IN THIS ISSUE

Regional Faculty Salaries

While advisors from the Buddha to Winston Churchill have warned of the folly (or worse) of envy, others have documented problems with inequity. One recent example offered by animal psychologists is an experiment in which two social animals are offered different rewards (a cucumber slice versus a grape) for the same task - and the monkey stuck with the cucumber slice is not happy. Administrators may find inequity in employee compensation an irritating distraction, but the effects can be corrosive.

Ninety-Two Cents to the Dollar. We compared Tampa versus St. Petersburg and Sarasota / Manatee salaries (at least, those that appeared readily comparable), and it seems that an average regional faculty member receives 92 cents for each dollar a comparable Tampa faculty member receives. For details, see below or click here.

Meanwhile, Critical Race Theory is in the national news, which brings us to...

Happy Juneteenth! Even though slavery was abolished in the United States on 6 December 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, abolition is increasingly celebrated on June 19. This year, the celebrations occur during a particularly contentious quarrel over American history. For details, see below or click here.

Returning to Tampa, the controversy over the USF Forest Preserve continues. As noted in the previous Biweekly, the USF Faculty Senate passed a Resolution opposing the development of the preserve, and the USF Chapter of UFF sent out a Biweekly Extra with a similar statement. And now, the alternative weekly Creative Loafing reports that a USF alumnus and three USF graduate students produced a twelve-minute movie called Choke Point on the Preserve, and the movie was screened at New World Brewery.

And considering that people hospitalized with COVID-19 nowadays are largely unvaccinated, we have two reminders...

Where to Get a Shot. Now that all adults (and many children) are eligible for shots, many sites in the Tampa Bay area are dispensing COVID-19 vaccines, and many can be found via Vaccine Finder. Meanwhile, the CDC advises that, "it typically takes a few weeks for the body to build immunity (protection against the virus that causes COVID-19) after vaccination." And the Mayo Clinic recommends that people should continue to take certain precautions against infecting others even after being vaccinated.
What do you think about going back to campus in fall? Speaking of the pandemic, USF has announced that, the virus willing, USF will reopen in fall. UFF would like to know what you think about that. Here is a link to an online anonymous survey, and we ask all faculty to fill it out. Thank you.

Speaking of going back to campus, recall that the 20 May Biweekly noted the following contractual language concerning job safety: Whenever an employee reports a condition which the employee feels represents a violation of safety or health rules and regulations or which is an unreasonable hazard to persons or property, such conditions shall be promptly investigated. The appropriate administrator shall reply to the concern, in writing, if the employee's concern is communicated in writing. UFF members may seek assistance from the UFF USF Grievance Committee in making such a report.

Chapter Meeting Tomorrow on Zoom

The USF Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida will meet tomorrow Friday at 12 noon on Zoom. On the agenda: reopening in fall, salary equity across campuses, collective bargaining, and more. And here are the minutes for the previous meeting.

Any employee in the Bargaining Unit may attend, but you must have an invitation: contact the Chapter Secretary to get one. This summer, we will be meeting on alternate Fridays at 12 noon over Zoom: the dates are June 18, July 2, 16 & 30, and August 13. Any employee in the Bargaining Unit may attend, but you must have an invitation: contact the Chapter Secretary to get one.

Meetings and events are posted on the Events Calendar of the UFF USF Website. Come and check us out.

Tailgate Social in Fall

UFF will sponsor a Tailgate Social for the first home football game of the USF Bulls vs. the Florida Gators on Sept. 11, 2021. The game will be at Raymond James stadium in Tampa. The game is scheduled to start at noon, but kickoff time is subject to change. Regardless, we are planning a tent, chairs, coolers, and food for 50 UFF members and families members before the game. In the past, our Tailgates have been at a prime location to watch the bands and players enter, meet up with Rocky, and enjoy the fans.

RSVP to Steve Lang if you plan to participate and let us know who is coming (like a spouse or children). We will need to order food and maybe extra chairs.

If you already have tickets to the game, that’s great! Otherwise, you can get tickets at the Go USF Bulls (Football Tickets) website. For the last few years there was an employee discount, so call them and ask. If you do not have tickets and would like UFF to ask for a group or tickets together, then let us know ASAP and we will try to arrange it. This game will be sold out! No one actually knows what the mask or vaccination policy will be at Raymond James Stadium at this time.

Please provide an email so that we can update folks with information about the time of the game, location of the Tailgate, parking, food choices, and tickets.

We have had some really great tailgate parties in the past few years at the Rays, Rowdies, and USF Bulls, so hopefully this will be a back-to-normal event.

Join UFF Today!

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. Here is the membership form. Come and join the movement.

Grievances

If you have been the victim of a violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement or the recent Memorandum of Understanding, 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 Grievances Page.

USF United Support Fund for Food Pantries

Many of our students are struggling during this crisis, and the USF Foundation is supporting the USF Food Pantries to help out. They are accepting non-perishable donations, but one can also make monetary donations for the pantries at St. Petersburg, Sarasota / Manatee, and Tampa.

We are on Social Media

Yes, we are on social media.

We have a Facebook group: see United Faculty of Florida at USF. 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, and the moderator will invite every UFF member that asks to join. Non-members are welcome to look (but you need a Facebook account to do that). So check us out.
We have a blog: see The USF Faculty Blog. This has news items as they come up.
We are twitter-pated: follow us on Twitter via @UffUsf.
We even have a You-Tube channel: check out our videos

If you want to help with media matters, contact the Communications Committee chair.

Ninety-Two Cents to the Dollar

One of the many issues arising from consolidation was the issue of cucumber slices and grapes. There was a perception that Tampa-based faculty enjoyed greater affection from the Administration than faculty based elsewhere - and that this difference in affection was reflected in compensation.

To test this hypothesis, we compared Tampa versus non-Tampa faculty in 95 groups; all faculty in each group were in the same system-wide department and held the same job title (Instructor I, Instructor II, Instructor III, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor). For each group, we computed the number of cents an average non-Tampa faculty member would receive for each dollar an average Tampa faculty member would get. Looking at each of those 95 groups of faculty, we asked how many cents an average non-Tampa faculty member in that group receives for each dollar a Tampa faculty member (in the same group) gets. It turns out that one group has an average non-Tampa faculty member getting 60 - 65 cents for each dollar a Tampa faculty member gets, two groups have an average non-Tampa faculty member getting 65 - 70 cents, and so on. Here are the result for all 95 groups:

We then computed the weighted mean (weighted by the number of regional faculty in each group) and concluded that of those faculty surveyed, the average non-Tampa faculty member earned 92 cents for each dollar earned by the average Tampa faculty member in the same department and of the same rank. For details, see below.

Of course, this is not a result of consolidation; it is the result of decades of policy. Since the comparison is of faculty with the same job title, this is not a consequence of inequitable promotion policies. And as the 21 November 2019 Biweekly observed, (percentage) raises for non-Tampa faculty are not out of line (both USF St. Petersburg and USF Sarasota / Manatee did better than Arts & Sciences, the Arts, Behavioral & Community Sciences, and Engineering). Incidentally, this comparison covered merit and discretionary raises over several years.

That leaves at least three reasons for this differential. First, new faculty hired at St. Petersburg and Sarasota / Manatee may have been offered lower starting salaries than those at Tampa. Second, faculty at Tampa may have changed positions more frequently, and as a result, have received a succession of changes in salary that were not, technically, raises (this happens a lot at USF). Third, faculty salaries for faculty whose position and job title remains the same for a long time tends to fall behind (see the 29 November 2012 Biweekly for details), and non-Tampa faculty may have been on the job longer than comparable Tampa faculty. (Of course, that was nine years ago, and things may have changed since then.)

Whatever the causes of this discrepancy, it is a warning. And there are already signs of frustration and resentment in St. Petersburg and Sarasota / Manatee.

Details. Using data from April 30, we first classified base campus for faculty members based on their campus mailing address (the overwhelming majority have a listed address). We then identified 28 departments in the Bargaining Unit with faculty from both USF Tampa and from one of the other two campuses. We further partitioned faculty by job title, and identified 95 groups of faculty that

were from the same department and had the same job title, and
had at least one faculty member from USF Tampa in that department with that job title, and
had at least one faculty from USF St. Petersburg or USF Sarasota / Manatee in that department with that job title.

Then for each of the 95 groups of faculty, we computed the ratio of the mean base salary of non-Tampa faculty in that group divided by the mean salary of the Tampa faculty. The result was the above chart of the resulting 95 ratios (in percentages). Considering that the departments vary in size (and number of USF Tampa and other faculty), we are not surprised by the large variance - especially as some of the groups are small. But the cluster of groups below 100 cents per dollar suggests something systemic.

Happy Juneteenth!

On 19 June 1865, Major-General Gordon Granger read General Order Number 3 to the people of Galveston, Texas, informing them that "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free." One year later, African Americans started the tradition of observing Juneteenth celebrations, and for this year, the Tampa Bay Times has posted a list of Juneteenth events happening around Tampa Bay and reported that Congress voted to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. USF's Office of Multicultural Affairs is also holding a Juneteenth Celebration of Liberation today from 1 pm to 3 pm. (USF is also running an Enlightenment Workshop Series focusing on "intersectional perspectives related to bias, cultural competence and systemic racism, with an emphasis on current trends facing Black communities across the African Diaspora.")

Juneteenth has also been a time for reflection, and considering the current concern, alarm, or hysteria over the threat posed by critical race theory, this may be a good time for us to remind our students, family and friends, of the importance of listening. Eight-two academic and related organizations have issued a statement saying, "Americans of all ages deserve nothing less than a free and open exchange about history and the forces that shape our world today ... To ban the tools that enable those discussions is to deprive us all of the tools necessary for citizenship in the 21st century." For example, before lauding or denouncing the 1619 Project (on the history of slavery in the USA), one should read it first - and the Pulitzer Center has posted it online.

Meanwhile, on June 10, the Florida Board of Education met to consider, among other things, a clarification to be sent to K-12 schools. The initial draft said that, "Instruction on the required topics must be factual and objective, and may not suppress or distort significant historical events, such as the Holocaust, and may not define American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence." Results of that meeting have not been posted yet, but the Orlando Sentinel reported that after appeals by, among others, Governor Ron DeSantis, some of that text now reads, "Instruction may not utilize material from the 1619 Project and may not define American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence." We hope that board members at least glanced at the 1619 Project before voting on it.

LOGISTICS

Chapter Meeting tomorrow Friday, June 18, at 12 noon, via Zoom. All UFF USF members are welcome: for the Zoom link, contact the Chapter Secretary.

All UFF members are invited to attend. Non-members are also invited to come and check us out. To get the link to Zoom, contact the Chapter Secretary. Come and join the movement.

Membership: Everyone in the UFF USF System Bargaining unit is eligible for UFF membership: to join, simply fill out 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 or contacting the Chapter Secretary. If you do not receive the Biweekly, but want to, contact the Chapter Secretary.