WELCOME NEW FACULTY & PROFESSIONALS!
All faculty (except those in the College of Medicine, along with many chairs and directors) and many professionals (including advisors, counselors, and librarians) are members of the "Bargaining Unit", i.e., the people who the United Faculty of Florida (UFF) represents.
All employees in the Bargaining Unit have the same contract, called the Collective Bargaining Agreement, which is
posted on-line. UFF and the USF administration bargained this contract covering the "terms and conditions of employment", including salary raises, tenure and promotion, academic freedom, discipline and the grievance process, assignments and evaluations, sabbaticals and health benefits, etc., etc., etc.
The UFF also enforces the contract by using the "grievance process" when the contract is violated. Any employee whose rights are violated can file a grievance, but UFF will only represent UFF members. Membership is NOT automatic: one must join (there is a membership form at http://faculty.ourusf.org/join-uff/ ). Membership dues are 1 % of salary, somewhat less than the 10 % to 15 % charged by Hollywood agents.
Representation in grievances is not the only benefit UFF provides to UFF members: we also provide tenure and promotion workshops, subscriptions to journals on jobs and teaching, a variety of promotional bargains with various businesses, and insurance in case you get sued on the job. But UFF's most important mission is the contract.
UFF at the university is run by fellow faculty and professionals. It is a democratic organization whose officers and representatives are elected each spring; any UFF member – and only UFF members – can run and vote. We meet at "Chapter Meetings", where any UFF member can participate and vote on business matters (when an issue is "presented to the Chapter," that means it was on the agenda of a Chapter Meeting). The fall schedule of chapter meetings will be set at the Chapter Meeting tomorrow Friday, at noon, in EDU 161 on USF-Tampa, with sandwiches and soda pop provided by the Chapter. Come and check us out.
We also have two websites, one
on-campus and one
off-campus.
This "UFF Biweekly" is sent out every other week, the day before a chapter meeting. All members of the Bargaining Unit should receive it; if you do not, please contact us.
MARK KLISCH STEPS DOWN AS BARGAINING AND GRIEVANCE CHAIR
Dr. Mark Klisch, a psychologist in the USF-Tampa Counseling Center, is retiring at the end of the fall semester, and has stepped down as chair of the UFF-USF Grievance and Bargaining committees. The Chapter Council has confirmed Sonia Wohlmuth of the World Languages Department at USF-Tampa as incoming Grievance chair and Robert Welker of the School of Accountancy at USF-Tampa as Bargaining chair for the remainder of the 2010-11 term.
The Chapter Council and the Chapter also unanimously resolved: "That the USF Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida expresses its profound gratitude to Dr. Mark Klisch for his years of exemplary service to the United Faculty of Florida, to the University of South Florida, to his colleagues, to students, and to the community."
Dr. Klisch served as UFF-USF Grievance Chair for more than a decade, and represented the union for a broad range of grievances on behalf of individuals at USF and on behalf of the Chapter, on issues ranging from academic freedom to annual leave. "Mark is skilled at presenting a grievance in writing and in a formal hearing," said Chapter President Sherman Dorn. "A good deal of what Mark accomplished over the years was due to his people skills, from helping aggrieved colleagues figure out what concerns are grievable to persuading management that it's in everyone's interest to address a grievance immediately."
"Mark was well-known around the entire state as a grievance chair with a level head and sure judgment," said United Faculty of Florida statewide President Tom Auxter. "Faculty and professional employees at USF have been very lucky to have Mark's services as grievance chair for more than a decade. It's now time for others to step up to the plate."
Incoming Grievance and Bargaining Chairs Sonia Wohlmuth and Robert Welker are looking for UFF members interested in the grievance and bargaining process, for both committees are seeking new members. "A chapter's ability to enforce the contract depends on many members' knowing how to analyze and prepare grievances," remarked Wohlmuth, and Welker affirmed that "The bargaining committee not only needs many eyes, but it needs to be broad-based so that the union's bargaining position represents faculty across the disciplines and throughout the system." The UFF will run grievance and bargaining training sessions on September 24 & 25 at the Wyndham Westshore in Tampa, and any UFF member interested in participating is encouraged to contact
Chapter President Sherman Dorn, or
Sonia Wohlmuth for grievance training or
Robert Welker for bargaining training.
Any UFF member seeking help with a possible grievance is encouraged to contact
Dr. Wohlmuth, phone (813) 974-2231, or office CPR 449 in USF-Tampa.
UNIONS CAN HELP WITH LAYOFFS
Unions can often help employees in trouble. Unions enforce the contracts that they bargain, and enforcement often consists of defending the rights of employees whose contractual rights have been violated. That includes layoffs.
Layoffs are a central issue in any labor contract. At one extreme, if an institution faces a financial emergency, it may need the ability to jettison some operations – and hence some people – in order to survive. At the other, a layoff situation can provide cover for management to get rid of employees management happens to dislike. As a result, unions and managements tend to bargain contracts that will provide management the flexibility it needs in an emergency while limiting the caprice it can exercise in the process – and requiring that the administration provide reasonable assistance to laid off employees.
The power of contractual language was seen recently at the University of Florida, where Assistant Professor David Therriault of the Department of Educational Psychology was laid off last year. In May 2009, UF President Bernie Machen announced anticipated layoffs of nine faculty through merging, reorganizing, and eliminating programs – including the educational psychology program.
The contract required that the administration attempt to find laid off employees alternative positions within the university. Despite Therriault's history of scholarship and pursuing external funding, the administration did not make much effort to keep Therriault. In addition, Therriault was up for tenure, and the administration deemed him ineligible to apply.
Meanwhile, the UF College of Education continued hiring new faculty.
The proceedings took nearly a year (grievances go through a sequence of "steps" before reaching an external arbitrator), but last June, an external arbitrator ruled that the administration must give Therriault another year (he was employed while the grievance went through the system) and a chance at tenure.
What persuaded the arbitrator was UFF's argument that the administration should have made a more serious effort to find Therriault an alternative position – as required by the contract. The administration's argument that Therriault's tenure application had been rendered moot was waved away, and Therriault will have a shot at tenure.
Meanwhile, Therriault and two colleagues were awarded a half million dollar grant from the NSF.
This is not the only layoff case that has bitten the UF administration (they attempted to create a one-person Vietnamese language unit and then treat that as a layoff unit), and it is not clear how a very small number of layoffs, some of them bungled, have helped the university.
But one important lesson is that an official notice is not fate: often, there are options, and often, the union can help. But the United Faculty of Florida will not represent an employee who was not a member of the union (at the time of the violation), so join today by filling out and sending in the form posted at
http://faculty.ourusf.org/join-uff/.
USF SALARIES
For context, we observe that according to the U.S. Department of Labor, the average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees (nonfarm) was $ 19.04 in July. An employee paid that amount for forty hours a week for 52 weeks would earn about $ 39,600.
Education makes a difference: in 2009, the Department of Labor reported that the median weekly earnings of an employee with a doctoral degree was $ 1,532 (which would produce an annual income of about $ 79,700 assuming vacations were paid). Still assuming paid vacations, a "professional degree" would bring in about $ 79,500; a Master's $ 65,400, and a Bachelor's $ 53,300.
Let's refine the context a bit. The Chronicle of Higher Education's Almanac reports that the average pay of a full-time professor at a public doctoral institution was: for full professors $ 112,569; associate professors $ 78,375; and for assistant professors $ 66,754. (The Chronicle did not report on any other categories of employees, although the Chronicle did report that among public research institutions, 49 % were tenured or tenure-track full-time employees, while 27 % were non-tenure-track full-time.) Restricting attention to Florida, at public doctoral institutions, the average pay for full professors was $ 106,877, for associate professors $ 74,042, and for assistant professors $ 65,740.
The American Association of University Professors conducts a similar annual survey, which is posted
on-line. It reported that for the last academic year, at public doctoral institutions, the average salary of a professor was $ 116,750; of an associate professor $ 80,463; of an assistant professor $ 68,718; of an "instructor" $ 45,805; of a "lecturer" $ 52,529; of an "unranked" faculty member $ 56,254. Clearly the two surveys employed different methodologies and hence got slightly different numbers, but we can at least get a ballpark idea of what the salaries are.
Now that we know what national and state figures look like, let's turn to USF. To keep from mixing apples and oranges, we concentrate on base salaries for full-time faculty with nine-month contracts. From August 2010, the figures are: $ 101,593 for a full professor, $ 74,941 for an associate professor, $ 66,305 for an assistant professor, and $ 53,132 for an instructor.
There are several caveats. For example, salaries vary, with some people earning below and some above; it may be more useful to get the range of salaries. The minimum and maximum salaries are interesting, but they are usually eccentric; one can get a better impression of the range of most salaries by looking at the lower quartile (the 25th percentile), the median (the 50th percentile), and the upper quartile (the 75th percentile). Here goes:
For professors, the minimum was $ 43,515, the lower quartile was $ 84,391, the median was $ 98,697, the upper quartile was $ 110,961, and the maximum was $ 197,344. (For Distinguished Professors, salaries ranged from $ 90,067 to $ 231,734, with a median of $ 125,728.)
For associate professors, the minimum was $ 30,908, the lower quartile was $ 64,027, the median was $ 69,510, the upper quartile was $ 77,911, and the maximum was $ 177,010.
For assistant professors, the minimum was $ 36,280, the lower quartile was $ 56,100, the median was $ 60,000, the upper quartile was $ 70,000, and the maximum was $ 155,000.
For instructors, the minimum was $ 28,860, the lower quartile was $ 43,080, the median was $ 48,938, the upper quartile was $ 62,947, and the maximum was $ 90,000.
We will continue our exploration in the next issue.
USF SALARIES II: SALARIES ACROSS CAMPUSES
At the last report to UFF, there were 1,649 employees in the UFF-USF Bargaining Unit, and determining "average" salaries is a complicated business. To avoid adding apples and oranges, we do not look at part-time people, and we separate 9-month and 12-month employees. In the previous Biweekly, we included people on various kinds of leaves or sabbaticals, but this time we do not; including employees on leave compromises uniformity while excluding them introduces bias, so there are complications either way.
Since most employees in the Bargaining Unit are on nine-month contracts, we start with them. But first, a word about the mischievous word "average". This usually means either the "median" (half the people are above the median, half are below) or the "mean" (take all the money and divide by the number of people). In many distributions (including the standard normal/ Gaussian/ bell curve), the mean and the median are close together; not so in distribution of wealth. For example, if nine people have $ 1 each and one has $ 10, the median will be $ 1 and the mean will be $ 2: the mean will tend to float above the median when a few people get a lot more than everybody else.
Here are the means and medians for instructors, assistant professors, associate professors, and professors (provided that there are more than just a handful in those positions) in the colleges at USF-Tampa. Here we divide the College of Arts and Sciences into its three schools. Here are employees on 9-month contracts:
CAS Humanities:
- For instructors, median = $ 40000 and mean = $ 40400.
- For assistant professors, median = $ 56076 and mean = $ 55871.
- For associate professors, median = $ 65975 and mean = $ 67282.
- For professors, median = $ 87063 and mean = $ 88445.
CAS Natural Sciences and Mathematics:
- For instructors, median = $ 47567 and mean = $ 47887.
- For assistant professors, median = $ 65000 and mean = $ 64935.
- For associate professors, median = $ 68221 and mean = $ 68383.
- For professors, median = $ 97199 and mean = $ 97633.
CAS Social Sciences:
- For instructors, median = $ 49396 and mean = $ 50877.
- For assistant professors, median = $ 58861 and mean = $ 62100.
- For associate professors, median = $ 70273 and mean = $ 71115.
- For professors, median = $ 101381 and mean = $ 103499.
The College of Behavioral and Communication Science:
- For assistant professors, median = $ 65000 and mean = $ 61841.
- For associate professors, median = $ 68776 and mean =$ 69967.
- For professors, median = $ 99511 and mean = $ 99699.
The College of Business:
- For instructors, median = $ 74957 and mean = $ 69824.
- For assistant professors, median = $ 149084 and mean = $ 135438.
- For associate professors, median = $ 121999 and mean = $ 122620.
- For professors, median = $ 126989 and mean = $ 132425.
The College of Education:
- For instructors, median = $ 46464 and mean = $ 46536.
- For assistant professors, median = $ 58070 and mean = $ 58854.
- For associate professors, median = $ 65588 and mean = $ 68450.
- For professors, median = $ 87180 and mean = $ 89374.
The College of Engineering:
- For assistant professors, median = $ 79352 and mean = $ 81084.
- For associate professors, median = $ 92137 and mean = $ 91984.
- For professors, median = $ 107753 and mean = $ 117365.
The College of the Arts:
- For assistant professors, median = $ 56000 and mean = $ 53085.
- For associate professors, median = $ 64997 and mean = $ 65242.
- For professors, median = $ 90882 and mean = $ 90028.
The other regional campuses are relatively small, so we put them in single units. Some have so few people in certain positions that we omit them as statistically meaningless.
Polytechnic:
- For instructors, median = $ 63264 and mean = $ 62552.
- For assistant professors, median = $ 65000 and mean = $ 72924.
Saint Petersburg:
- For instructors, median = $ 55431 and mean = $ 56968.
- For assistant professors, median = $ 54290 and mean = $ 58352.
- For associate professors, median = $ 67092 and mean = $ 77016.
- For professors, median = $ 108442 and mean = $ 112513.
Sarasota/Manatee:
- For instructors, median = $ 53212 and mean = $ 57658.
- For assistant professors, median = $ 58934 and mean = $ 68544.
- For associate professors, median = $ 70118 and mean = $ 88331.
We will continue our survey in succeeding issues of the Biweekly.