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Dear FSU Colleagues,
Our UFF bargaining team, which includes both specialized and general faculty members from across campus, works diligently to negotiate the rights outlined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), but if we do not have at least 60% membership density in early July, we will lose our right to bargain salaries, evaluations, tenure and promotion protections, workloads, benefits, and so much more. Please join now! And if you’re a member, thank you for your support, and please talk to your colleagues about the importance of having a union, a CBA, and contract enforcement.
On June 17, we signed a Memorandum of Agreement to implement three additional paid summer holidays: the Juneteenth federal holiday and July 2 and 6 announced last week. That, unfortunately, was the extent of the productivity of our bargaining session.
The BOT team has not responded to our Salary proposal (Article 23) or our proposals for Leaves (Article 17) or Artificial Intelligence (Article 32), a frustration that we made very clear, especially considering the ground rules both sides agreed to in May. Instead, the BOT team only proposed another version of their Memorandum of Agreement for an administrator review pilot program, which they renamed, “In-Unit Chair Review Pilot Program,” that would only be available to those who have served as chair for 5 years or more. Our concern is how this change will affect those who have served as chairs for fewer than 5 years who are not eligible for Post-Tenure Review raises thanks to the Board of Governors and the BOT’s regulation. So, for example, let’s say you become chair before your first Post-Tenure Review or three to four years after your first Post-Tenure Review. The BOT proposal means that if you remain chair, you would not have a review for at least 5 more years. It is also unclear how non-administrative assignments and accomplishments such as research or teaching might be included in the chair review, which is just about administration, or how administrative performance will be assessed, especially since the BOT has refused thus far to include input from the faculty members in the department, claiming that deans already know what faculty think of the chair. We are very supportive of chairs being included in the review process, but we want to be sure that it benefits as many in-unit chairs as possible, as fairly as possible, so we are still working on a response.
Because the BOT team has not responded to the Salary proposal we gave them more than a month ago, we gave them a revised version based on the announcement last week that the inflation rate increased to 4.2%. You may have seen media reports that on June 18, the BOT approved a record $3.22 billion operating budget for the next fiscal year, including $1.16 billion for wages and benefits, so we look forward to receiving their salary proposal soon.
We hope to see you at our next bargaining session scheduled for Wednesday, June 24, from 3-5 pm in the Training Center. We’ll send a Zoom link Wednesday for those who cannot attend in person.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Proffitt
Professor and Co-Chief Negotiator, on behalf of the UFF-FSU Bargaining Team