Chapter Meeting Tomorrow on USF Tampa

The next chapter meeting will be tomorrow Friday, April 24, at 12 noon, on USF Tampa, in room EDU 150. There will be sandwiches, chips, and drinks. All employees of the UFF USF Bargaining Unit are invited. Check us out. Join the movement. Bring a colleague.

This will be the last Chapter Meeting of this semester. Chapter meetings will resume for the summer on Friday, May 15, at 12 noon, at CDB Restaurant, just east of USF Tampa at 5104 E. Fowler Ave.

$ 500 Travel Scholarships for New UFF Members - and for UFF Members Who Recruit New Members

IMPORTANT: APPLICATIONS DUE TODAY

The USF Chapter of the UFF will award four $ 500 Travel Scholarships for next spring and summer.

• Two scholarships will be for UFF USF employees who join UFF this spring (as of April 23): for information, see the the flyer for new and prospective members.
• Two scholarships will be for current UFF members who recruit at least one new UFF member. For information on how UFF members may apply, see the flyer for UFF members who would like to recruit new members. Notice that recruiters should put their name on the membership form for the new member.

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.

Visit Us on Facebook

Visit the United Faculty of Florida at USF Facebook page. This page is a place where UFF members can exchange thoughts and ideas. The page is "public", but only dues-paying UFF members are eligible to post items on 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. So check us out. UFF members are welcome to join, and non-members are welcome to look.

IN THIS ISSUE

Salaries ... and the Legislature

The semester is ending and summer is coming so the faculty union's thoughts turned to … collective bargaining. Although our contract runs to summer, 2017, every summer it is "reopened" and the union (representing USF faculty and professionals) and the Administration (representing the USF Board of Trustees) open a small collection of items for bargaining. This always includes salaries. Meanwhile, the American Association of University Professors has just come out with its annual national survey of faculty salaries. So in this issue we take a brief look at how we are doing at USF. But first…

• Legislative Update. The Florida State Senate seems to be living up to its reputation as the house where bad legislation goes to die. For more, see below or click here.
• Salaries. For a brief look at how salaries are distributed among populous ranks, see below or click here.

In the last Biweekly, we asked for feedback from faculty on a proposal to oppose legislation that would permit adults with permits to carry guns on campus. We received several emails, all of them opposing the legislation. Some said that they would leave Florida if the legislation passed. At the April 10 Chapter Meeting, the Chapter unanimously approved the following statement:

We understand that while House Bill 4005 continues to move through the House, Senate Bill 176 has stalled. Hopefully, it has died in committee, but it could be revived towards the end of the session so we are keeping a close watch.

Meanwhile, Senate Bill 182, which would permit secret searches for senior academic administrators, has also apparently stalled in committee. And legislation restricting the right of faculty to select texts for their courses has had those restrictions removed.

Every year the American Association of University Professors conducts a survey of faculty salaries across the nation. Every year, there is a different theme, and this year's theme is the misinformation and disinformation about faculty salaries: the title is "Busting Myths." But what the media picked up was that for continuing faculty members, salaries went up an average 3.6% (not correcting for inflation). Curiously, salaries across all ranks went up only 2.2%, suggesting that there has been a lot of turnover lately.

Readers may recall that our salaries went up an average 4% due to merit pay increases, so we're hanging in there. But many of us are curious how we're doing compared to the rest of the nation. Let's compare the AAUP numbers for public doctoral institutions with those of full-time, nine-month faculty at USF - with USF figures for the UFF USF Bargaining Unit from GEMS.

Caveats: there are two apples & oranges issues here: the AAUP figures do not distinguish 9-month versus 12-month faculty, and the AAUP figures include medical faculty, while 594 of USF Health's 731 non-administrative faculty are not in the UFF USF Bargaining Unit.

Let's start with the full professors. According to the AAUP, the "average" full professor earned $ 130,039 a year. Of course, this is just an average. At USF, "benefits salary" for 9-month full professors in the Bargaining Unit range from $ 43,308 to $227,533. Here is a graph showing these faculty distributed by salaries:

According to the AAUP, the "average" associate professor earned $ 88,716 a year. At USF, "benefits salary" for 9-month associate professors in the Bargaining Unit range from $ 33,398 to $ 193,851. Here is a graph showing the number of these faculty distributed by salaries:

According to the AAUP, the "average" assistant professor earned $ 77,446 a year. At USF, "benefits salary" for 9-month assistant professors in the Bargaining Unit range from $ 30,000 to $ 172,000. Here is a graph showing the number of these faculty distributed by salaries:

We now reach titles that do not articulate with the AAUP titles. In the survey, the average "instructor" earned $ 50,913 a year while the average "lecturer" earned $ 57,303 a year. Let's look at the 9-month Instructors I and Instructors II in the Bargaining Unit. First, Instructors I:

Then, Instructors II:

A lot of USF faculty in the Bargaining Unit are on 12 month contracts. This group is quite a jumble, and it's graph looks like this:

Finally, because we are nosy, we can look at the Distinguished University Professors, the Eminent Scholars, and the Graduate Research Professors, in the Bargaining Unit, all in one group:

Bargaining starts next month, the Bargaining Team welcomes your input. Feel free to send messages to the UFF mailbox; bargaining messages will be forwarded to the UFF USF Bargaining Team.

LOGISTICS

The next Chapter Meeting will be tomorrow, Friday, April 24, at 12 noon, on USF Tampa, in room EDU 150.

• Click here for the standing agenda.
• Click here for the minutes of the previous meeting.

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, e-mail a message to gmccolm@tampabay.rr.com.