Specialized Faculty Reclassification Update Fall 2013

Specialized Faculty (SF; previously NTTF)
Reclassification Plan

This fall most Specialized (Non-Tenure Track) Faculty will be reclassified.  The UFF and the FSU Board of Trustees have agreed to a reclassification plan for specialized faculty, which concluded a six-year effort to update SF job descriptions and make other changes to the CBA.  These changes address issues important to SF, including the potential to earn two-year and four-year employment contracts and clarified opportunities for promotion.  The changes specified in this plan, which began with a Faculty Senate Report in November, 2006, have now been approved by the Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC) (May 2013).  Specific changes to the contract called for in this plan will be implemented this fall and are planned to be concluded by December 23, 2013.   This 46-page agreement defies easy summary, but here are some key points:

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Bargaining Update and Ratification Voting

UFF faculty and Administration/BOT teams concluded negotiations for fiscal 2012-13 in late Ocotober, including an agreement on Specialized (NTT) Faculty Reclassifications. Ratification voting for faculty is tentatively scheduled for December 4-5th. Revisions to the current contract are fairly extensive, and we encourage faculty members to begin their review of the tentatively agreed changes as soon as possible. A summary of the changes is available at the following link:

https://uff-fsu.org/art/BargainingUpdateNov2012.pdf

The summary includes links to the tentatively agreed revisions. More information on ratification dates, time, and places, and on voting procedures will be forthcoming soon.

Faculty Senate Report on University Welfare

Report on University Welfare for Faculty Senate, September 19th, 2012

By Professor Jack Fiorito, Senator and UFF-FSU President

Good afternoon!  In view of the late hour and that we have already had a report on collective bargaining from President Barron, I will try to be brief.

Collective Bargaining

As President Barron suggested, budget cuts and the political environment have made for a difficult bargaining environment.  Since last spring we have held consultations with President Barron and Provost Stokes twice and held weekly meetings with the Administration/Board of Trustees bargaining team.  Read More →

UFF/FSU Presidents Consultation

DRAFT minutes from July 10th’s consultation with President Barron, Provost
Stokes, and other administration representatives are now posted at the UFF-FSU web site (www.uff-fsu.org). The URL is:

https://uff-fsu.org/art/Mins2012July10Consult-UFFdraft.pdf

Charts from the UFF May faculty poll comparing Specialized Faculty (NTTF) and Read More →

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.”

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