Author: Kathleen Krach

Dear FSU Colleagues,

The bargaining teams met Wednesday to discuss Article 23-Salaries (and we also agreed to ground rules for our bargaining sessions). The UFF team sent our first proposal on May 1. That proposal and the BOT’s first counteroffer included the following:

Both teams agree on the continuation of Promotion Increases of 12% for the second rank and 15% for the top rank.

We would like to acknowledge that the BOT’s first counteroffer was the highest we have seen in some time (as a reminder, last year the first offer the BOT made was 1% Performance, 0.25% for Departmental Merit, 1.50% Deans’ Merit, no Market Equity, and 1.25% Administrative Discretionary Increases, or ADI), which is certainly appreciated. However, as shown above, each team’s priorities remain quite different.

As we noted during the bargaining session, the UFF offer takes into consideration the need to retain faculty; as we are hearing and seeing, faculty members are leaving or planning to leave Florida for several reasons, including pay and attacks on higher education and DEI.

We explained that faculty have been losing ground in real dollars due to inflation, which amounts to a pay cut. We are asking for the cost of inflation from March 2022-March 2023, which is 4.98%. In our annual poll, more than half of the faculty who responded stated that they would not ratify if the offer didn’t at least offset the cost of inflation. We hear you, and we will try our best to advocate for your priorities.

We also explained once again that faculty tell us that when it comes to merit: Departmental Merit is essential because it is based on criteria agreed upon by the faculty as well as the Deans and Provost, while Deans’ Merit is completely discretionary without any stated criteria. That is, faculty never know what they need to do to receive Deans’ Merit because the process is not transparent. We also pointed out that Deans and the Provost approve Departmental Merit plans, so they do in fact have a say in Departmental Merit decisions, precluding any need for Deans’ Merit. Furthermore, Deans have Administrative Discretionary Increases available to them to reward especially productive faculty and/or those who have offers from other schools, as outlined in Article 23.

We also reminded the BOT team that Market Equity is critical for faculty retention. University data show that Market Equity is an $18 million problem. So that we don’t keep falling behind, Performance and Market Equity adjustments are necessary.

After both sides made two counteroffers, we ended the session with:

We look forward to receiving the BOT’s next counter when we bargain again on Monday, May 8, from 2-5pm.

Our union’s efforts at the bargaining table are most effective when faculty attendance is high: if you care about Salaries, please come! Bargaining sessions are open to faculty, and we appreciate having you! Meetings are face-to-face at the FSU Training Center (493 Stadium Drive). If you would like 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.) 

Regular bargaining updates can be found at our webpage: http://uff-fsu.org/ 

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. http://uff-fsu.org/wp/join/ 

All the best,

Scott Hannahs, Specialized Faculty, Magnet Lab, and Jennifer Proffitt, Professor, Communication

Co-Chief Negotiators, UFF-FSU

Wednesday’s bargaining session was a flurry of activity as the two sides tentatively agreed to three articles and an appendix, and we are hopeful that we can soon agree to three more. But the main event was salaries, which was discussed right after President McCullough’s email promised investment in faculty and staff through increased salaries. The BOT team presented their latest offer on Article 23 (Salaries), and the UFF team countered:

We were pleased to see the BOT team increase their Performance and Market Equity proposals and reduce the amount they allocated to Dean’s Merit, although Dean’s Merit still remains unprecedentedly high. The BOT team said they heard our concerns. Their movement on salaries is in the right direction, but we are still not quite “there,” as expressed by the faculty in the bargaining room and the 43 faculty members on Zoom who stated that they were hopeful after seeing the president’s email but disappointed with the BOT’s proposal.

We’d also like to thank the more than 560 faculty members who already signed the UFF-FSU petition asking the BOT to provide fair salaries for faculty members who worked incredibly hard in dangerous circumstances to ensure that intellectual and educational life at the University continued uninterrupted. Your voices made a difference! And there is still time to sign the petition if you haven’t already.

With no raises for most faculty in two of the last three years, faculty members have fallen further and further behind. And while the BOT and President McCullough argue that the current salary offer is the most generous in at least a decade, they fail to acknowledge the two years with no raises and the 14% plus rate of inflation since the last raise that is eating up our paychecks. As we have noted, FSU bragged about how “All of FSU’s priorities were funded.” But the offer they call generous does not demonstrate that faculty are a priority. In addition, this year, FSU received an increase of $66 million or almost 11% in unrestricted state funding in lottery, tuition/fees, and state General Revenue. As a faculty member noted in the Zoom chat, “The fact that [the BOT’s offer is] the largest in 10 years does not actually help their cause; that data shows how poorly we’ve been compensated.” And another faculty member asked after hearing the BOT’s salary offer, “That is supposed to make up for other years?”

The BOT team once again said that they are very close to their salary limit, so now really is the time for faculty to show that they want a more meaningful salary offer by attending the next bargaining session scheduled for Wednesday, August 3, from 2-5 (information regarding location can be found below). If it is at all possible, please attend in person and encourage your colleagues to attend in person as well. Having faculty in the room is an effective and visible way to support the UFF team’s position. Having faculty members attend via Zoom also helps because we do let them know how many faculty attend virtually, but your physical presence sends a powerful message that we are all in this together.

A big thank you to the faculty who have attended in person and virtually these last few weeks. Please continue to do so!

The two teams did Tentatively Agree (TA) to Article 19 (Conflict of Interest/Outside Activity), with most of the protections for faculty we asked for, and Appendix K and agreed to status quo language (no changes) in Article 8 (Appointment) and Article 12 (Non-Reappointment). The BOT proposed that the teams agree to the changes the UFF team proposed in Article 18 (Inventions & Works), Article 24 (Benefits), which would codify the tuition scholarships for faculty member’s dependent children and spouses, and Article 17 (Leaves), which would remain status quo—that is, only one paid parental leave (UFF’s last proposal was two paid parental leaves). The UFF team proposed a counteroffer to Article 17 changing paid parental leave to paid family leave, which would allow faculty to use the leave for the birth or adoption of a child or to take care of sick family members, including spouses, biological or adoptive parents, biological or adoptive children, step-children, and biological or adoptive siblings. We noted that this change would recognize the lives of faculty members as sometimes-caregivers and would offer a more family-friendly and age-friendly campus.

We are still waiting for a response to UFF’s proposed Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to ensure that Promotion and Sustained Performance raises become effective for those faculty in August and to Article 22 (Sabbatical & Professional Development Leave).

As noted, the next bargaining session is scheduled for Wed., August 3, from 2:00-5:00. Our union’s efforts at the bargaining table are most effective when faculty support is evident, so if you care about salaries, please come! It really does make a difference. 

Bargaining sessions are open to all faculty. Meetings are face-to-face at the FSU Training Center (493 Stadium Drive).  If you would like to attend remotely, please contact Chandler Blount [email protected] to receive the Zoom link. (Alternatively, if you retained a previous bargaining Zoom link, it will still work.)

Regular bargaining updates and the entire CBA can be found under “UFF At Work” at our webpage:  http://uff-fsu.org/

The key to a strong Collective Bargaining Agreement is a strong membership base, so if you are not a member, please join! There has never been a more important time for us to stand together.  http://uff-fsu.org/wp/join/

All the best,

Scott Hannahs and Jennifer Proffitt, Co-Chief Negotiators, UFF-FSU

Dear Colleagues,

At Wednesday’s bargaining session, the BOT team proposed what was presented as a final package deal that included all remaining articles, including salary. The BOT’s offer included the $750,000 in Market Equity that the UFF proposed last week, but it did not increase Performance Funding. The UFF team countered, and then the BOT presented a ‘best and final’ offer that was only good until the end of the bargaining session. UFF countered that offer, and the BOT team agreed, thus ending negotiations that saw a couple dozen salary proposals passed back and forth and compromises on both sides. The two teams Tentatively Agreed (TA) to the salary proposal found here that includes implementation dates.  

Both the UFF and the administration believe that merit is an important part of any compensation package. Thus, the Performance and Merit components of the UFF-BOT agreement, plus Market Equity increases, should be considered as part of the total salary package. While the initial BOT offer was 2.75% + Promotions + Sustained Performance Increases, the accepted offer is 5.7% + Promotions + Sustained Performance Increases, for an overall faculty compensation package of about 6.7%, not counting ADI. While the UFF believes that faculty merit is best determined by departments and their bylaws, as per President McCullough’s direction, the BOT demanded that a significant amount of faculty raises be determined by the deans. We do hope that our concerns regarding merit allocated based on the whims of deans have been heard and that deans will allocate the money based on fair and transparent criteria.

We’d like to once again thank the nearly 700 faculty members who signed the UFF-FSU petition asking the BOT to provide fair salaries and the dozens of faculty members who attended bargaining in person and via Zoom. Your voices definitely made a difference!

On another note, we were pleased to see President McCullough’s 8/4/22 email announcing staff raises of 5% because our hardworking staff have gone many years without across-the-board raises and are generally lower paid than faculty, as evidenced by the announced increase of annual base pay for full-time, salaried staff employees to $31,320. We hope that the administration will continue to work on providing fair compensation for FSU staff as well.

The two teams also Tentatively Agreed to the other articles in the package deal, including Article 18 (Inventions & Works), Article 22 (Sabbatical and Professional Development Leave), which increases the number of paid one-semester sabbaticals from 1 out of every 30 eligible tenured faculty members to 1 out of every 20 eligible tenured faculty members, a 50% increase, Article 24 (Benefits), which codifies the tuition scholarships for faculty members’ dependent children and spouses, and Article 17 (Leaves), which remains status quo (that is, one paid parental leave). We hope to address the need for paid family leave in future years’ negotiations as such a change would offer a more family-friendly and age-friendly campus.

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 during this bargaining session, which you’ll be hearing more about as we near ratification. For example, we significantly increased our sabbatical program, held tight to the four-year contracts for the third rank of Specialized Faculty that the BOT wanted to curtail, mandated safety inspections of FSU buildings at regular intervals, and tightened protections for faculty members to engage in political speech outside of FSU. Even as we made a lot of progress in improving the working lives of faculty, we would still like to hear our members’ ideas about how we might improve things further in future negotiations!

Bargaining updates and the entire CBA can be found under “UFF At Work” at our webpage:  http://uff-fsu.org/

The key to a strong Collective Bargaining Agreement is a strong membership base, so if you are not a member, please join! As the negotiations have demonstrated, we can accomplish more when we all stand together.  http://uff-fsu.org/wp/join/

All the best,

Scott Hannahs, Research Faculty III, and

Jennifer Proffitt, Professor,

Co-Chief Negotiators, UFF-FSU

The teams met Wednesday to present and discuss articles, including salaries. The BOT presented their latest offer on Article 23 (Salaries), and the UFF team countered:

The BOT team once again only increased their offer by 0.25% (added to Department Merit), and they made it clear that their priority is Dean’s Merit, which, as we noted in previous updates, is allocated at the discretion of the Dean rather than through departmental procedures voted on by faculty and outlined in department bylaws. The UFF team countered that the dramatic increase in Dean’s Merit is a radical departure from previous years; what the BOT team is proposing is nearly 4 to 8 times larger than Dean’s Merit in previous years (since 2015, Dean’s Merit has been no more than 0.15-0.35%, not 1.25%). The ability for Deans to dispense increases already exists in the Administrative Discretionary Increases category, and we see little need to increase that amount when there is so much need in the Performance and Market Equity categories.

If a goal of the University is faculty retention, as noted by the Board of Trustees in the last Trustee meeting and by President McCullough in various contexts, the focus should be on Performance raises and Market Equity, not a discretionary fund for Deans to reward some faculty and not others. We explained once again that faculty spent the last two plus years working through a deadly pandemic, spending countless hours pivoting their classes to multiple platforms to keep the University functioning, without a raise. And with a 14% plus increase in inflation since our last raise, Performance raises are the foremost priority for faculty. Further, without raises for several years, compression and inversion have continued to increase, which is why Market Equity–based on the formula outlined in the contract–is also a much bigger priority than discretionary increases. As a faculty member attending the bargaining session via Zoom noted in the chat during the discussion of raises, “Every other faculty member I know is incensed. And polishing their resumes. Short-sighted.” Another member noted that the 0.25% increase in each week’s offer from the BOT is “almost hostile.” Other terms we’ve heard from faculty regarding the BOT salary offer include “insulting” and “offensive.” We are awaiting the BOT’s next offer and hope that we see greater progress than we have seen so far to show that they value the hard work and dedication of the faculty.

Faculty participation in-person and on Zoom really does matter, so please see the information below regarding how to participate.

As we noted in the last update, because both teams do agree on the continuation of Promotion Increases and of Sustained Performance Increases, the UFF team was proactive and proposed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to ensure that these increases become effective for those faculty in August. The BOT’s proposal unfortunately added a “poison pill”—a provision that would also reinstate the BOT’s now-expired authority to grant discretionary raises to individuals. This would undermine what little bargaining power faculty have under Florida law. It appears as though the BOT team is more interested in holding faculty raises hostage to gain an advantage at the bargaining table than to award faculty the promotion raises that they have rightfully earned.

The UFF team also presented a counter to Article 19 (Conflict of Interest/Outside Activity). We explained why safeguards are needed to protect faculty from investigations and potential discipline due to unintentional violations and unfounded claims of consensual sexual activity with students. We also clarified that we want to be sure that the BOT’s language regarding ‘verbal discussions of a sexual nature’ does not violate academic freedom or pedagogical choices. The BOT team heard our concerns, and we were very pleased to see that they countered with a proposal that includes protections. We are carefully reviewing their proposal, but we are optimistic that we are very close to an agreement.  

The next bargaining session is scheduled for Wed., July 20 from 2:00-5:00. Our union’s efforts at the bargaining table are most effective when faculty attendance is high, so if you care about Salaries, please come! 

Bargaining sessions are open to faculty, and we appreciate having you!  Meetings are face-to-face at the FSU Training Center (493 Stadium Drive).  If you would like to attend remotely, we welcome that as well!  Please contact Chandler Blount <[email protected]> to receive the Zoom link. (Alternatively, if you retained a previous bargaining Zoom link, it will still work.)

Regular bargaining updates can be found at our webpage:  http://uff-fsu.org/

The key to a strong Collective Bargaining Agreement is a strong membership base, so if you are not a member, please join! There has never been a more important time for us to stand together.  http://uff-fsu.org/wp/join/

All the best,

Scott Hannahs and Jennifer Proffitt, Co-Chief Negotiators, UFF-FSU