UFF-FSU Bargaining Update August 11, 2025

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 to attain major federal grants, the two sides agreed to both narrow the definition of “scope of employment” (relevant because FSU can claim inventions and works that fall within that scope) but also to specify that we follow the relevant federal regulations on funded research. Both sides have come to accord on the following definition, which we hope and believe adequately addresses both faculty and administrative concerns.

Scope of Employment refers to the range of duties, responsibilities, and activities reasonably expected as part of a faculty member’s university employment relationship including the faculty member’s FSU research expertise. This includes any invention of a faculty member conceived or first actually reduced to practice in the performance of work under a funding agreement or University auspices in conformance with 37 CFR 401.2 (d).

For those of you (like me!) whose eyes glaze over at references like “37 CFR 401.2 (d),” “CFR” stands for Code of Federal Regulations and the text of this passage reads as follows:

The term subject invention means any invention of a contractor conceived or first actually reduced to practice in the performance of work under a funding agreement; provided that in the case of a variety of plant, the date of determination (as defined in section 41(d) of the Plant Variety Protection Act, 7 U.S.C. 2401(d)) must also occur during the period of contract performance.

Like it or not, we are bound to this rule so we’re essentially affirming that “yes, we follow federal regulations.”

Article 17 (Leaves)

For years, we have been trying to get the administration to allow faculty to split their contractually negotiated six-month paid parental leave to cover more than one birth or adoption. This week, the administration offered us contract language that would allow each faculty member 24 weeks of paid parental leave and would (for the first time ever) allow us to split that leave however we like. They also agreed that faculty couples may (both) take a parental leave for the same child/children. Since 24 weeks doesn’t cover two full-semester leaves, we are trying for a slightly longer leave and we proposed 28 weeks total. Admittedly, that’s short of our previous goal of 32 weeks (16 times 2), but at the second leave a faculty member would likely have accrued enough sick leave to make up the difference and allow for two full semesters off. 

One sticking point is that the administration continues to require at least two years from the end of one parental leave until the beginning of the next one. We don’t know why they care about this so much, but we believe that faculty members (and, for that matter, everyone) ought to make their own decisions about when to conceive or adopt children. There’s obviously still more work to do here, but this really is progress and, for the first time this year, they have proposed a parental leave structure that is a clear improvement over what we currently have in the CBA.

Article 23 (Salaries)

As I said above, the administration didn’t offer any more money, but they rearranged their offer in a way that makes us a bit happier: they agreed to zero out deans’ merit (a category we dislike because it puts all the decisions into one person’s hand, without criteria or any guard posts so that a dean could potentially give all the designated money to one person) and distribute those funds evenly into performance (essentially across-the-board) and departmental merit (merit adjudicated by faculty committee according to faculty-approved departmental bylaws). Before showing this week’s salary spreadsheet with changes highlighted, I’ll just mention two more things: 1) we know that there’s less money for raises this year than last year; 2) other Florida public universities have offered their faculty 2% raises, as opposed to the 1.7% we’re currently seeing. We keep hearing that FSU received more recurring funds this legislative session than most schools, so we steadfastly believe that we should be receiving more.

Feel free to contact me or any member of our bargaining team if you have questions or thoughts and please contact your incoming colleagues and let them know that one of the great benefits of working at FSU is that we have a faculty union that negotiates the terms and conditions of their employment, that defends faculty rights, and that 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. We might have just hit 60% in July, but it’s August and here come our new colleagues! They (and you) can join here: https://www.uff-fsu.org/join/.

The next bargaining session will be tomorrow: Thursday, August 14 from 3:00–5:00 at the FSU Training Center, just across Stadium Drive from the University Center (or join us on Zoom). 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