More News
Dear colleagues,
On Friday, the Tallahassee Democrat reported that the Board of Trustees has awarded President McCullough an 8% raise, boosting his salary to approximately $1.35M. They also added a $600,000 bonus if he serves out his contract. The UFF-FSU chapter congratulations him on his good fortune and we are glad to continue working with him as our President.
In seemingly unrelated news, at our latest bargaining session this past Wednesday, August 26, the Board of Trustees offered faculty a two-year salary contract, where we would receive an average 1% raise in departmental merit and a $1,000 bonus this year, and a 1.25% raise in departmental merit and a 0.5% bonus next year.
We were also told that the Board is not interested in a parity clause that would trigger larger raises for faculty if upper administrators get raises that exceed those I just mentioned. I guess that now seems unsurprising. They mentioned that one problem with tying our raises to the President’s is that only $200,000 of his salary can come from the state coffers. The remainder must come from other sources.
Your faculty UFF team of bargainers obligingly removed the President from our parity clause and is willing to settle with a similar comparison to (only) FSU’s pool of Vice Presidents, whose more modest salaries come from state funds. We also declined their extended offer that would lock in small raises for most faculty for two years. The Board of Trustees team pointed to the fact that, in many years, our raises have exceeded those of our sibling institutions and that when they have money they give it to the faculty. If we are forced to settle for a low salary offer, we hope that it is only a one-year blip, though the steadily declining raises during Pres. McCullough’s term (which started off with relatively healthy raises for faculty) tempers our optimism.
The BOT team still has not yet responded to our MOA which would allow faculty who are due to receive Post-Tenure Review (PTR) and Sustained Performance Increases (SPI) their salary adjustments now that the semester has begun.
We also discussed Article 3 (UFF Rights) and we are still trying to iron out radically different legal interpretations of the new law (SB 1296): our lawyers believe the law still allows faculty to receive credit on our AORs for bargaining our contract and for enforcing the contract terms; FSU’s lawyers believe this same law completely forbids that. At least five other state universities in Florida have continued to give credit for union work. If we lose this fight, we will need substantially more volunteers to step forward to help with these important, but time-consuming tasks. Here is their language and here is ours.
And we are close to agreement on Article 32 on Artificial Intelligence. We still have disagreements about faculty representation on the IT Governance committee and monitoring real-time computer work in keystrokes and eye movements. Here is their language and here is ours.
We invite you to attend our next bargaining session on Friday (Sept. 4) from 9:00–11:30 am at the Training Center across Stadium Drive from the University Center [map link], as we try again to loosen the purse strings of a Board of Trustees that is clearly not otherwise averse to spending money. Bring your grading, bring some knitting, bring a tin cup with a shekel or a farthing. If you cannot come in person, it will (as ever) be streamed over Zoom.
Faculty deserve more. We will never stop fighting for better wages, for faculty intellectual freedom, and for the respect we deserve. Please join us in that fight. Join UFF-FSU.
In solidarity,
Michael Buchler, on behalf of your UFF-FSU Bargaining Team