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UFF Biweekly
United Faculty of Florida -- USF System Chapter
4 September 2014
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Chapter Meeting Tomorrow Noon at BSN 1304

The UFF USF Chapter will meet tomorrow Friday at 12 noon on USF Tampa at BSN 1304.

The fall schedule for Chapter Meetings will be on alternate Fridays, at 12 noon, on September 5 & 19, October 3 & 17 & 31, November 14, and December 12. All meetings will be on USF Tampa in BSN 1304, except for two dates TBD when we will meet in USF St. Petersburg and USF Sarasota / Manatee.

All employees of the UFF USF Bargaining Unit are invited. There will be sandwiches and soda pop and chips. Join the movement. Bring a colleague.

Join UFF Today!

Download, fill in, and mail the membership form. Benefits of membership include the right to run and vote in UFF chapter and statewide elections; representation in grievances (UFF cannot represent a non-member in a grievance or litigation); special deals in insurance, travel, legal advice, and other packages provided by our affiliates; free insurance coverage for job-related liability; and the knowledge you are supporting education in Florida. Come and join the movement.

Grievances

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

IN THIS ISSUE

Welcome Back!

Fall is back, we just passed Labor Day, and we are facing a new academic year. That means thinking about students, committees, and next spring's legislative session. But for the moment...

  • The Contract. This summer, USF faculty and the USF Board of Trustees ratified a new contract, which is now in force. It will be in force for the next three years. For a summary on how it works, see below or click here.
  • The Class of 2018 As Brant Parker once observed, they're not getting younger - we're getting older. For more on the Class of 2018, see below or click here.
  • We're on Facebook. Yes, the USF Chapter keeps up with the times, so it has a Facebook page. For details, see below or click here.

The Contract

The 2014 - 2017 Collective Bargaining Agreement is the legally binding contract between the USF faculty and professionals in the Bargaining Unit and the USF Board of Trustees. (Most faculty - in fact, almost all faculty outside of Health, and quite a number inside Health - are in the Bargaining Unit.) According to Florida law, a new contract has to be bargained at least once every three years, and the current contract was ratified this summer and will run from now to 2017.

The contract governs the tenure and promotion processes, salary and benefits, assignments and evaluations, sabbaticals and leaves, and many other aspects of our professional lives. It also creates the grievance process, and UFF will represent UFF members who get in trouble: if you are a UFF member and your contractual rights have been violated, contact that Grievance Committee immediately.

The contract specified an average four percent merit raise, and the USF Administration has promised to process the paperwork expeditiously. So the raises should come into effect shortly. This is the non-discretionary raise specified by the contract for 2014; according to the contract, the USF Chapter of UFF and the USF Administration will soon start bargaining a "reopener" that includes raises for 2015 (and there will be another reopener round including raises for 2016).

Bargaining and enforcing the contract are the legal obligations of the United Faculty of Florida, but there are plans for other activities as well. There will soon be an announcement for a tenure and promotion workshop. If there are other activities that would be helpful for faculty, please bring your ideas to chapter meetings; the next meeting is tomorrow, Friday, at noon, at BSN 1304 on USF Tampa.

The Class of 2018

In 1996, Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov in a game (but in a brief save for humanity, Kasparov won the match), Nelson Mandela stepped down as President of South Africa, Bob Dole ran for President of the U.S. against Bill Clinton, the Tampa Bay Thunderdome was renamed Tropicana Field, and the currently incoming Class of 2018 was born.

Beloit College's famous - or infamous - Mindset List was launched when the Class of 2018 was going through the Terrible Twos. Since then, Beloit College has been reminding faculty everywhere that our students are ... different. Just as we found ways to confound and irritate our predecessors (be honest, we did), so do our students find ways to confound and irritate us. The Mindset List "... was initially created as a reminder to faculty to be wary of dated references and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing perception of each new generation as they make an important transition."

"Behind the light humor of the Mindset List there are always some serious issues about the future of the class and their role in the future of the nation." About the current list, "[t]he digital technology that affords them privacy from their parents, robs them of their privacy amid the 'big data' of the NSA and Google. How will the absence of instant on-line approval impact their performance in the classroom and work place? Will this generation continue to seek reliance on prescription medications to address challenges and adjust reality?"

For the class of 2018, Beloit College observes that:

  • Celebrity "selfies" are far cooler than autographs.
  • When they see wire-rimmed glasses, they think Harry Potter, not John Lennon.
  • The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has always been the only news program that really "gets it right."
  • Hard liquor has always been advertised on television.
  • Women have always attended the Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel.
  • Hong Kong has always been part of China.
  • Courts have always been overturning bans on same-sex marriages.
  • Joe Camel has never introduced one of them to smoking.
  • Cloning has always been a fact, not science fiction.
  • Ads for prescription drugs, noting their disturbing side effects, have always flooded the airwaves.
  • Parents have always been able to rely on a ratings system to judge violence on TV.
  • Bill Gates has always been the richest man in the U.S.
  • Attending schools outside their neighborhoods, they gather with friends on Skype, not in their local park.
And although Beloit didn't mention it, for the Class of 2018, Betty Rubble has always been a Flintstone vitamin.

For more from Beloit, see their Mindset Page.

We're on Facebook

The USF Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida has just launched a Facebook page, entitled United Faculty of Florida at USF. This page will be a place where UFF members can exchange thoughts and ideas. The page will be moderated by the USF Chapter's Communications Committee, and all we ask is that people be civil and all that. Here is how it works:

  • The page is "public", which means that anyone (students, parents, administrators, etc.) can read the posts on the page and look up the "members" of the page. (A member of the page is someone who may post items on the page.)
  • Only dues-paying UFF members are eligible to become members of the page. If you are a UFF member, ask to join on the page, or contact the Communications Committee. The Committee will invite every UFF member that asks to join.
  • Postings are the responsibility of the people who post them: UFF does not endorse any posts on the page except for official postings from the Communications Committee (which are labeled as such).
  • The Communications Committee reserves the right to remove postings. (But we're lazy and would rather not.)
So check us out. UFF members are welcome to join, and non-members are welcome to look.

LOGISTICS

Chapter Meeting tomorrow Friday, September 5, at 12 noon on USF Tampa in BSN 1304.

There will be sandwiches, soda pop, and chips. All UFF members are invited to attend. Non-members are also invited to come and check us out. Come and join the movement.

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

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

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

If you do not want to receive the UFF Biweekly, you can unsubscribe below. If you do not receive the Biweekly, but want to, contact the Communications Committee.