offer August 14 | |
| Promotions | 12% / 15% | 12% / 15% |
| Sustained Performance Increase (SPI) for top ranked specialized faculty every 5 years | 3% | 3% |
| Post-Tenure Review: Professors | 3% Meets / 5% Exceeds | 3% Meets / 5% Exceeds |
| Post-Tenure Review: Associate Professors | $4,000 Bonus Meets / $6,000 Bonus Exceeds | $4,000 Bonus Meets / $6,000 Bonus Exceeds |
| Performance | 1.4% (same as their previous proposal) | 2.3% or $2,000 whichever is greater (down from 2.5%) |
| Department Merit | 0.4% (up from 0.3%) | 0.5% (same as our previous proposal) |
| Deans’ Merit | 0% | 0% |
| Market Equity (to adjust for compression and inversion) | $0 | $0 |
| Administrative Discretionary Raise | 0.80% (same as previous proposal) | 0.40% (up from 0.30%) |
Feel free to contact me or any member of our bargaining team if you have questions or thoughts and, again, please let all your incoming colleagues know that one of the great benefits of working at FSU is our faculty union that negotiates the terms and conditions of their employment, defends faculty rights, and fights unfair laws that curtail faculty governance and freedom of expression! They need to hear from you that joining FSU is in their (and all of our) best interests. They (and you) can join here: https://www.uff-fsu.org/join/.
The next bargaining session will be on Thursday, August 21 from 2:00–5:00 at the FSU Training Center, just across Stadium Drive from the University Center (or join us on Zoom). These are open meetings and we would love to have you join us.
In solidarity,
Michael Buchler, on behalf of your UFF-FSU Collective Bargaining Team
Professor of Music Theory
FSU College of Music