Oppose Severe Cuts for State Universities
We are down to the last week to leave messages for legislators. This is
our last chance to stop severe budget cuts. There is reason to think we
could reduce the damage if we stay with the task.
Monthly Archives: February 2012
Report on University Welfare for Faculty Senate, February 22nd, 2012
Ratification voting is underway. If you are in the faculty bargaining unit and did not vote already, please do so on your way out today.
Aside from ratification, I would like to talk about reading assignments today. I will try to be brief and give you more time for your reading.
One document I urge you to read is the summary of what we are voting about. This summarizes everything we were able to resolve during roughly the past year of bargaining. There were many other things that we discussed, some very important to the Senate. Our bargaining co-chairs, Dr. Scott Hannahs of the Mag Lab and Dr. Irene Padavic of Sociology, prepared an excellent summary of the past year’s negotiations, including many of the issues that we are continuing to negotiate. It is only two pages, and it is excellent reading on some critical issues. Both documents are available at our web site and will pop up if you search there for “ratification.”
One key issue is the reclassification of specialized (non-tenure track) faculty. As recognized in the 2006 Faculty Senate report on specialized faculty, this issue necessarily ties into FSU’s commitment to tenure. Sec. 8.3 of our contract states “Commitment to developing and maintaining a tenured faculty. The Board agrees that it is in the best interests of the University, the faculty, and the students to maximize the ratio of tenured and tenure-accruing E&G appointments to the number of non-tenure-accruing E&G appointments among those appointments including significant teaching responsibilities. As Drs. Padavic and Hannahs report, however, “The chief … sticking point is the BOT team’s disinterest in any contract language that would follow through on the commitment of the FSU Constitution, the Faculty Senate, and the Collective Bargaining Agreement to preserve a tenured faculty.”
UFF Legislative Update: Week Five
UFF UNITED FACULTY OF FLORIDA
The 2012 Legislative Session: Week Five
The Florida Senate released a budget that:
February 2012: Collective Bargaining Update
The teams closed the 2011-2012 contract negotiations with agreements that can be found here. Later this month you will be asked to ratify the agreement.
Even though we formally re-opened negotiations for the 2012-13 year in late January, we have been steadily bargaining since May of 2011 on several issues, mainly: nontenure-track (specialized) faculty reclassification project, Performance Evaluations, the Salary Plan for Professors, Promotion & Tenure, Academic Freedom, and Domestic-Partner Benefits. The teams also renegotiated minor changes resulting in MOAs on Voluntary Separation Program, Winter Holidays, and our contract’s Amendment and Duration (Article 31). Details are below the fold.
Continue reading
2/21-23: Contract Ratification Voting
Contract Ratification is tentatively scheduled for February 21-23. Your departmental stewards will be doing the voting in departments and general voting locations will be at Strozier and the Faculty Senate meeting.
Ratification Summary February 2012
Article 23 Salaries
Article 31 Amendment and Duration
Memorandum of Agreement – Merit Bonus
Memorandum of Agreement – Voluntary Separation Program 2011-01-13
Memorandum of Agreement – Winter Break 2011
2/24: Collective Bargaining Session
On Friday February 24th, the UFF and BOT bargaining teams will meet from 2:00 to 4:45 at the FSU Training Center. Topics to be discussed are Salary Plan for Professors (SPP), Evaluations, Promotion and Tenure provisions in the Collective Bargaining agreement. The meeting is open to all faculty members.
3/16 First Friday – Miller’s Ale House
To break with tradition the March First Friday will be held on the third Friday! We will meed at Miller’s Ale House, 722 Apalachee Parkway, from 5:00-7:00 on March 16th.
3/15: Executive Council Meeting
The UFF Executive Council will meet Thursday, March 15th at 4:00 PM in Oglesby Union, room 311A. All faculty are welcome to attend.
Legislative Update from UFF President Tom Auxter — Week 4
What is happening to the budget for higher education?
In week four of the session the Senate released general amounts each agency will have in its budget but will not publish a detailed budget until later. The House has already published all the details of its full budget. The Senators may be delaying publication of the final budget in the hope that revenue projections will improve and save them (before they face voters in November) from making the draconian cuts the House is proposing.
Call senators now and urge them to vote against any more cuts to higher education. Higher education is already underfunded. Also urge them to vote against $2.5 million for Western Governors University (in Salt Lake City), funding for which appears at the end of the House budget. Sending $2.5 million to Utah for distance education courses to count as credits in Florida hurts the authentic distance education programs already in place at our universities and colleges. These programs should be chosen over one from a private entity without a real faculty creating courses for students and evaluating students carefully.
What is happening to the bill (SB 1560) to prevent faculty from serving in the legislature?
When I spoke with legislators this week, they acknowledged there was a shift of opinion on whether faculty should be the only professionals (aside from professional criminals) that would be prohibited from serving. I even received assurances from some senators who voted for the bill in committee, which only passed by a 7-6 margin, that they would vote against it next time. The message came through loud and clear to all senators when their phones began ringing — thanks to the faculty from across the state who called.
What do legislative leaders have in mind for reforming higher education?
They keep saying 2013 will be the year for a complete overhaul of higher education, with dramatic cost savings as a result. What they have in mind is something similar to what the Legislature did to K-12 education last year in SB 736. They eliminated all forms of tenure, job security, and due process for teachers and made annual evaluations and retention depend on standardized test scores of students.
In the sweeping higher education reform that leaders contemplate, there will be no legal rights or collective bargaining contracts preventing termination of any faculty member. The goal is to have “at will” personnel actions, depending only on what the supervisor decides to do in order to cover all responsibilities to teach students within a severely reduced budget from the state.
The consequence will be to radically “reform” professional conditions of employment for faculty unless faculty organize to convince legislators otherwise. (Some will be re-elected, and some will be new after November.)
We have only twelve months to convince legislators that higher education is not broken, although underfunding definitely creates problems affecting quality that could be fixed with a better budget. For example, Florida remains at the bottom of rankings in student/faculty ratio, compensation for faculty, and per capita expenditures for higher education.
This year we have seen that faculty contacting legislators can make a difference in the outcome. Ask a colleague to join UFF and join us in our struggle to defend the integrity of the profession.
Tom Auxter
President, United Faculty of Florida