UFF recently completed our 2023 Faculty Poll. It included questions ranging from the general impression of the atmosphere on our campus and our current trajectory as well as more specific questions regarding administrators, bargaining priorities, and Legislative issues.
The results may be found on UFF’s webpage through the following link:
The next step in the bargaining process is the ratification of the negotiated contract by the faculty. This will be a majority vote to accept the negotiated settlement or reject it and send the bargaining teams back to the table for more negotiations. The ratification vote will take place June 13 and 14th with times and locations to be announced soon. The complete agreement with details on the various categories in markup format, showing changes, can be found on our web page here.
We are pleased to announce that the UFF and BOT teams settled Article 23, Salaries. While the teams could not agree to the transparency language for Deans’ Merit or a minimum on the Performance increases, we did agree to the largest salary increase we’ve had in recent memory. We would like to thank those who came to the bargaining sessions or participated via Zoom for doing so. It does make a difference!
Category
Amounts
Promotions
12% (1st promotion) / 15% (2nd promotion)
SPI (Sustained Performance Increase)
3.00%
Performance
4.20%
Department Merit
0.75%
Deans’ Merit
0.30%
Market Equity
$1,000,000, Divided $800,000 for tenured and tenure-track faculty, $200,000 for specialized faculty
Administrative Discretionary Increase
Up to 1.00%
Note: Amounts for Performance, Department Merit, Deans’ Merit, and Administrative Discretionary Increase are expressed as a percent of the salary base for in-unit faculty. Other percentages refer to the increase in individuals’ salaries.
Note that not all categories are awarded to any given faculty member.
SPI raises are awarded to ranked faculty in good standing who have reached the top rank, 7 years after their promotion or last SPI raise.
Performance raises go to all faculty who met or exceeded “FSU’s high expectations” for their 2022 annual evaluation.
Department Merit raises are allocated according to department bylaws which specify criteria and procedures for distribution. The total amount is the percentage of the total faculty salary rates for that department.
Deans’ Merit is allocated at the sole discretion of the dean. The total amount is the percentage of the total faculty salary rates for that college/school/unit.
Market Equity raises are allocated to librarians, tenure track, teaching and research faculty who are below the national average salary for their discipline and rank at public universities; this is adjusted for time in rank, previous merit raises, and has a cap and floor amounts.
Administrative Discretionary Increases are awarded by the deans if funds are available and for various awards, counter-offers, increase duties, and extraordinary service to FSU.
The key to a strong Collective Bargaining Agreement is a strong membership base, so if you are not a member, please join! It is more important than ever for us to stand together. https://uff-fsu.org/wp/join
Your UFF-FSU Bargaining Team,
Scott Hannahs, Specialized Faculty, Magnet Lab, Co-Chief Negotiator Jennifer Proffitt, Professor, Communication, Co-Chief Negotiator Brian Arsenault, Specialized Faculty, University Libraries Michael Buchler, Professor, College of Music Arash Fahim, Associate Professor, Mathematics Jack Fiorito, Professor, Management Robin Goodman, Professor, English
Matthew Lata, Professor College of Music, President UFF-FSU
We are pleased to announce that the UFF and BOT teams settled Article 23, Salaries. While the teams could not agree to the transparency language for Deans’ Merit or a minimum on the Performance increases, both of which the UFF team made arguments for once again, we did agree to the largest salary increase we’ve had in recent memory.
Category
Amounts
Promotions
12% / 15%
SPI (Sustained Performance Increase)
3.00%
Performance
4.20%
Department Merit
0.75%
Deans’ Merit
0.30%
Market Equity
$1,000,000 Divided $800,000 for tenured and tenure-track faculty, $200,000 for specialized faculty
Administrative Discretionary Increase
Up to 1.00%
Note: Amounts for Performance, Department Merit, Deans’ Merit, and Administrative Discretionary Increase are expressed as a percent of the salary base for in-unit faculty. Other percentages refer to the increase in individuals’ salaries.
It has been made very clear to us that President McCullough values merit — as do we, but with clear criteria. We do hope that our concerns regarding merit allocated based on the discretion of deans have been heard and that deans will distribute the money fairly and transparently.
The next step in the process is ratification of the contract, so please be on the lookout for ratification voting dates, times, and locations. In all, the UFF is proud of the gains we made for faculty salaries during this bargaining session. We would like to thank those who came to the bargaining sessions or participated via Zoom for doing so. It does make a difference.
The key to a strong Collective Bargaining Agreement is a strong membership base, so if you are not a member, please join! It is more important than ever for us to stand together. https://uff-fsu.org/wp/join/
All the best,
Scott Hannahs, Specialized Faculty, Magnet Lab, and Jennifer Proffitt, Professor, Communication
On Wednesday afternoon the UFF-FSU and BOT bargaining teams met for 3 hours. The session came very close to a final agreement but ended up on a somewhat tense and acrimonious note.
To make a good-faith move to meet the BOT, the UFF-FSU started out proposing a Performance Increase that is somewhat less than the rate of inflation. In partial compensation for this, we proposed a floor or a minimum amount to help offset the impact of inflation on our lowest paid faculty. This minimum was ignored and deleted through several rounds of bargaining as we lowered it, trying to come to agreement. This minimum has an easily calculable effect, and the extra cost is negligible in a year where FSU did so well in the legislature and “got everything we asked for”. One of the things that the president is required to request each year is adequate funding for hiring and retention of faculty.
Again, we attempted to hold the Deans’ Discretionary Merit category to a small amount or zero it out; however, it became obvious that funding this category was a high priority to the BOT team. We feel that this is a “waiver,” or a surrender of a mandatory subject of bargaining to total administrative discretion without any faculty input. The UFF-FSU team felt that if the BOT was requesting a significant amount and a significant concession, then it should have some guardrails on its implementation. The proposed amount of the Deans’ Discretionary Merit increase is reduced from last year’s 0.5% of the faculty salary base to 0.3% this year. The UFF-FSU team proposed that the trigger where a dean would need to write a justification for a Deans’ Discretionary Merit raise be reduced from required for anyone receiving a deans merit raise of 5% or more to required for anyone receiving a 3%-or-more increase. In addition, our objection to the Deans’ Discretionary Merit category is that it does not accomplish the objective of rewarding merit. If there is no definition of what merit is, then faculty are left clueless as to what they should do to earn merit. This is similar to a game of blindperson’s bluff where one is trying to reach a goal but has no idea what or where that goal is. Thus, the deans responsible for allocating a substantial amount of funds for raises, should at least communicate to the faculty the criteria used for that allocation. In the past only 15% to 20% of the funds in deans’ discretionary merit have gone to Specialized Faculty and this bias also needs to be justified.
The BOT team did offer an increase to $1 million in the Market Equity category. Since this category also addresses the impact of inflation on faculty, we gratefully accept this as a partial offset to having Performance Increases be less than inflation.
We presented an offer accepting the BOT’s numbers with the guard ails discussed above. The BOT team focused on the raw numbers and not the issues. In their next counteroffer, the BOT team accepted the numbers with all conditions eliminated, suggesting that this was as far as they were willing to bargain. We countered by reducing the floor such that it met them halfway in cost and reduced the reporting required of deans. At this, the BOT team berated us for proposing language changes at the last minute and for proposing salary increases that they are unable to calculate. We do not agree that the calculations are complicated or onerous. As preparation for bargaining, the UFF-FSU team had constructed a simple spreadsheet to calculate costs in real time during negotiations.
We reject both argument that the language is last minute and that the change is difficult to calculate. Language setting floors on increases has been discussed in the past, as a way to reach agreement and was present for the entire day’s bargaining session. We believe that the changes in the amounts mandate changes in the language governing how the money is to be distributed in order to ensure transparency and accountability as well as fairness. The BOT team left the meeting with the statement that they were unsure what to do and if they should continue negotiations.
A Summary Table of the final offer and counteroffer for 5/10/2023 is provided below. As you can see, we have come very close to an agreement, with only about $175,000 difference in total cost (roughly 0.09% of the bargaining unit faculty salary base.
Summary Table
Category
BOT Offer
UFF-FSU Counteroffer
Promotions
12% / 15%
12% / 15%
SPI (Sustained Performance Increase)
3.00%
3.00%
Performance
4.20%
4.20% With a minimum increase of $2,500
Department Merit
0.75%
0.75%
Dean’’ Discretionary Merit
0.30%Deans’ merit increases that are more than 5% of the faculty member’s base salary shall require written justification from the Dean.
0.30%Deans’ merit increases that are more than 53% of the faculty member’s base salary shall require written justification from the Dean. The deans shall inform all faculty in their college/school/unit of the precise criteria to be used for determining distribution of deans’ merit.
Market Equity
$1,000,000 Divided $800,000 for tenured and tenure-track faculty, $200,000 for specialized faculty
$1,000,000 Divided $800,000 for tenured and tenure-track faculty, $200,000 for specialized faculty
Administrative Discretionary Increase
Up to 1.00%
Up to 1.00%
Note: Amounts for Performance, Department Merit, Deans’ Discretionary Merit, and Administrative Discretionary Increase are expressed as a percent of the salary base for in-unit faculty. Other percentages refer to the increase in individuals’ salaries.
We do not fully understand the objections expressed by the BOT team and trust that they will move forward and consider our counter proposal. We look forward to continuing our discussion on Monday.
All the best,
Scott Hannahs, Specialized Faculty, Magnet Lab, and Jennifer Proffitt, Professor, Communication
The bargaining teams met for the second time on Monday to discuss the Salaries article. The BOT team began with a counteroffer to the UFF-FSU offer from last Wednesday. This is where we left off last week and picked up on Monday:
There were many things on which the two teams still agreed. We both agree on 3% Sustained Performance Increases (SPI) every 7 years. (Originally, we felt this should be a 5-year cycle to be in line with the upcoming 5-year cycle of post-tenure review, but we have agreed to wait until the regulations and policies regarding that are finalized.) Both teams also agree on the continuation of Promotion Increases of 12% for the second rank and 15% for the top rank.
The BOT team, however, continued to focus on Deans’ Merit, even raising it to 0.75% from their own last offer of 0.50% from last Wednesday. They told us that they had done some research and found that about 99% of faculty get Performance raises, so they didn’t see that as an award for merit. They stated that about 80% of faculty get Departmental Merit, so they liked that more than Performance, but Deans’ Merit only goes to about 45% of the faculty, so there must be “more scrutiny in Deans’ Merit,” because, they reasoned, fewer people get it.
We pointed out that 99% of the faculty meeting or exceeding FSU’s High Expectations, and some of them substantially exceeding those expectations, is a good thing and should be rewarded, especially as we are concerned that retaining quality faculty will be an increasing problem in coming months. We continue to ask for the cost of inflation from March 2022 to March 2023, which is 4.98%, because all faculty are affected by the cost of living and shouldn’t continue to lose ground in real dollars due to inflation.
We also do believe that faculty should be rewarded with merit increases, but we disagree that deans are best positioned to distribute those increases both knowledgeably and transparently. In the latest annual faculty poll, you told us that you prefer that merit increases be based mainly on peer recommendations (i.e., Departmental Merit) over deans’ discretion by a ratio of 4 to 1. When deans are scrutinizing which faculty should receive Deans’ Discretionary Merit increases, what criteria do they use? Any guesses? Give up? Well, there aren’t any criteria. With Departmental Merit, there are standards as required by the Collective Bargaining Agreement and outlined in departmental bylaws. Also, it appears that Deans’ Merit is 4 to 5 times more likely to go to general faculty rather than specialized faculty even though specialized faculty make up about 45% of the bargaining unit. We find that alarming.
By the way, if you’d like to conduct your own research on how merit money is awarded in your department, remember that according to our Collective Bargaining Agreement, a printed report detailing the amount received in each salary increase category by faculty members in a department is available on request to any faculty member of that department. See Article 23.12 for more information about what must be contained in the report.
We presented a couple of proposals, as did they, and we ended the session with the following positions:
We are getting closer! We will present our next counteroffer when we bargain on Wednesday, May 10, from 2-5pm. Please note that the Wednesday session will be held in Westcott 211A and 214D instead of our usual venue.
Remember that our union’s efforts at the bargaining table are most effective when faculty participate and attendance is high, especially face-to-face in the room. If you care about Salaries, please make every effort to attend! If you need to attend remotely, please contact Brian Arsenault <mailto:[email protected]> for the Zoom link. (Alternatively, if you retained the previous bargaining Zoom link, it will still work.)
The key to a strong Collective Bargaining Agreement is a strong membership base, so if you are not a member, please join! It is more important than ever for us to stand together. https://uff-fsu.org/wp/join/
