United Faculty of Florida, Spring 2009

January 8, 2009

WHAT DO USF'S FINANCES LOOK LIKE?

Leroy Dubeck regularly works for the National Education Association, analyzing institutional budgets, and it was on one such assignment, reviewing USF’s reports to the State of Florida (at the request of UFF!), that he noted that USF had $ 240 million in "unrestricted net assets." It was that observation that brought USF’s unrestricted assets to the attention of the university community.

Leroy Dubeck is Professor of Physics at Temple University, former president of the U.S. Chess Federation, author of the National Education Association's "Budget Handbook," and co-author of the American Association of University Professor's handbook on "College and University Budgeting: An Introduction for Faculty and Academic Administrators". And he is visiting Florida this month.

He will be speaking at USF about "The USF Audited Budget Statement and Beyond" on Thursday, January 22, at 2 pm at USF-Tampa, at Marshall Center 2001 (A), followed by a panel discussion. The presentation is free, open to the public, and sponsored by the USF Faculty Senate, the USF Student Government, and the USF Chapter of the UFF. Everyone with a stake in the future of USF is strongly encouraged to attend.

A REVISED STUDENT ACADEMIC GRIEVANCE POLICY

The Board of Trustees have approved two regulations that split issues of academic integrity (regarding cheating and plagiarism) from disruption of academic processes. The university has revised the student academic grievance policy to match those regulations changes (including addressing suspensions from internship programs where appropriate). One change faculty should note in particular is that students still have the burden of proof in most academic grievances (e.g., when they think a grade is unfair), but instructors have the burden of proof when the issues is academic integrity. The standard is the preponderance of evidence, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Note: Students must talk to instructors as the first step of an academic grievance; if there is cheating or plagiarism, instructors or the department should FIRST apply its judgment. If a student files a grievance, consequences such as an "FF" grade may be overturned if the student wins, but faculty and departments should first take the steps they think are appropriate and let the chips fall where they may.

Here are the links to the regulations and policy:

January 14, 2009

THE RISING WINDS

BATTENING THE HATCHES

"Higher education, compared with many other sectors of the municipal market, is normally more insulated from near-term budget shortfalls caused by recessions," wrote Moody’s in October. "However, the potential impacts of the combined credit freeze and recession on some colleges and universities will be significant if current trends persist."

Education consultant Laurence White wrote that the crunch is hitting the colleges and universities where it hurts: cutting endowments and parental investments for college, while shutting down credit for both institutions and parents. Notice that this is on top of a national contraction – or we should say, an acceleration of the longstanding national contraction – of state funding of universities.

Tuition hikes were on the table. For example, on November 20, Florida Governor Charlie Crist presented "a comprehensive proposal to reform our state university system" that included giving university trustees the power to raise tuition (former Governor Bob Graham was not appeased, and will continue his suit to keep the state government from dictating tuition policy). But there are limits: if the students do not have the money, they must borrow it or drop out. The 2008 FastWeb Student Loan Survey found that nearly half of all applicants for private student aid are rejected; even more remarkable, while a sixth of the students surveyed borrowed money from family or friends, a seventh borrowed money from...credit card companies.

The thoughtful reader might pause to reflect on recent scandals in student aid loans – and on Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulsen’s November 12 statement said that bailout money will go to student lenders.

An alternative was to tighten our belts. Critics have been complaining about perks – like free laptops and new recreational facilities – that colleges and universities used to market themselves to prospective students and parents. The latest Campus Computing Project said that nearly half of surveyed public universities have cut their IT budgets and about half have outsourced e-mail accounts for students.

Belt-tightening often involves pay freezes, pay cuts, and layoffs. A survey of about 200 institutions conducted by the Chronicle of Higher Education and Moody's reported that about a tenth had laid off employees and a fourth were thinking of doing so. Only 5 % had imposed total hiring freezes on faculty, but 40 % had imposed partial freezes and 60 % had imposed freezes on non-faculty hiring.

Still, not everyone is suffering. The Career College Association's Annual Higher Education Investment Conference focused "on the growing profitability and market share of for-profit colleges." Inside Higher Ed reported a study by the brokerage firm Stifel Nicolaus, which concluded that for-profits grow nearly twice as fast during economic downturns than upturns. "While many experts have predicted that this recession, like previous ones, will result in higher college enrollments over all as laid-off workers return to school for retraining, many public and private institutions will be hard-pressed to accommodate them because their other sources of financing will be squeezed," reported Inside Higher Ed. For-profits, on the other hand, seem to be improving their financing.

USING ONE'S HEAD

Lawrence White wrote, "As is always true in periods of financial stringency, labor malaise will affect workplaces. The number of employee grievances and employment-related lawsuits will grow, and collective bargaining will become more contentious. Any executive-compensation arrangement that could be characterized as excessive will be questioned." Gary Rhoades, General Secretary of the American Association of University Professors, wrote that the AAUP has been receiving an unusual number of reports of problems, and that "This is not the first time in our history that administrators and policy makers have claimed that we cannot afford to engage in shared governance, to maintain a wide range of academic programs, to increase the number of tenure-track faculty and the security of faculty in contingent positions, and even to maintain tenure." But notably, some administrators chose to show their solidarity with university employees by sharing the pain: Stanford’s president and provost each took a 10 % pay cut, and when Wilberforce University employees were put on involuntary furloughs, president Patricia Hardaway put herself on furlough as well.

Not everyone was convinced that belt-tightening was the right prescription. Chronicle of Higher Education writer Goldie Blumenstyk asked "What would Warren [Buffet] do?" She quoted Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of the Higher Education Research Institute at Cornell University saying, "This is a great time to be hiring faculty if you have the money." And she added, "Protecting the endowment at the expense of a new or continuing transformative program could be a mistake." "You may have to raid the endowment for a year or two," says John S. Griswold, director of the Commonfund Institute, "Taking the shock to the endowment is better than taking it in the operating budget."

This may be a good time to recall a financial tracking system implemented by Oregon State University several years ago. As Inside Higher Ed explained in 2007, "On Oregon State's budget reporting Web site, users can track expenditures, transaction by transaction, by clicking through the various budget lines in an academic department or administrative office, from the president's on down...Budgeted monies, actual expenditures, and available balances are displayed for individual line items." Inside Higher Ed suggested that "The site offers an intriguing approach for colleges responding to increasing pressure to demonstrate fiscal accountability and transparency." Inside Higher Ed quoted the site's designer explaining that the primary difficulties were political, not technical, and "I think of it as sort of a struggle to change the culture. This is the kind of information that in most institutions is closely held and is really not broadly disseminated." Charles Miller, who headed the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, said, "We have this thing going on in the world where information's just going to be widely available, which is why when universities resist having that data available they're just fighting a long-term trend."

With that last thought in mind, we invite everyone in the USF community to join the movement towards transparency and attend Leroy Dubeck's presentation on USF's financial statements and budget. Thursday, January 22, at 2 pm, in Marshall 2001 on USF-Tampa campus.

January 29, 2009

LEROY DUBECK AT USF

USF's STATEMENT

Exhibit A was the $ 240 million in unrestricted net assets reported on the table on page 7 of the Financial Statement. But there were other exhibits as well. One of the most important lies in the history of the unrestricted net assets.

USF is surrounded by a cluster of "component units" (e.g., the USF Foundation) that raise, handle, and spend money. As of the end of the fiscal year 2003, the university had $ 117 in unrestricted net assets while the "component units" had $ 59 million more. At the end of the fiscal year 2007 – in the last audited statement – the university had $ 240 million in unrestricted net assets and the "component units" had $ 88 million more. The recent 2008 statement, as yet unaudited, reports $ 240 million in unrestricted net assets, and $ 79 million more in the component units; it is Dubeck's interpretation that all three hundred-odd million dollars are available in a crisis.

People may disagree about what a "crisis" is, but Dubeck was only interested in legal restrictions, and these funds appear to be effectively at the disposal of the board and the administration.

In addition, Dubeck noted that in the "Compensated Absences Payable" (for annual and sick leave) section, while the state pays only for the leave used or paid during the year, the university reports all outstanding leave as liabilities. Because the Statement says "The University expects the liability to be funded primarily from future appropriations," Dubeck argued that the money for leave is not tied up and therefore could be treated as additional usable assets: in 2007, the University reported $ 59 million of leave liability. Altogether, that's nearly $ 380 million available for a crisis as of summer, 2007.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Faculty Senate President Larry Branch announced that on Wednesday, January 21, the provost had convened the USF System Annual Strategic Budget Planning Process, which is charged with preparing an annual balanced operating budget "through a transparent, engaged process" while articulating with the strategic plans and the missions of the components of the system, finding funding sources (and efficiencies), and providing for growth while maintaining the financial integrity of the system and "the public trust through developing a clear understanding of revenue and expenditure patterns across the USF system." The operating principles included "openness and transparency," "mutual trust and respect," "customer service commitment," "training to assist people in working effectively," and "treating information as a resource."

The panelists viewed this initiative as a positive step for two reasons. First, the university and the community will benefit by involving and empowering its constituents. Just as panelists were glad that Dubeck's presentation brought the Student Government, Faculty Senate, and UFF together, and just as they hoped that they could build on these new connections, they also hoped that the new budget planning process will bring more collaboration and cooperation into the budgetary process.

You will need that collaboration and cooperation, advised Dubeck, who noted (as Provost Wilcox had in his January 20 letter) that President Obama's stimulus plan included money for higher education. Federal funding proposals under consideration ranged from $ 15 billion for higher education construction to $ 80 billion to states for various educational purposes, not to mention more money for the NSF, the NIH, and the Department of Energy. Most money will be funneled through the states, although some of it will come directly from the federal government. But money will not rain on USF, said Dubeck: we will need to lobby for our share. USF needs to have a committee that looks at the budget and can effectively advance USF's cause. "You cannot overlook this," said Dubeck, who urged the panelists and the audience to organize to get a share of the stimulus money.

An occasion is historic only in retrospect. The economic downturn, the public debate over USF's budget, and the new stimulus plan arrive together at a moment of realization. As several panelists said, we are all in the same boat. There was a consensus that building (as the new budget committee's charge put it) "a premier research university with state, national, and global impact" requires active involvement by all the players in the entire process. If USF succeeds, then this presentation will likely be remembered as a landmark in USF's transition; if USF fails, it will be remembered as a poignant might have been.

BACKGROUND

USF people first encountered Dubeck when he gave an invited talk about institutional finances at the joint Higher Education Conference of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. As Dubeck is one of the NEA's roving financial experts, UFF promptly asked the NEA if he could look at some statements from Florida universities and community colleges, and the NEA kindly obliged.

While Dubeck is a professor of physics at Temple University, he is also author of the NEA's "Budget Handbook," co-author of the American Association of University Professor's handbook on "College and University Budgeting," and he has lent his financial expertise to Temple's Board of Trustees, to the American Association of University Professors, to the U.S. Chess Federation, to various state education associations and the American Council of Education, as well as the NEA.

"Money," wrote Emma Lathen, "has a strange and powerful effect on human behavior." Anyone with Dubeck's experience will have a few Lathenesque stories to tell, and Dubeck had a few. For example...

• A university administration that sent a hundred layoff notices to employees, including tenured faculty, when the administration pled poverty. When Dubeck was sent in to look at the audited financial statements, he found that there weren't any (!). Nevertheless, Dubeck found about $ 100 million of grant overhead squirreled away in a foundation.
• A university administration that countered Dubeck's analysis with a claim that Dubeck overstated the university's unrestricted net assets by $ 50 million. It turned out that it was the financial statement itself that was in error.

February 12, 2009

THE EDUCATIONAL FUNDING SITUATION

The UFF Senate met over the January 31 / February 1 weekend, and the meeting opened with a Legislative Session Briefing by two guests from the Public Policy Advocacy office of the Florida Education Association (UFF is affiliated with the FEA, which is the state union representing K-20 teachers in Florida). The guests started the discussion of the primary issue of the UFF Senate meeting: the state budget. The Special Session of the legislature had ended, and the guests described the result of the Special Session's efforts to plug a $ 2.3 billion hole in the budget. In particular, they reported that the cut to higher education was kept to the 4 % cut that the governor had already held back. Since other agencies were cut more (up to 12 %), this was regarded as a relief. But the respite may be short, for the state may soon be facing another shortfall of as much as four billion dollars.

Part of the problem is the economy. A primary proximate cause of the crisis was the collapse of the housing market, accompanied an implosion of available credit. According to the Center for American Progress, as of January, we are in the worst new homes sales market since the Census Bureau started collecting homes sales data in 1963. Meanwhile, the values of all homes have fallen 13.6 % in the last year – the largest drop since the Federal Reserve started collecting that data in 1952 – and home equity as a share of home values has fallen to 44.7 % (from about 60 % at the beginning of this decade).

UFF WILL FIGHT THE CUTS

The primary focus was on Tallahassee. The FEA presented a legislative program, and outlined a plan to sell it to the legislature. Central to the program is increasing revenue, and the selling plan is to have educators across the state contact their legislators, either by phone or email, or even by attending rallies or helping lobby legislators in Tallahassee (UFF will support the travel of members, non-members, and those outside the bargaining unit who want to participate; details at the end of this article).

One proposal very reluctantly advanced was to institute tuition increases.

During the last few decades, higher education has increasingly come to be regarded more as a consumer commodity than as a public good, and politicians have become less willing to apply public funding for colleges and universities. Many academics – some of whom remember the opportunities they had when young, opportunities now being denied the coming generation – are very wary of burdening students who are already carrying unprecedented debts from student loans.

But with support from those very students, many academics are seeing tuition increases as the only mechanisms for fending off disaster, at least in the short term. The UFF has joined the Florida Student Association, the Florida Chamber of Commerce, and the Council of 100 in advocating tuition hikes, along with substantial increases in need-based financial aid. "Across the U.S., Florida has one of the worst proportions of aid going to students who struggle to pay for college," UFF President Tom Auxter wrote, adding that if a plan advanced by Governor Charlie Crist is approved, "...that situation will dramatically improve within a few years."

But this is a band-aid, and the FEA (like many others) believe that Florida must clean up its taxation system. The battering ram is a proposal for a one-cent sales tax hike for the next three years; this would probably generate at least $ 3.5 billion a year, which would be dedicated to K-20 education. Despite its disadvantages (the sales tax is rather regressive), it has the advantage of simplicity and thus can serve as a "conversation changer": if the honorable representative dislikes this proposal, does the honorable representative have a better idea?

February 26, 2009

TALLAHASSEE AND THE BUDGET

UFF IS SENDING THE LEGISLATURE A MESSAGE

The time to influence decisions, explained Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes, Prime Minister, is when they are being made. That is why the Florida Education Association and its union locals (including the United Faculty of Florida) are gearing up for the coming legislative session.

The issue is educational funding, and how to pay for it. Governor Charlie Crist says that the stimulus plus a gambling agreement with the Seminole tribe may make both spending cuts and tax hikes unnecessary. Senator J. D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, said that, "The governor said no taxes. And I take him at his word." On the other hand, Senator Nan Rich, D-Broward/Miami-Dade, said, "If you don't start raising the revenue now and saving for the future, this is all pointless."

But it is the legislation emerging at the end that matters, and that is what the FEA and the UFF plan to influence. And while the FEA lobbies politicians year-round, constituents can have a powerful effect on legislators:

• Legislators are elected by voters, not by politicians, pundits or bloggers. If they have ambitions for re-election or higher office, they must listen to constituents.
• The narrow stage occupied by politicians, pundits, and bloggers is pervaded by information processed through ideological or mercenary filters. Input from offstage constituents provides a valuable reality check for the sensible legislator.

First of all, the UFF will be sending people to Tallahassee and Orlando.

HOPEFULLY NOT IN NEWS OF THE WEIRD

Last week, former Associate Vice President Abdul Rao resigned from his non-tenured, administrative post in USF Health. Until recently, Dr. Rao was probably best known across the university for his proposal to charge principal investigators to process grant paperwork. Dr. Rao's final act at his post was something more befitting News of the Weird, with a stolen bike, a security tape that somehow found its way onto YouTube, a handyman who offered to take the fall, an interview with the victim to try to explain a "misunderstanding," a resignation accepted followed by an un-resignation not accepted, and, of course, the $ 50,000 settlement payout. About that settlement: the UFF is tempted to congratulate Dr. Rao for developing a most creative way to make (alleged) crime pay, but we know that the administration was trying to figure out how to separate itself from Rao without breaking a contract. And, being union folks, the chapter officers have to respect the administration when it fulfills its contracts.

March 12, 2009

THE CAMPAIGN IS UNDERWAY

Florida's fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30, and March and April are when the governor and the legislature work out their plans for the coming fiscal year. So that's when everyone who wants to influence the budget visits Tallahassee.

The Florida Education Association kicked off its campaign with a Make Our Schools a Priority Rally at the UCF Arena in Orlando on February 28, when six thousand teachers heard FEA President Andy Ford say, "Time and again, voters have gone to the polls to say they want education to be a priority. And (lawmakers) continue to ignore the will of the people...It's time to tell them, 'No more delays. Just do it.'" And Ford's predecessor, current Chair of the Broward county school board Maureen Dinnen said, "We cannot let our public school system be starved out of business." And Florida PTA president Karin Brown said, "Our legislators have actually said they haven't heard from our parents...We want our roar to be so loud, they'll hear us all the way down to Key West."

The legislative session opened on March 3, and was promptly greeted by a rally of more than a thousand students and faculty, mostly from FSU and FAMU, but with many visitors from the rest of the state. Governor Crist told the legislature that, "The strength of Florida’s economy is dependent upon a workforce able to compete in an increasingly global economy. Our 28 community colleges are already recognized as the number one in the U.S. and I am committed to giving our universities the resources they need to be among the best in the nation."

ORGANIZING AGAINST THE WIND

In the beginning, unions were simply illegal. Legality crept in slowly, with little judicial and legislative steps, until finally Congress passed laws in the late 1920s and early 1930s legalizing picketing, strikes, and boycotts.

But the biggest fight of all was over the ability to organize, period. After all, if a union has organized a bargaining unit, and has established a relationship with management, both sides have learned to get along and neither has a particular interest in destroying the other. Unless some outside force (like a new CEO with something to prove) mandates a battle, union and management tend to concentrate on the quieter business of checks and balances.

The critical period runs from the beginning of the organizing campaign to the ratification of the first contract. Nowadays, about a fourth of all organizing campaigns see campaigners fired (about one-fifth of all pro-union activists are fired during this period) even though it is illegal to fire an employee for trying to organize a union. Half of all companies facing organizing campaigns threaten to shut down if the campaign succeeds (although only 1 % carry out the threat). And even if the campaign succeeds and the employees get union representation, the odds of getting a contract are just over one in two.

March 26, 2009

WE CAN HELP WITH LAYOFFS

UFF has just won an important arbitration case on layoffs, and this victory serves as important reminder of Aesop's moral that in union there is strength – and that contracts are especially important when times are hard.

UFF, with help from the Florida Education Association (which provided the lawyer and paid the bills), was able to defend an assistant professor at Gainesville and establish a precedent that will protect faculty in many universities, including USF.

First, the facts. Last summer, the University of Gainesville administration announced a 6 % across-the-board cut of all units, leaving the units to decide how to cut costs. The administration sent out a memo saying that most of the "layoff units" would be the colleges, like the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. That college has been cut a lot lately, and one of those cuts was a layoff from the Department of African and Asian Language & Literature. The Chair and the Dean decided that Vietnamese instruction would go, and that the assistant professor who taught the courses would be laid off.

There is a problem: Article 13 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement of the UFF-University of Florida contract requires that layoffs occur within a "layoff unit," and roughly by seniority. In particular, non-tenured employees of that unit with less than five years of continuous service would be laid off before non-tenured employees with more than five years of continuous experience. This is not language that the union made up and imposed on the university: this is language that union and management agreed to and signed off on.

Nevertheless, the assistant professor (who was due to come up for tenure) got a layoff notice saying that the "Vietnamese Language Area" was being shut down, and as she was the only employee in this alleged unit, she was being laid off. This is a hoary old trick – the "Vietnamese Language Area" is not a unit for reasons we will see in just a moment, but the important points are:

• The assistant professor was a member of the UFF when she received her layoff notice, which meant that she was entitled to union representation in a grievance, and that the union would represent her.
• She went to the union quickly, for a grievance must be filed within thirty days of the time she knew or should have known that her contractual rights were being violated.

UFF had argued all along that creating a "Vietnamese Language Area" for the purpose of laying off a particular employee was a violation of the contract, which says that a layoff unit "may be at an organizational level." (After all, even the administration's memo had said that the college was the layoff unit.) In addition, as this assistant professor had been at UF for six years, and there were non-tenured faculty in the same department for less than five, she should not have been laid off.

The arbitrator agreed with UFF: "The evidence shows that UF has a well-defined organizational structure for both administration and academics. ... No where [sic] in these documents is Vietnamese identified as any kind of organizational unit." As to whether the administration may invent a layoff unit that is not an organizational level, the arbitrator issued a warning to over-clever lawyers: "It is a well-established arbitral principle that an interpretation that tends to nullify or render meaningless any part of the contract should be avoided based on the general presumption that the parties do not write into their CBA words that are intended to have no effect."

In other words, when bargaining, both sides understood that they were talking about organizational levels as layoff units.

One thing that the arbitrator did not get into is whether the Department and the College had even considered (or looked up) the contract when making decisions about layoffs. It would not be too surprising if Gainesville's senior administration had supported a policy decision made in ignorance – they are nothing if not obstinate – but it is possible that a lot of grief could have been avoided if the responsible administrators had consulted the contract.

The arbitrator instructed UF to let the assistant professor apply for tenure. Arbitration rulings set precedents, so as the language of the UF and USF contracts are both grandfathered from the old contract with the Board of Regents, the ruling applies to us, too.

If you are thinking that this victory took a lot of commitment, time and money, you are right.

• First, UFF could represent the assistant professor because she was a member of the union when she got her layoff notice. If she had not been a member, she could have filed a grievance and gone through the arbitration process, but she would have had to pay all of the expenses herself, and they could have run well over $ 20,000.
• Second, UFF could get support, legal advice, and legal representation because we are a union local in the Florida Education Association. It was the FEA's lawyer, Tom Brooks, who represented the union at the arbitration hearing.
• And it is the UFF members who ultimately shoulder the burden and pay the bills.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES

Last year’s joint NEA-AFT Conference in Washington, D.C., Building Alliances for Higher Education and the Public Good, was upbeat and exhilarating. Workshop sessions focused with topics we in Academia are universally concerned about: Quality Distance Education, Free Speech, Retaining Tenure, Grant Opportunities, etc.

This year’s AFT Higher Education Conference in Miami Beach, Generating Power: Mobilizing the Union to Revitalize Higher Education, was a "whole 'nother show." The giddy pleasure of electing a real education president has faded quickly.

For the first time in years, NEA, FEA, AFT, and AAUP leaders met there to strategize survival techniques. The very basic strength in numbers and putting our past differences between us aside prevailed. This time workshops prepared members for heightened political action, increased accountability, and what to do until the money arrives. Even the Plenary Session was titled The National Financial Crisis and Public Higher Education.

In Dean Baker’s excellent Polishook Lecture, The Causes of the Economic Crises and the Role of Higher Education in the Recovery, the message was that the numbers are in folks, and it is even worse than we thought. The catch phrase for the weekend was Academic Capitalism, with constant reminders that although the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act offers a glimmer of hope, it had better work because there will be no Stimulus 2.0. In other words, things really are as bad as it seems and the time is ripe for union activism to surge, for members to roll up their sleeves and help with Higher Education’s very survival.

THE RALLY IN TALLY

The FEA had planned to place all 15,000 pounds of pennies on the capitol steps, but officials publicly worried that the steps were built over a parking garage whose ceiling might not be able to hold the weight of two elephants – or, for that matter, a hundred politicians and supporters in a group photo. So the penny event was held at a nearby plaza.

There was a variety of reactions. Governor Crist, who has said that he doesn't like the penny sales tax, was not in town for the rally, but he later met with presidents of the student governments of the universities. Some legislators expressed support, while others tried more overtly to change the subject from taxes to who-to-cut-instead-of-education, or blaming the school boards, or even proposing that new revenue streams be put on the ballot of fall, 2010 (assuming we can wait 'til then).

As for the stimulus money, it seems that Florida is one of three states that has been underfunding education recently and must apply for a waiver to get funding. Apparently, someone in Washington doesn't think Tallahassee is serious about education. The FEA is determined to make Tallahassee get serious...

April 9, 2009

ARBITRATION HEARING APRIL 24 ON INVOLUNTARY ANNUAL LEAVE

Last May, at a special meeting of the Faculty Senate, President Genshaft announced a Budget Reduction Proposal. Among the nickel-and-dime items was the closure of USF for three days during the Winter Break of 2008, and the imposition of involuntary annual leave on all employees assigned to work during that time.

THE VERDICT ON WARD CHURCHILL

Ward Churchill seems to be the most colorful figure in the current round of academic freedom cases. A prolific writer and extravagant commentator, he is the sort of faculty member an attention-hungry school on the make would want – and the sort of faculty member that a timid administrator would fear.

April 23, 2009

THE EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT II: BACK TO THE FUTURE

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) has several provisions, and the most controversial is probably a change in the way unions are certified.

Currently, if employees within a natural "unit" with a common private employer wish to unionize, they draw up a petition (consisting of cards) and ask fellow employees to sign. If at least a third of the employees sign up, then the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) meanders to the worksite and eventually arranges for a secret ballot referendum so employees can vote whether or not to be represented by the union. If a majority of the voting employees vote for the union, then henceforth the union represents them in bargaining. Then the NLRB meanders off as the union and the now-miffed employer set out to bargain their first Collective Bargaining Agreement, which often fails to materialize.

(If the employer graciously recognizes the union, the NLRB might certify the union if a majority of the employees signed cards.)

The most significant changes that the proposed Employer Free Choice Act makes are probably:

• The initial petition can be directly for union representation, and if most of the employees sign, then they are represented by the union immediately, no matter what the employer thinks.
• Once the union is approved by the employees, both sides face a time-line for getting the first Collective Bargaining Agreement in place.