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UFF Biweekly EXTRA
United Faculty of Florida -- USF System Chapter
21 July 2014
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ANNOUNCEMENTS

Chapter Meeting Tomorrow Noon near USF Tampa at CDB Restaurant

The UFF USF Chapter will meet tomorrow Friday at 12 noon east of CDB Restaurant at 5104 E. Fowler: for a map, click here. There will be pizza, salad, and drinks. All UFF USF employees - UFF members and non-members alike - are invited.

The summer schedule for Chapter Meetings will be on alternate Fridays, at 12 noon, on JUly 25 and August 8 & 22. Meetings will be at CDB Restaurant.

Don't Forget to Vote in the Primaries!

It's the primary elections that determine who the parties will run in the November general election, so make sure to vote in the primaries. The primary election is on August 26, and the deadline to register to vote is July 28. In addition, the Florida Education Association is encouraging everyone to vote by mail. For details on how to vote by mail, click here.

USF Tampa Climate Survey and Evaluations

We encourage all USF Tampa faculty to fill out the USF Tampa Faculty Senate's Climate Survey and their evaluation surveys of USF President Judy Genshaft and USF Provost Ralph Wilcox. For more information about the survey and the evaluations, click here. To fill in the survey and the evaluations, go via the USF log-on, and there will be announcements at the left from "Faculty Org": those are the survey and evaluations.

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. Come and join the movement.

Grievances

If you have been the victim of a violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, you have thirty days from the time you knew or should have known of the violation to file a grievance. If you are, and at the time of the violation were, a dues-paying member of the United Faculty of Florida, you have the right to union representation. To contact the UFF USF Grievance Committee, go to the online contact form. For more information, see our web-page on grievances.

Ratification Ballots are in the Mail!

The new contract (called the Collective Bargaining Agreement, or CBA) bargained by the United Faculty of Florida and the USF Administration must be ratified by both the USF UFF employees and the USF Board of Trustees to come into force. As the CBA covers UFF members and non-members alike, that means the ratification vote is open to all employees in the Bargaining Unit.

The ratification vote is by mail ballot, and ballot packets are now in the mail to the home addresses of employees in the Bargaining Unit. The packets are in 9" × 12" white envelopes with the United Faculty of Florida Bargaining Team as the return address. Inside, there will be:

  • A 4-page bulletin on white paper describing the changes from the old 2010 - 2013 CBA to the proposed 2014 - 2017 CBA.
  • A blue ballot sheet to vote on.
  • A small unmarked envelope to put the ballot into. (Don't forget to seal this envelope).
  • A regular-sized envelope to put the small envelope in. This envelope has space at the upper right hand corner for you to print your name and address. Please sign across the flap on the back of this envelope and mail (affix stamp for mailing).
  • A goldenrod flyer so you can join the union. We need YOU!
The Bargaining Team and the Executive Committee strongly recommend that you vote in favor of ratification. The deadline for UFF to receive your ballot in the mail is Monday, August 4, 2014. The ballots will be counted on Tuesday, August 5, at 10:30 am at the Union Office, NEC 223 (the location is mistyped in the Bulletin): the Union Office is in the Continuing Education Building at upper left of campus map.

Below are the highlights on the contract. The big things are:

  • It will provide an average 4.0 % merit raise,
  • It will bar discrimination based on gender identity and expression,
  • It will strengthen employees' first right to supplemental summer assignments, and
  • It will discourage teaching assignments that leave less than twelve hours between the end of the last class of the day and the beginning of the first class of the next day.
The new CBA, if ratified, will also preserve the existing layoff article in the contract. This layoff article has been used in grievance arbitrations across the state to protect jobs at other Florida universities.

Here are the details. The language of the current 2010 - 2013 Collective Bargaining Agreement remains in effect, with the following changes:
  • Article 3 on UFF Privileges: Returns the number of UFF units of released time to the pre-2010 level.
  • Article 6 on Nondiscrimination: Adds gender identity and expression to classes of non-discrimination.
  • Article 8 on Appointment: Deletes outdated promotion increase language and adds new promotion increase language for non-tenure earning career track position.
    ***** Adds language regarding employees' first right to available supplemental summer instructional appointments.
    ***** Continues, during the three-year term of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the summer salary cap of $ 12,500 for a three-hour credit course except courses offered through innovative education.
    ***** Deletes compensation for Theses and Dissertation Hours supervision in summer school.
  • Article 9 on Assignment of Responsibilities: "... the end of the last face-to-face (i.e. not online) assignment and the beginning of the next face-to-face assignment is no less than twelve (12) hours," if practicable.
  • Article 17 on Leaves: Deletes language regarding accrued sick leave pertaining to transfer of credits, retention and restoration.
    ***** Discontinues donated sick leave program, but not the sick leave pool program.
    ***** Allows the University to develop a voluntary sick leave buy-back program.
    ***** Discontinues payment for unused sick leave for employees appointed on or after January 1, 2014.
  • Article 22 on Professional Development Program and Sabbaticals: Deletes reference to two-thirds (2/3) pay sabbaticals and corrects a typo.
  • Article 23 on Salaries: Confirms the State of Florida Across the Board Increase (the competitive pay adjustment distributed last fall).
    ***** 4.0% department /unit merit salary pool distributed to employees with at least a 3.0 (satisfactory) on their most recent annual evaluation.
    ***** University has the discretionary authority to distribute 1.0% of salary base over the three-year term of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
  • Article 24 on Benefits: Provides for appointment of 3 system-wide committees regarding:
    1. Tuition assistance for spouses and children of employees,
    2. Evaluation by students of employees’ teaching, and
    3. Use of employees’ teaching work product by the University.
  • Article 28 on Severability: Added language regarding the right of the parties to challenge actions by third parties to invalidate provisions of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
  • Article 29 on Amendment and Duration: This is a three-year contract ending on August 7, 2017.
    ***** For the second and third years of the contract, there will be "re-opener" bargaining. The salary article will be re-opened (to discuss bonuses and raises) and in addition, each party may re-open two articles in a re-opener - except that the following articles cannot be re-opened except by mutual agreement of the parties: Article 3 on UFF Privileges, Article 4 on Reserved Rights, Article 13 on Layoff and Recall, Article 14 on Promotion Procedure, and Article 15 on Tenure.

The UFF USF Chapter President, Executive Committee, and Bargaining Team strongly recommend in favor of voting for ratification.

Questions and Answers on the Proposed Contract

Q. IF THE CONTRACT IS RATIFIED, WHEN WILL FACULTY AND PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYEES RECEIVE RAISES?

A. The tentative agreement requires that 2014 raises be implemented within six weeks of the Trustees' ratification of the agreement (which ratification must come within three weeks after UFF bargaining unit ratification). Administrators have told chapter leaders that they hope raises will be implemented well before the deadline.

Q. IF THE CONTRACT IS NOT RATIFIED, WHAT HAPPENS?

A. UFF Executive Director Ed Mitchell says that if the bargaining unit fails to ratify the tentative agreement, UFF and the Board of Trustees returns to the bargaining process.

Q. HOW IS THE 4 % MERIT RAISE DISTRIBUTED?

A. Each department is allocated 4 % of its total payroll to be distributed. For example, if the department has a $ 1,000,000 payroll, its allocation will be $ 40,000. For each faculty member, their 2013 evaluations are reduced to a "score" from 5 (outstanding) to 1 (poor): this computation is the "weighted average" of the evaluation number by the FTE assignment. For example, if an employee with a 60 % teaching assignment, a 30 % research assignment, and a 10 % service assignment received annual evaluations of 4.0, 3.5 and 4.5 for teaching, research, and service respectively, the computation would be:

(0.60 × 4.0) + (0.30 × 3.5) + (0.10 × 4.5) = 3.90.

So that employee's score is 3.9. An employee whose score is less than 3.0 (satisfactory) is ineligible for a merit raise. Then the scores of all the eligible employees in the department are added to get a departmental score. The employee's share of the departmental allocation is the same proportion as the employee's share of the departmental score. For example, if the department had an allocation of $ 40,000 and the departmental score (the sum of all the employees' scores) was 41.0, then our employee's raise will be:

(3.9 ÷ 41.0) × $ 40,000 = $ 3,804.88.

Notice that the raise depends only on the employee evaluation (in relation to evaluations of other employees in the department), assignment (which is why everyone should take FAIR and FAR forms seriously) and the departmental payroll; it does not depend on the salary of the individual employee.

Q. HOW CAN I GET ANSWERS TO OTHER QUESTIONS I HAVE?

A. Contact Chapter President Arthur Shapiro or Chief Negotiator Robert Welker.

LOGISTICS

Chapter Meeting this coming week Friday, July 25, at 12 noon at CDB Restaurant at 5104 E. Fowler Ave., just east of USF Tampa.

There will be pizza, salad, and drinks. All UFF members are invited to attend. Non-members are also invited to come and check us out. Come and join the movement.

Membership: Everyone 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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