News

Dear Colleagues, We have good news to report from last week (August 21)’s bargaining session. After many weeks of negotiations, the UFF and Board of Trustees teams have tentatively agreed to language on Articles 17 (Leaves) and 18 (Inventions and Works).  Article 18 (Inventions and Works) We finally arrived at a definition of “Scope of Employment” and on language that covers disputes of intellectual property ownership. Both faculty and the administration agreed that this new language was fair and clear. It was also vetted by our union’s lawyers at FEA. Scope of Employment refers to the range of duties, responsibilities, and activities reasonably expected as part of a faculty member’s university

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: This week we got them to agree to two more things that we have been insisting upon:  Under the existing system, most faculty were never able

Dear colleagues, I am happy to report some progress in bargaining this week: we made substantial improvements to both Article 17 (Leaves) and to Article 18 (Inventions and Works) during our August 11 bargaining session. I wish I had good news to report about Article 23 (Salaries), but the administration is still only offering a total of 1.7% raises (combined across-the-board and departmental merit), but we will be back at the bargaining table tomorrow (Thursday) at 3:00. More on all that below. Article 18 (Inventions and Works) After going back and forth and hearing our Vice President for Research’s concerns about adhering to rapidly changing federal laws or possibly losing the ability

Dear FSU Colleagues, Our latest bargaining session was held on Wednesday, August 6. Your UFF-FSU faculty team and the Board of Trustees’ team discussed salaries (Article 23), leaves (Article 17), and inventions and works (Article 18). The good news is that the BOT team agreed to sign the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) that we proposed weeks ago. The MOA will allow newly promoted faculty to receive their promotion raises on time. We are glad that the BOT team agreed with us that promotion raises are critically important for the faculty members who worked so hard to earn them. The BOT team presented their latest proposal for Article 18, Inventions and

Dear FSU Colleagues, Our latest bargaining session was held on Thursday, July 31. Your UFF-FSU faculty team and the Board of Trustees’ team discussed salaries (Article 23), parental and family leaves (Article 17), and inventions and works (Article 18). The BOT team first presented their latest proposal for Article 18, Inventions and Works. The sticking point is how to define “scope of employment.”  The reason the definition of “scope of employment” is important is that (we think) the university wants potentially to claim rights over inventions and patents that are within our “scope of employment,” which they would like to expand to include any thought you have had, no matter

Dear colleagues, Our latest bargaining session was held on Monday afternoon, July 28. Your UFF-FSU faculty team and the Board of Trustees’ team discussed salaries (Article 23), parental and family leaves (Article 17), and inventions and works (Article 18). We were disappointed with how things went. I thought that we were close to agreement on Article 18 and we only needed to add a very minor clarification that not all of the research we do can be claimed as university property. However, this proposed change was met with apparent disagreement by the BOT team. I thought that we had settled the matter of what is and isn’t an “independent effort,” but the

Dear FSU Colleagues, At our June 4 bargaining session, we continued to discuss intellectual property rights for faculty.  The Board of Trustees team responded to our counter of Article 18, Inventions and Works, and as explained below, in a win for faculty, they offered to trade status quo language in Article 19, Conflict of Interest, for status quo language in Article 1, Recognition. More on bargaining details below, but first … If you value your rights as a faculty member that are guaranteed in our Collective Bargaining Agreement, we need you as a union member. Your union must reach 60% membership or else it will be decertified. We are close; we need

Dear Colleagues, This past bargaining session featured a lot of discussion on intellectual property rights for faculty. The outcome of these issues will seriously affect how faculty can treat their creative work, including databases, software, and their instructional materials. The UFF-FSU team responded to the Board of Trustees team’s proposals for articles — 18, Inventions and Works, and 19, Conflict of Interest. A detailed and earnest discussion followed on faculty rights to control their own class materials, their creation of works outside of the university, and their ability to act during one’s free time. We also briefly discussed Article 21 with reference to classroom safety. The University is facing financial

Dear Colleagues, Our latest collective bargaining session had some significant developments.  We started with presentations by the BOT team, since the UFF-FSU team had responded to all open articles at the last session. The BOT team presented two new articles, Article 18, Inventions and Works, and Article 19, Conflict of Interest along with a response to Article 9, Assignment of Responsibilities. The text of all three proposed articles has been posted on the UFF website uff-fsu.org. To help the BOT present these articles, the session was attended by Stacey Patterson, Vice President for Research, and Valerie McDevitt, Associate VP for Research.  The proposed changes significantly affect faculty rights, restrict faculty activity that