The Board meets on Thursday, 11 am, for what is billed as a four hour meeting (the agenda is posted at their website), but meetings usually don't last that long. The meeting is in the Marshall Center ballroom (on the second floor). We ask everyone in the bargaining unit, everyone whose contract is being negotiated by the union's bargaining team (who are all fellow faculty, uncompensated volunteers working on their own time!) to come to the meeting to show our support for our bargaining team, and our impatience with the Board.

We recommend that you come by 10:45 to make sure you get seats (there is usually a good audience there, mostly administrators sitting quietly in the august presence of the Board). There will be union members handing out stickers at the door, so you can identify yourself quietly as faculty. You can bring non-obtrusive work into the room (books, notebooks, laptops --- the ballroom has wireless capacity). We expect to be given a few minutes so President Weatherford can explain our position to the Board.

Of course, we will be polite, but even so, it is an unusual step for an unusual situation. We hope that this will inspire the Board to remember that its responsibility to the university is more important that than its fantasies of bringing faculty under centralized control. We the faculty, not it the Board, are the university, and it appears that the Board needs to be reminded of this.

President Genshaft's performance is described . in a 10-page .pdf file: The evaluation was very positive, but mentioned nothing about shared governance or faculty relations.

Although Trustee Rhea Law thanked the faculty for winning grants, most of the Board tended to regard the university's accomplishments as Genshaft's own. Beard said "I give her the highest marks." (The only dissent came from new Student Government President Bijal Chhadva who complained, among other things, about Genshaft's accessibility.)

There was a lunch break about 1 pm. This being the last Thursday before classes, many faculty had to leave.

Then came many budgetary items.

At three o'clock, at the time the meeting was scheduled to end, they reached the presentations.

The new Faculty Senate President, Anthropology Professor Susan Greenbaum, spoke about her two primary goals, faculty governance and salary (salary was part of the long range plan in which embarrassingly insufficient progress was made). She also said that she was interested in undergraduate involvement in faculty research, and in utilizing USF facilities during the summer.

Mr. Chhadva spoke about the grading system (+ and -), the Marshall Center (which had been discussed already), and student finances (tuition, fees, grants, etc.), and finally, the state funding formula that has traditionally allocated USF inordinately low resources.

At 3:20, 260 minutes after the meeting was scheduled to begin, with perhaps a third of the visiting faculty still present, Chapter President Weatherford was asked to speak.

Professor Weatherford began by remarking that requiring visiting faculty to wait four and a half hours (long after most had to leave) did not show much consideration for the faculty's time. He thanked Beard for his hope for a contract soon, but noted that Beard had expressed such hopes already in months past with problematic results. He then contrasted Genshaft's assurance that she did not intend to use the SUS reorganization to harm faculty or the union to the administration's bargaining strategy, noting that the salary initiative presented in mid-summer would have resulted in an effective pay cut for many faculty who normally teach summer school. He concluded by saying that the faculty had intended to make their point by a quiet and polite demonstration of their determination, but that we had learned that day that "sitting quietly and politely doesn't work."

Beard responded by saying (again) that he hopes for an appropriate resolution to bargaining. Later, he told a reporter that UFF spoke last because ... that's where they were on the agenda. For news stories on the meeting, see the stories in:

• The Saint Petersburg Times
• The Tampa Tribune
• The USF Oracle
• WMNF

The meeting agenda, with supporting reports, is on-line. There is (or was) a video on-line, but unfortunately the page handling it relies on frames, and so the URLs tend to fail: go to the netcast site, in the center of the page it will say "Recent Highlights," go to August 19, 2004 BOT meeting and click there, and the video stream for the meeting is divided into two parts (and clicking on them may produce the video on the left of the window, or an error message at right, in which case just try again). (The gentle webmaster distinctly remembered that USF had vowed to get rid of frames.) Incoming Faculty Senate President Greenbaum's remarks start at approximately 1:42:30 mark of the second file, and Chapter President Weatherford's at about 1:59:20.

UFF has responded by calling on faculty to speak out. Chapter President Roy Weatherford began with a letter on August 30, writing, "I would now like for those folks who saw firsthand what we are up against, and anyone else who is not afraid to speak up, to report your observations and opinions to the faculty...," and offering to post letters anonymously to those who wrote that they were afraid to speak out (indeed, some faculty said that they were afraid to even attend the Board Meeting for fear of retaliation). Letters sent out are posted at our August 26 Board of Trustees page; send letters by responding to this e-mail or sending to our aol account.

On August 26, the University Relations sent an e-mail to facult and staff on "Salary & Employment," regarding relations (or lack thereof) with campus unions --- except for the nurses' union, which has left. The letter leads to links to a University Relations page on-line.

• The Administration has posted its salary proposal to UFF.

  One preliminary point: the $ 1,000 bonus was mandated by the Legislature, which may or may not be able to make such mandates. In fact, one consequence of Amendment # 11 was that money would be given to the universities in lump sums, and then the universities would figure out how much would go to faculty, staff, grounds, paper, etc. So when the Administration complains that "the Florida Legislature did not allocate any funds to increase the base salaries of USF employees," the reality is that the Florida constitution says that such allocation is now the job of the university's own governance.

  The salary proposal is in flux. The mean raise of 5 % still refers to a pool of funds, allocation to be determined by methods still under negotiation. The page also posted the curious proposal that the method for determining summer salary be made by the individual departments; we leave the likely consequences to the gentle reader's imagination (does the Administration read its own proposals?).

  Human Resources has posted its August 9 proposal --- out of date since the last bargaining session was afterwards --- on-line.

• The Administration also claims to be very close to tentative agreement with the Police Benevolent Association.
• In bargaining with Graduate Assistants United, they have not reached salaries yet.
• Hostile activities towards the staff union are roughly outlined (no surprise: one of Governor Bush's priorities is slamming the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees). The Administration suggests that staff vote against union representation in the current certification election (which is concluding about now).

  The August 26 letter says "A union based in North Florida wants to handle negotiations about salary and other conditions of employment on behalf of USPS employees, rather than allowing USF employees to have the authority to handle these issues themselves. The university prefers working directly with employees on these issues." (Anti-union management has been whining about unions ever since Medieval masters whined about the guilds.) The web-page has a few specifics.

  • The Administration contends that unions prefer to spread raises thin rather than allow management to reward high-performing workers. (In reality, unions try to increase the salary pot for all workers, and then insist that raises be determined by an intelligible system not involving favoritism or tea leaves.)
  • The Administration prefers "direct" communication with staff, rather than involving third parties, and claims that such communication led to two new staff holidays. (In reality, staff need the protection of union involvement in, say, the grievance process, and awards like staff holidays are often generously given during certification fights with unions; such awards are not repeated, and often go away, if the union is defeated.)

In general, the Administration does not view the university as a community, with intertwined and interconnected groups functioning as a cultural ecosystem. It is functioning as if it was itself the university incarnate, with the rest of us as transient employees.

Bargaining teams for the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) and the USF Administration have just "tentatively agreed" on a contract for USF police officers. The contract will come in force once it is ratified. The details should come out soon (the USF Administration has posted its own announcement).

During the past few weeks, we have been broadcasting letters from faculty (broadly defined) about the Aug. 19 Board of Trustees meeting (which was archived ). The letters we broadcast are being posted at our off-campus site.

Two weeks prior to the meeting, this Biweekly had reported a lack of progress on contract negotiations, which has now taken three times as long as the infamously longwinded Congress of Vienna (which finally finished carving up post-Napoleonic Europe in 1815). The problem during the summer was an administration salary proposal of immense complexity, including summer pay cuts. The Biweekly had called on faculty to come to the Aug. 19 meeting to show their support for getting a contract already.

On August 19, the meeting started shortly after 11 am, in the Marshall Center Ballroom. This large room on the east side of the building has two doors, on its west side. The Board was seated on a horse-shoe arrangement of desks, on the south-western side of the room, facing a projector screen up against the southern wall. Seats on the horseshoe were set in advance: Chairman Dick Beard and President Genshaft (and Rhea Law) were at the center of the horseshoe, facing the screen. Other trustees sat at the two sides of the horseshoe. Along the eastern wall were a few rows of seats, whom Beard and Genshaft could see if they turned sharply to their left. Then there were many rows of seats on the northeast, almost directly behind Beard and Genshaft, who rarely turned around.

Speakers making presentations would walk up to the left (east) of the screen, at the end of the east prong of the horseshoe, where there was a podium. The result was that the speaker at the podium, unlike the Board, could see and respond to everyone in the room. It differed from an aristocratic or judicial court in which the presiding officer faces the room and everyone else; it was as if a judge or or a noble sat in court, with his back to everyone else. Those familiar with the use of court ritual to impress an audience can make a good guess of what the effect of this eccentric arrangement would be.

Indeed, several letter writers commented on the effect of the arrangement, with the consensus being that the Board gave a good impression of being out of touch with reality. Of course, the major reasons given were not based on the seating arrangements, but on the content of the meeting: writers commented on the self-congratulation and the lack of serious assessment and analysis.

Incidentally, at the previous Board meeting the gentle webmaster attended, the meeting was in a smaller room, with the entire audience off the left side of the horseshoe, so that audience members could look Chairman Beard and President Genshaft in the face. The effect was a lot less surreal (although the content was, if anything, more surreal, but that's another story).

As mentioned in the last Biweekly, UFF is usually granted a few minutes for a presentation. Initially, UFF was not given any time at the Aug. 19 meeting, but after a query, UFF was given a time slot at the end of the meeting. Most meetings seem to last three hours, but this one lasted four and a half (well, there was a lunch break). Faculty arrived at eleven or so, picked up stickers saying NO EXCUSES, and waited, and waited, and waited, and all this time Chairman Beard was sitting with his back to the majority of the audience. Many faculty had to leave at lunchtime, but a third were still there at 3:15, when UFF Chapter President Roy Weatherford said that in making the faculty wait for over four hours, the Board was communicating its lack of consideration for the faculty's time.

He also said that the Board showed that sitting politely did not impress the Board. A few days later, Weatherford called on faculty to write letters and columns to newspapers and other media outlets about their reactions. (Letters should be about one page long, double-spaced, with name, day and nighttime phone numbers, and addresses. Columns should be about 400 words long. Warning: some newspapers do not respond to columns, not even columns including self-addressed stamped envelopes.) Weatherford also offered the union's own broadcasting capacity, offering to broadcast letters sent either in reply to the Biweekly, or to . Since prior to the meeting some faculty had expressed an interest in attending but also a fear of retaliation, Weatherford said that anyone who feared retaliation could have her/his letter broadcast sans signature. To date, no writer has made this request.

We are continuing to broadcast letters, and we are continuing to receive them. Letters are welcome, for, among other things, we are continuing to negotiate the contract.

To set the mood, I should note that this was on September 24, the same day the Oracle's lead headline was Two admissions officers forced out for altering test records: A university audit report revealed that Doug Hartnagel and Dewey Holleman deleted approximately 900 standardized test scores from student records in an attempt to raise USF's median test scores. Both men resigned this week after the university proposed their dismissals.

Now to the two-hour bargaining session.

Whatever the publicity over summer pay -- and grousing over course releases -- the piece de resistance was discretionary pay raises. For months the administration bargaining team has been saying that administrators have to be able to make counter-offers, awards for special achievements, pay damages in lawsuits (!), etc. That sounds very reasonable, said the union team, but before agreeing on anything, we would like to know what in reality (as opposed to theory) these discretionary pay raises and bonuses have been going for. Say for the last few years. The union team got a sequence of incomplete and contradictory responses, and a request for several hundred dollars to pay for compiling a comprehensive report.

This was the meeting when the union team would finally get its desired information ... for 2003. Before the meeting the team was told that the total discretionary raises and bonuses in 2003 (no doubt of varying legality) totaled $ 1,933,942. The administration team would try to find out what the money went for.

The problem, of course, was GEMS, the new, improved software that handles all our salaries. Some Information Technology people spent the first hour of the meeting presenting a description of GEMS, whose compilation processes consist of a huge list of preset commands available only to users with a variety of clearances. There is a separate help system. And it seems that GEMS lacks or doesn't allow ready access to a field where a user could type in a rationale for a raise. Instead,there were a few categories of ACTION REASONS for listing raises.

Then the team could get down to the breakdown of the $ 1,933,942. The biggest was Base Merit, $ 1,060,343.82, which itself breaks down to $ 952,593 for the Presidential Excellence Awards, and $ 102,750 for Special Achievement. The industrious reader is invited to carry out the computation $ 102,750 + $ 952,593 = $ 1,060,343.82. Then there were other categories (market equity, base-other, retention, market adjustment, performance, and lump bonus). Yes, Virginia, base raises (recurring funding) and bonuses (non-recurring funding) were all mixed together.

But it was the smaller items that raised eyebrows. It seems that normal discretionary raises (and bonuses!) are Faculty Out Of Cycle Compensations, which are handed out by the "requesting unit" for "increased responsibilities," "pre-emptive offers," "counter-offers," and "pay for performance." (Why the first and last items cannot be handled by the usual in-cycle compensation system was unclear.) As the union team had wanted to know where these raises and bonuses were going, the administration team had to call up the "requesting units" and ask (the reasons for the raises and bonuses last year were not on file in the Provost's office, nor available via GEMS). We got stories of heroic work: designing several new courses (including distance-learning courses), assisting the Chair with substantial administrative duties, doing other extra duties. All these compensations were arranged by heads of "units" using the on-line forms available via the Provost's office. Asked if all the heads of "units" were aware of this system, the union team was told that this was the primary topic of an extensive meeting of the deans.

Then the union team asked to caucus: when a team caucuses it meets in private. The union team then discussed the situation, and a proposal, as modified by the information given.

The teams met again. (The public once more invited.) The union team presented its proposal. Again, the union's Chief Negotiator has years of experience negotiating, and is concerned that if the union broadcasts union proposals that will restrict the union team's ability to, ahem, play poker. Anyway, the proposal was a bit complex (the two sides have been inching towards somewhere in the middle), and the administration team had a number of questions. Reactions were mixed, and the administration team wants to think about it.

Our team has given them a proposal that gives them what they need in discretionary raises and bonuses. At the moment, the union team has no comment about administration bookkeeping, but we certainly hope that the administration will be meeting contemporary standards of accounting by next year. On other issues, our proposal is not out of line, and in many ways consistent with what other universities have accepted.

UFF is affiliated via the Florida Education Association to both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. Both organizations have endorsed Senator John Kerry in his campaign for the presidency. At the July meeting of the AFT, Secretary-Treasurer Edward J. McElroy said, "With John Kerry in the White House, America’s public schools will have the support and leadership they need to thrive" (see the AFT press release for more).

Senator Kerry will be visiting USF on Friday as part of a two-day Rally for a Stronger America. He will be speaking at the USF Sun Dome at noon, together with Vanessa Kerry, Congressman Jim Davis, and the Chris McCarty Band.

There is a story in the USF Oracle, and a web-page on Senator Kerry's website.

The United Faculty of Florida has adapted a faculty survey conducted by the Gainesville UF administration. The 14-question online survey is now available for all faculty and professional employees in the bargaining unit. This includes ranked faculty, instructors, visiting faculty, research faculty, student advisors and counselors, and librarians. It will be available through noon EDT, Wednesday, October 13, 2004. After you finish the survey, the survey site will show you the cumulative results up to that time. Both of the following URLs for the survey should work. If you cannot reach the survey with the shorter link, try the longer one: http://tinyurl.com/72brd and http://leadernet.aft.org/surveymaker/take/survey.cfm?id=35546f84-0e6c-092c-4cd7-d4cbe976c8a3.

This shuffle, shuffle, shuffle comes up a lot in bargaining. Take a look at the bargaining positions on four (out of umpteen) issues, as of a few days ago, presented from the Administration's point of view. These positions are the results of months of shuffling; if you compare them with what the administration was offering earlier (see, e.g., the union's reaction to the Administration's first broadcast), you can see how far the Administration has shuffled since June. Not that the union hasn't shuffled as well.

Hopefully, in future negotiations we will be able to walk more normally.

At the moment, the bird is not quite in hand. The way bargaining works is that the two bargaining teams work out the language of each article of the contract; when both sides agree to an article the two chief negotiators initial it, "tentatively agreeing" (TA'ing) it. The last seven articles (which contain the four issues mentioned in the University Relations broadcast) have not been TA'd yet. At the moment, the two teams have agreed on four of the issues within those articles, and they are now working on the language. Once these last seven articles are TA'd, the proposed contract will be ready for ratification.

One thing about all this delay: one other thing the two teams agreed on is to follow standard practice and have pay raises be retroactive to August 7.

The sickest is, of course, the University of Florida at Gainesville. UF's faculty are unhappy with the administration, as indicated in a new survey by International Survey Research (slogan: "the standard of the world"): the Gainesville Sun paraphrased ISR executive director Adam Zuckerman as saying that the results show attitudes so unfavorable toward the administration before the arrival of President Bernie Machen that UF could be likened to a company in crisis undergoing a takeover, massive regulatory changes or changes in leadership. Said UF President Bernie Machen, "What's most disturbing is the lack of credibility the faculty has in the central administration." It is also disturbing that Machen was taken by surprise, for faculty are upset over the UF Board's illegal refusal to even work towards schedule a certification election for the faculty union -- an election that would be unnecessary if the Board obeyed the law and recognized the United Faculty of Florida and the terms and conditions of the 2001 - 2003 contract. The ISR slide presentation is a 44-page .pdf document.

Perhaps more telling is a recent tempest at one of the four universities that did recognize UFF but at which virtually no progress in bargaining has occurred. Florida Gulf Coast University was from the beginning an ideological experiment in tenure-free universities (all new faculty are hired on various kinds of renewable contracts). The ideology became visible when the University's new First Year Reading Project invited Utah environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams to talk about her book, "The Open Space of Democracy." FGCU President William Merwin told his Board that the book criticized President Bush, and that "I in good conscience cannot permit an unbalanced political commentary ... on a public campus," and blocked Ms. Williams's presentation. The Board voted, eleven Jeb Bush appointees and one Student Government President versus one Faculty Senate president, to support Merwin's decision. This is but one of several politically motivated cancellations of college lectures across the country in the last few weeks.

It is possible that these phenomena are related. When the State University System was reorganized at Governor Jeb Bush's command, some of his allies announced that the reorganization would allow them to more readily intervene in campus decision-making processes. The rationale was often that pointy-headed leftist professors had to be contained somehow. It is possible that the Boards (largely consisting of Bush appointees) are feeling the pressure from the Governor's mansion.

So for example, if the Governor does not want new contracts to be too much like the old one, then there would be pressure to have administration bargaining teams present radically new language. We do not know the ultimate source for the Administration strategy, we can only observe that we see similar strategies across the state, conducted by negotiators ultimately responsible to boards that are beholden to the Governor.

There is also a meeting of the Performance and Accountability Committee, chaired by Mr. Steve Uhlfelder, starting at 8 am; for some of this committee's work, see the 17-page .pdf document.

This could well be a union issue. After all, if ALCs involve requiring faculty to fulfil goals of ALCs as part of their jobs, then certainly it is an employment issue. In addition, if these ALCs are to be used as standardized tests were to be used at SUNY --- to impose state requirements on what is taught --- there are very definite academic freedom issues involved. Finally, the Board of Governors and the Administrations, which should be using their time and energy to extract additional resources from the state, are being distracted by a weird and nebulous bit of bureaucracy: in setting this priority, the Board is undermining the welfare of the university system they are supposed to uphold, for the sake of political interests that have publicly stated their hostility to public education. This may well be a union issue.

If you are in the bargaining unit, you should receive a ballot within days. If you do not, contact us.

IMPORTANT: Your Contract Ratification Materials will come in a 9" x 12" Manila envelope with your name and campus address on it. Your ballot package will contain:

• A description of major changes from the previous contract. Both the old 2001-2003 and proposed 2004-2007 contracts are just over 100 pages, so this will only cover highlights. Both these contracts, and this description of major changes, are on-line at the UFF on-campus site . This description is on white paper.
• Instructions for mailing the ballot, on yellow paper.
• The ballot, on blue paper.
• A small, unmarked envelope for you to put your ballot in, and preserve your privacy.
• A larger envelope with the campus address NEC116 on it.

• Mark YES in favor of ratification or NO against ratification on the ballot.
• Put the ballot inside the small ballot envelope, then seal but do not mark the small ballot envelope.
• Put the ballot envelope in the mailing envelope and seal it.
• Sign your name across the sealed flap of the mailing envelope, and print your name clearly (with your return address) on the upper left hand corner of the front side of the envelope.
• Then mail it in.

IMPORTANT: Your ballot must be received by Thursday noon, November 18, to be counted.

IMPORTANT: The union believes that a large turnout will show the Administration and the Board how serious we faculty are at USF.

The union also believes that this contract, while necessarily a compromise, is a good contract. It is also a good place to begin the next contract for 2007-2010. We strongly recommend voting FOR ratification.

Finally, we were fortunate to have, on our faculty and on the chapter's Executive Council, a lawyer and experienced negotiator willing to put in the time and effort to protect faculty interests at USF -- on his own time. We thank Professor Bob Welker for his efforts, and we also thank the team of volunteer faculty that supported and assisted him: Susan Greenbaum (who resigned when she was elected President of the Faculty Senate), Mark Klisch, Kathleen de la Pena McCook, Steve Permuth, Art Shapiro, and Keith White.

Oh, and Professor Welker would like university professionals in the bargaining unit to observe that the raises for university professionals outside the unit are, on average, less than half that of those in the unit: the higher raise the UFF Bargaining Team won would pay union dues three times over -- for life. Maybe union membership is a bargain after all...

If you are in the bargaining unit, you should have received ballot materials by now. If you have not received them yet, contact Mark Klisch immediately so you can get your ballot sent in as soon as possible. BALLOTS MUST BE RECEIVED AT NEC116 BY THURSDAY NOON, NOVEMBER 18, in order to be counted.

The USF Chapter of UFF is strongly recommending that faculty vote IN FAVOR of ratification. This contract is mostly the 2001 - 2003 contract with some variations. For example, for the first time, salary raises are actual commitments, and are computed by a formula in the contract, with discretionary components clearly labelled: this makes it easier for faculty to verify that they are receiving the correct raise. (The raises are larger, too.) For more on the new contract, go to our on-campus website, to get:

• The proposed new contract itself,
• The old contract, to make comparisons,
• A brief description of the significant differences, which was included in the ratification packet,
• The latest issue of Uncommon Sense, the USF UFF Chapter newsletter (which everyone in the bargaining unit should also have received by now; if you did not, contact us, and
• The November 3 USF UFF Biweekly Extra announcing the ratification election.

We are already getting kudos. UFF (statewide) President Tom Auxter (a philosophy professor at Gainesville) wrote us:

"Congratulations to Bob Welker and the bargaining team and to Roy Weatherford and the very large group of UFF activists and supportive members at USF on this remarkable bargaining victory! You were dealing with a board that has been among the most recalcitrant in the state on issues that faculty care about most -- including academic freedom itself. You have not only preserved the academic freedom protections we had before; you have expanded them by deleting the collegiality requirement and adding responsibility for the administration to have a positive effect on the situation. There is another historic victory in adding sexual preference to the faculty rights that are protected by contract -- a UFF goal that goes back at least two decades. I note that the five percent salary increase has accountability provisions that increase the likelihood of a fair distribution, while reducing administrative discretion in ways that are precedent-setting. I also note that you have achieved the longtime UFF goal of making sure that promotion raises are not deducted from the salaries of other faculty members at the same time that you have increased the raises themselves. UFF at USF is an example for all of us to follow in the advantages of expanding the leadership to involve members in decision-making and translating a strong faculty consensus into action that supports the bargaining process and moves history. It is also an example of how bargaining genius and faculty activism can be coordinated to produce results. A great job!"

So once again, be sure to vote!

So everyone out there who is interested in helping fellow faculty members in jams, please consider becoming a grievance advisor. There is some time and training involved, but you get to help faculty as seeing some of the very human parts of running a university. Contact the Grievance Chair, Dr. Mark Klisch.

If you don't feel up to grievances, but would still like to contribute, we do need volunteers to help build lines of communication, to bring faculty concerns to the union's executive committee, and to be available for faculty who have questions. If you are interested, please contact our Membership Chair, Professor Sherman Dorn.

If the contract is to be a living document, then we, the living, will have to give it life.

Right now, chairs across campus are receiving packets from the Administration describing how salary bonuses and raises are being handled. The methodology is outlined in the contract (which is on-line; see Article 23), and described in detail on various working documents which are now being distilled for use. At least one college is developing spreadsheets to handle the computations centrally.

We don't present the entire algorithm here (whew!). Of course this was a compromise: it looks it, after all. Here is an outline of how it works.

But first, a few words about evaluations, since this formula is evaluation driven.

Each year each faculty member is evaluated, and the evaluation produces a single number between 0.00 and 5.00: "satisfactory" is 3.00 or above. Here is how faculty with teaching, research, and service assignments compute their annual evaluations. You have percentages of your time (your time is measured in Full Time Equivalent, or FTE) devoted to teaching, research, and service: call them Pt, Pr, and Ps. You get an evaluation number (between 0.00 and 5.00) for each of teaching, research, and service: call them Et, Er, and Es. Your annual evaluation is:

Anyway, let's call your 2003 evaluation EV2003 (this was the evaluation reported to you last spring).

Now, what do we do with these numbers?

First, the Legislature has decreed that we get bonuses: each faculty member who was continuously employed since July 1, and who was rated "satisfactory" or above on most of their FTE last year, gets a $ 1000 bonus. We interpret this to include faculty who were employed during the 2003-2004 academic year who took summer off.

Next comes raises, which are complicated, so here is just an outline. The mean 5 % raise consists of 4 % merit and 1 % discretion. First, if you got at least a "satisfactory" on most of your 2003 assigned duties, you get at least a 2 % raise. If your EV2003 score is less than 3.50, that is all you will get unless you also get a discretionary raise. So let's look at the region in between.

To compute your raise, multiply your 2003 evaluation EV2003 with a "multiplier" as follows:

• If your EV2003 is between 4.75 and 5.0, multiply EV2003 by 1.2.
• If your EV2003 is between 4.5 and 4.75, multiply EV2003 by 1.1.
• If your EV2003 is between 4.0 and 4.5, multiply EV2003 by 1.
• If your EV2003 is between 3.5 and 4.0, multiply EV2003 by 0.8.
• If your EV2003 is below 3.5, multiply EV2003 by 0.

Then get three numbers from your department. These will have to be the "adjusted" numbers, since the entire computation is carried out several times, the last time after removing some faculty from the computation described below. So ask for the adjusted numbers used in the last computation:

• SUM, the sum of the remaining SCORE scores of faculty in the department.
• DISCRETE, equal to 1 % of the total base salaries of employees in the department or unit, before adjustments.
• TOTAL, the pot for merit raises, equal to 4 % of the total base salaries of employees in the department or unit, minus commitments made after previous computations.

• DISCRETE is divided up at the chair's discretion. This is your discretionary raise. It is capped: you cannot get a discretionary raise greater than 5 % of your current base + merit raise.
• 1/2 TOTAL goes into a merit raise: compute (SCORE / SUM) times (1/2 of TOTAL) to get your first merit raise.
• 1/2 TOTAL goes into a second merit raise: if SALARY is your base salary, compute
  [(SALARY/TOTAL) + (SCORE/SUM)]/2 times (1/2 of TOTAL)
  to get your second merit raise.

One last thing: what is this carrying repeated computation business? The computation is carried out as above, and then two contractual conditions are checked:

• All faculty who got a "satisfactory" most of the time are guaranteed at least a 2 % raise.
• All faculty who, after this first raise is computed (including discretionary raises), had at least a 4.00 average evaluation during the last five years and yet still has a base salary of 20 % or worse below market gets an additional 1 %.

Oh, yes, promotions of ranked faculty are accompanied by 9 % raises.

And of course, there are lots of little details, so it's not surprising that chairs are hoping for spreadsheets in their stockings this Christmas. We recommend that faculty pay close attention to their raises: this is the first time raises are being distributed this way, and there may be glitches. And as we tell our students, the only way errors can be corrected is by pointing them out.

• In the USF Oracle.
• In the St. Petersburg Times.
• In the Tampa Tribune.

Now that both the faculty and the trustees have voted to ratify, the contract is now in force, effective December 2. Of course, the contract does not enforce itself, and if anything goes wrong, the union cannot do anything about it if the union doesn't know about it. So if your contractual rights are violated, please tell us about it. For most violations, action must be take within 30 days, so don't delay: contact our grievance chair, Dr. Mark Klisch.

For example, during the last two years, a lot of employees within the bargaining unit have had their jobs reclassified. Between January 7, 2003 (when the old contract expired) and December 2, 2004 (when the new contract came in force), the Administration says that there was no contract, so they could reclassify anyone they wanted to. The union contends that the terms and conditions of the old contract did apply, and that litigation continues even now (and its outcome will affect how the new contract is enforced, which is why the union is still pursuing it). The most serious kind of reclassification is for someone who was in the bargaining unit to be reclassified OUT of the bargaining unit: that can be illegal and can be dealt with -- if the union knows about it.

Anyone reclassified between Jan. 7, 2003, and Dec. 2, 2004 must await the outcome of that litigation if the reclassification affected their contractual rights under the old contract. NEVERTHELESS, it is important to tell our grievance chair if you had your position reclassified, especially if you were moved out of the bargaining unit as a result. Alas, the Administration is not in the habit of given us lists of employees they mistreat, so we must rely on employees telling us themselves.

However, there is no controversy that as of December 2, all the contractual law protects employees, including protection from being reclassified out of the unit. If you are so reclassified subsequent to December 2, let us know at once so we can take immediate action.

Officially, membership in the union is determined by your "job code," which your departmental manager will know. The union represents employees with position numbers 9001 - 9007, 9009, 9016 - 9019, 9053 - 9056, 9115, 9120, 9121, 9126, 9150 - 9153 (see Appendix A (page 87) of the 2004 - 2007 Collective Bargaining Agreement.)

On Monday, November 22, Chapter President Gummerson spoke to the Board, warning that the university was in danger: "the effect of these attacks on the faculty is to drive away the best researchers and scholars, to universities which offer collegial governance, real academic freedom rather than lip-service, and the kind of environment where creative activity, the creation of knowledge, and critical thinking are encouraged, not threatened." About 250 faculty attended, and there has been some murmuring among faculty about leaving. For more about this, see the FIU UFF website.

Meanwhile, at the University of Central Florida...

...the Board of Trustees has declared impasse. While the FIU board has come close, it has not uttered The Word. Yet UCF Provost Terry Hickey, noting that after 35 Bargaining sessions over 14 months, only three articles had been Tentatively Agreed to, sent a letter to the campus announcing the impasse. See the Administration's side.

The UFF team noted that they had been negotiating in good faith, and as in all bargaining, had been adjusting their proposals in response to Administration proposals seeking acceptable compromises (which is how bargaining works). The UFF UCF webmaster wrote, "We have been told that it is extremely uncommon for impasse to be declared when so many articles are still unsettled. More commonly, both parties work diligently on one article or designated small groups of articles at a time so that they can come as close as possible; impasse is then declared when only a few difficult issues remain. Because the BOT declared impasse with so many issues unsettled, we cannot now predict how long the impasse process will take. Quite possibly, this process will take longer than good faith negotiations would have taken." See the union's side.

Curiouser and curiouser. Well, the UFF response is a clear commentary on the Administration's declaration that "The Board of Trustee's bargaining team is working diligently with the UFF to reach agreement on all terms and conditions of employment in an effort to better meet the needs of the university and the members of the faculty and professional employees' bargaining unit." Outside of the question of how diligent the Administration actually is, there is the more serious problem of what happens now.

Impasse is a legal state:

• The two sides agree on an independent Special Master, who can recommend but not impose a resolution.
• Meanwhile, the "Legislative Body" for the contract can impose (to a limited extent) interim terms and conditions of employment. Before the reorganization, the Legislative Body was the State Legislature; current theory is that it is now ... the relevant Board of Trustees.

There are two issues here.

• What does the Administration hope to gain in the new contract? The Administration complains that there hasn't been much progress in the exchanges of proposals and counterproposals. The Administration may be taking steps to get a contract, or to get a contract more to its liking.
• What happens meanwhile? Historically, the State Legislature would Solomon-like split the difference (like hand out across-the-board raises). But for the UCF Board of Trustees -- the interested party calling for impasse -- also be the Legislative Body during impasse is an anomalous situation that could lead to litigation in itself.

Speaking of litigation, a lot of this mess is entangled with an Unfair Labor Practice complaint brought before the Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC). UFF had complained that the UCF Administration had been unilaterally handing out "out-of-cycle" compensation while evading the collective bargaining process (sound familiar?) and PERC ruled in favor of UFF. This litigation was going on while UFF and the UCF Administration were bargaining compensation.

There have been a lot of Unfair Labor Practice complaints lately, just as there has been a lot of weirdness, perhaps arising from a general desire among the boards to get an anti-union victory to present to the anti-union governor who appointed them. It will take a while for the SUS reorganization's massive injection of politics to wear out. USF has been very fortunate in many ways, and perhaps USF could serve as a model on how to get a contract signed.