Chapter Meeting Tomorrow on Tampa

The UFF USF Chapter will tomorrow, Friday, at 12 noon in Temple Terrace, just east of USF Tampa, at CDB Restaurant (5104 E. Fowler Ave., at 51st & E. Fowler). Everyone is invited to the Chapter Meeting. There will be pizza, salad, and drinks. On the agenda:

• We continue to get ready for fall. We consider two issues from the membership report: long-range planning and communications.

This is the first Chapter Meeting of summer. We will meet during the summer on a schedule to be determined tomorrow.

National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive

The NALC is one of our fellow unions under the AFL-CIO umbrella, and their annual food drive is this Saturday, May 14. Just leave non-perishables by your mailbox on Saturday to be picked up by your friendly neighborhood letter carrier.

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; see also the main article (left).

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.

USF Grant Writing Workshops

The USF Tampa College of Arts & Sciences is continuing its workshops on writing grant proposals. An NIH Workshop will be held tomorrow, Friday, May 13, from noon to 2:30 pm. Click here for more information.

IN THIS ISSUE

Bargaining Salaries

It's happened again. Every once and a while, a senior administrator tells faculty in a meeting that faculty salaries are low because the union won't let the Administration raise salaries, and that just happened again. Many faculty have highly compressed salaries, said the administrator, and compression / inversion raises of a few thousand dollars would be inadequate to address the problem. This administrator would like to hand out much higher raises, but the union won't allow it...or perhaps (and this came up in Q & A) discretionary raise money is being reserved for other purposes.

Two things about this vignette. First of all, administrators occasionally blame the union for low salaries, tenure denials, the Zika virus, etc. Since the union is a democratic organization whose members want high salaries, fair tenure decisions, and Zika-free campuses, it is not clear how union officers could stay in office if they were wandering around campus with bottles of mosquito larvae.

Second, we agree that many senior faculty have compressed salaries (compression means that junior faculty in the same track have the same or even higher salaries). As noted in the 29 November 2012 Biweekly, in-unit employees who remain on the same line for many years tend to fall behind. The union's position is that this is because the university does not adequately fund merit and across-the-board raises, resulting in faculty discontent moderated by occasional spasms of compression/ inversion (er, "market equity") raises.

Something for the Administration to think about as we are now in the ... thirteenth ... month of bargaining.

• Bargaining Update. UFF represents faculty in bargaining, while the Administration (via a lawyer from Jacksonville) represents the Board of Trustees. For an update from our Chief Negotiator, see below or click here.

• An update on USF St. Petersburg. Here is the latest on the USF St. Petersburg Administration's proposal to abolish the Environmental Sciences department. For details, see below or click here.

Here is a Bargaining Update from our Chief Negotiator, Bob Welker. For reference, the current contract is posted online.

Collective bargaining has been on-going since May, 2015. Each party had the right to open two (2) articles in addition to the salary article. UFF opened Article 8 Appointment and Article 9 Assignment of Responsibilities. USF opened Article 16 Disciplinary Action and Job Abandonment and Article 12 Non-Reappointment.

UFF has proposed a 4.0% across the board salary increase, funds for compression and inversion salary increases, and an increase in the percentage for instructor promotions.

USF has proposed a 1.5% salary pot (pot to be determined by multiplying 1.5% times the total salary in all departments of a college) to be distributed at the college level based on an employee's department performance evaluation when compared to the department employee evaluations of all employees in the college. So you may be top in your department, but in the middle of all of the employees in the college. USF has also proposed an additional one-half (1/2) percent of base salaries for ADI (administrative discretionary increase).

The UFF is proposing a limit on the number of different course preparations per semester, a limit on the number of new course preparations per academic year, rolling three-year contracts for instructors and librarians, the right to refuse to teach an on-line course, and a formula for assigning FTE to a course.

USF proposes reducing the number of CALENDAR days for it to be able to declare that you have abandoned your job from 12 to 3. That's right – ‘calendar days,’ which includes Saturday and Sunday.

USF proposes eliminating Article 12.4 A and B which basically, depending on the circumstances for non-reappointment, requires the university to make a reasonable effort to locate appropriate alternative or equivalent employment within the university or offer re-employment at the university in the same or similar position during a two-year period, should an opportunity arise.

UFF intends to present some modified proposals to determine if an agreement can be reached with the USF/BOT. If not, the next step may be impasse.

Professor Welker will make a more detailed report at tomorrow's Chapter Meeting, to which everyone is invited.

Following up on the last Biweekly's article on the USF St. Petersburg Administration proposal to abolish the Environmental Science Policy & Geography (ESPG) department, when that Biweekly went to press, the System Faculty Council was considering the proposal. The Council is the faculty body whose members are elected by the faculty senates of the three campuses. Council minutes have not been posted yet, but we understand that the Council has unanimously approved the following proposal:

WHEREAS: Concerning the proposed administrative reorganization of the USFSP College of Arts and Sciences, the USF System Faculty Council finds that the process of development of the proposal has included sufficient faculty consultation and that it appears likely that proceeding as proposed would yield the benefits described for the University of South Florida St. Petersburg and the University of South Florida System;

THEREFORE: The USF System Faculty Council recommends to the administration that the proposed steps be taken, with continued consultation regarding implementation of the proposal.

Hopefully, the steps proposed by the USFSP Senate will be taken, we would hope that the "continuing consultation" addresses these outstanding issues.

LOGISTICS

Chapter Meeting tomorrow Friday, in Temple Terrace, at CDB Restaurant, 5104 E. Fowler Ave.

• 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.