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UFF Biweekly
United Faculty of Florida -- USF System Chapter
15 November 2012
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ANNOUNCEMENTS

TOY DRIVE : TOYS COLLECTED ON NOVEMBER 30

UFF USF is participating in the West Central Florida Federation of Labor's annual Toy Drive. We will collect toys at the November 30 UFF USF Chapter meeting. Please bring new toys or gifts to the UFF USF Chapter meeting on Friday, November 30, in SOC 145 on USF Tampa. This includes gifts for children of ages 9 – 17: for suggestions for this age group, see the 2007 article in the Ocala Star-Banner about gifts for older children.

CHAPTER MEETING TOMORROW AT USF TAMPA

Tomorrow, Friday, the UFF USF Chapter will meet in CPR 345 on USF Tampa. This is the penultimate Chapter Meeting of the semester: the last meeting will be on November 30 in SOC 145 on USF Tampa. There will be sandwiches, chips, and soda pop, and all USF faculty and professionals are invited to come and check us out. The meeting schedule is generally posted on the right hand side of the UFF USF website.

THANK YOU FOR VOTING!!

Despite the long lines and indigestible ballot, nearly eight and a half million Floridians voted last week. As of Saturday afternoon, the results in the presidential race ranged from for President Obama's 4,236,032 Florida votes to David Byrne and Erin Magee tied at zero votes each.

The Florida Education Association had encouraged voters to pay attention to the bottom of the ballot, and the results were very encouraging.

  • The FEA had recommended retaining all three Florida Supreme Court justices, and they were.
  • The four constitutional amendments opposed by the FEA all failed.
  • 70 % of the Florida House candidates supported by the FEA won, 90 % of the Florida Senate candidates endorsed by the FEA won, 80 % of the congressional candidates supported by the FEA won, and U. S. Senator Bill Nelson, supported by the FEA, won 55 % of the vote.
For details on how local candidates endorsed by the West Central Florida Federation of Labor did, see the UFF Votes Facebook page.

One consequence is that the Republican "supermajorities" that the Florida legislative leadership had used to railroad destructive bills is now gone, and the FEA will be in a better position work with the center to defeat bad ideas next spring.

But there will be battles ahead. Governor Scott has indicated a desire to cut corporate taxes further, and considering that last year cuts came by cutting education and taxing public employees, we will be busy next spring.
For example, the Governor's Blue Ribbon Task Force on State Higher Education Reform (whose final report is posted on-line), has developed a blueprint for the governor to follow next year. Some faculty who were frustrated by the Task Force's indifference to faculty views (and indifference to the view of much of the business community) composed a petition (still collecting signatures) stating that We trust that Governor Scott will recognize the pressing need for meaningful faculty input into future deliberations concerning the future of higher education in the State of Florida.
But for the moment, we have something to be thankful for. Thank you for voting.

JOIN UFF TODAY!

Download, fill in, and mail the membership form. Benefits of membership include the right to run and vote in UFF chapter and statewide elections; representation in grievances (UFF cannot represent a non-member in a grievance or litigation); special deals in insurance, travel, legal advice, and other packages provided by our affiliates; free insurance coverage for job-related liability; and the knowledge you are supporting education in Florida. AND YOU CAN JOIN NOW AND AFTER A TERM AS A DUES PAYING MEMBER, YOU WILL RECEIVE A $ 100 REBATE. Come and join the movement.

IN THIS ISSUE

The UFF USF Biweekly last looked at USF salaries in fall, 2010 (see parts I, II, III and IV), and since bargaining on the next contract (the 2013 – 2016 Collective Bargaining Agreement) is running this year, perhaps this is a good time to take another look. In this issue, we start by looking at:

  • How USF Salaries Work. Most faculty and professionals have a salary from a single source, and we look at how these salaries are set and evolve. For more, see below.
  • Overview. We look at basic numbers, and compare them with national surveys. For more, see below.
We will take a closer look in subsequent issues.

HOW USF SALARIES WORK

Salaries (and compensation in general) are critical issues in collective bargaining; salaries are covered in Article 23 of the 2010 – 2013 Collective Bargaining Agreement. Unions are creatures of law, and they tend to like procedures and rational systems while disliking discretion and caprice. So the UFF has traditionally pushed for a clear, transparent, and reasonable system for allocating raises. In addition, UFF prefers raises over bonuses, for a raise means that additional amount of money from now on, while a bonus means that additional amount of money just once.

  • At the moment, starting salaries are not covered by the contract.
  • Promotion raises are typically the largest raises. The contract (Section 8.4C) provides for raises for promotions for professors, instructors, and librarians.
  • "Across-the-board" or "fixed" raises are usually allocated to all UFF USF employees with a sufficiently high annual evaluation (usually something like "satisfactory"). All eligible employees receive the monetary raise or the same proportional raise. These are not "cost of living" raises since they depend on evaluations and do not keep up with the cost of living. There are none of these in the current contract.
  • "Merit" raises are based on a formula. (Unions like formulas: they limit caprice and favoritism.) The merit formula usually depends on the annual evaluation and perhaps one's current salary. The current contract, section 23.1A, provided for merit raises in 2010/2011 and 2011/2012, but none for this year.
  • "Discretion". There are two kinds of discretionary raises, defined in Section 23.5. First, the Administration has unlimited authority to make counter-offers, settle grievances or lawsuits, and things like that. Second, the Administration as the discretion to grant raises and bonuses for "special achievements"; the total amount of special achievement discretionary raises and bonuses can be no more than 1 % of the entire UFF USF payroll; the Administration decides what achievements are special.
  • "Compression / inversion". A number of USF faculty and professionals have rather low salaries for their seniority and rank, and UFF often pushes for raises based on, say, "market equity". The current contract grants the Administration the authority to grant such raises as part of its discretionary package.
Historically, the UFF has been interested in across-the-board, merit, and compression / inversion raises, as have faculty and professionals, while the Administration has preferred discretionary authority.

USF SALARIES: THE BASIC STATISTICS

Recalling that the UFF USF Biweekly last looked at salary data in 2010, we observe that the USF Department of Labor's CPI Inflation Calculator says that $ 100 two years ago is worth just over $ 106 today, i.e., buying power is about 94 % of what it was two years ago. Meanwhile, according to the Department of Labor, the average hourly pay for (production and non-supervisory) U.S. employees in the Education and Health Services sector rose from $ 20.18 in August, 2010 to $ 21.06 in August, 2012 (which, at 2000 hours a year, means a 4.4 % rise from $ 40,360 to $ 42,120 annual wages).

There are several popular surveys of higher education faculty compensation. The one used most frequently at USF is the annual Oklahoma State University Faculty Salary Survey by Discipline: it provides data on what faculty at particular disciplines and rank tend to earn, and thus can be used to evaluate the "market equity" of individual faculty whose performance through the years has been strong to outstanding, and thus should (presumably) be earning comparable salaries. The latest edition costs $ 75, but individual faculty can get an idea of where they stand by browsing the 2010-2011 edition.

But the survey that everyone reads is the Chronicle of Higher Education's Almanac of Higher Education (for subscribers only). The Almanac reports that of the public doctoral institutions that the Chronicle surveyed, the average (mean) salary of a professor is $ 120,955 annually, of an associate professor is $ 82,777, of a assistant professor is $ 71,465, and of an instructor is $ 47, 207. Of course, these figures vary by discipline, for example:

AreaProfessorAssociate ProfessorInstructor
Business, etc.$ 114,847$ 96,844$ 98,212
Education$ 85,165$ 66,964$ 46,581
Engineering$ 117,911$ 89,754$ 60,950
History$ 82,944$ 64,106$ 42,065
Library Science$ 90,937$ 70,602$ 46,505
Social Sciences$ 91,350$ 70,839$ 46,398
So how does USF compare? In order to leave out the Medical school, let's look at the UFF USF Bargaining Unit as of September 19, among full-time faculty with 9-month salaries with no administrative duties.
  • The mean salary of the 156 Instructors, Level I, is $ 50,860. It ranges from $ 22,930 to $ 110,000; the lower quartile is $ 41,400, the median is $ 47,000, and the upper quartile is $ 57,570.
  • The mean salary of the 33 Instructors, Level II, is $ 64,190. It ranges from $ 46,051 to $ 95,357; the lower quartile is $ 51,290, the median is $ 58,208, and the upper quartile is $ 76,873.
  • The mean salary of the 279 tenured Associate Professors is $ 79,596. It ranges from $ 31,747 to $ 184,836; the lower quartile is $ 68,316, the median is $ 74,136, and the upper quartile is $ 84,288.
  • The mean salary of the 230 tenured Professors is $ 108,697. It ranges from $ 52,894 to $ 203,233; the lower quartile is $ 89,000, the median is $ 103,000, and the upper quartile is $ 122,000.
Of course, this overlooks a lot of UFF USF employees, 1,688 altogether, 1,618 full-time. Of these, mixing apples and oranges (some of them on nine-month salaries (summer school and grant money doesn't count), some of them year-round), the mean salary of a full-time employee is $ 80,586. Salaries range from $ 22,500 to $ 287,784, with the lower quartile being $ 60,000, the median being $ 73,600, and the upper quartile being $ 93,600.

We will look in greater detail in the next issue.

LOGISTICS

The next Chapter Meeting is tomorrow, Friday, November 16, at 12 noon, at USF Tampa in CPR 345.

Sandwiches, chips, and soda will be provided by the Chapter, and all UFF members are invited to attend. Non-members are also invited to come and check us out. Come and join the movement.

Membership: All employees in the UFF USF System Bargaining unit is eligible for UFF membership: to join, simply fill out and send in the membership form.

NOTE: The USF-UFF Chapter website is http://www.uff.ourusf.org, and our e-mail address is uff@ourusf.org.

About this broadcast: This Newsletter was broadcast from uff.ourusf.org, hosted at ICDsoft.com, and is intended for all members of the UFF USF Bargaining unit (USF faculty and professionals at most departments). A (usually identical) version will be broadcast to USF-News and USF-Talk from mccolm@usf.edu.

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