Category: Bargaining News

The BOT and the UFF teams met last Wednesday for the first bargaining session of the year. After agreeing to ground rules, the teams laid out their proposals.  Each team is allowed to reopen two in addition to Article 23 Salaries.

The UFF-FSU reopened Article 17 Leaves and Article 24 Benefits.  We proposed that instead of one paid leave of up to six months to cover the birth or adoption of a child, Article 17 should be expanded to allow faculty two six-month leaves in order to care for family members (not necessarily children).  We proposed that Article 24 provide an increase in paid life insurance, a floor under insurance and retirement benefits, tuition reimbursement for dependents, and a transportation allowance.

The BOT reopened Article 8 Appointment and Article 32 Definitions.  They put forward two proposals regarding Article 8:  that departments be allowed to place a cap on summer teaching pay and that the length of Specialized Faculty contracts for top-rank SF be shortened by a year, thereby allowing one year’s less notice for non-reappointment.  In regard to Article 32, they proposed narrowing the definition of “continuous service,” a definition that had been crucial in an arbitration case the UFF-FSU recently won for a UFF member.

Bargaining resumes this week on Wednesday, March 7, at 2:00 in the FSU Training Center.  Faculty members are welcome.

The key to a strong Collective Bargaining Agreement is a strong membership base, so if you are not a member, please join!  https://uff-fsu.org/wp/join/

All best,

Irene Padavic and Scott Hannahs, Co-Chief Negotiators, UFF-FSU

Art-23-Salaries-TA-2017-08-09

The BOT and UFF bargaining teams met on July 26 to continue negotiations on the Salaries article. As noted in the last Update, the previous week the teams had signed a Memorandum of Agreement insuring that regardless of what happens in the remainder of bargaining, Promotion raises will go into effect with the first paycheck of the academic year.

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The administration and UFF bargaining teams met on July 17 to resume negotiating the Salaries article (Article 23). While we continue to see progress toward agreement, that progress is extremely slow. We were gratified that approximately 45 of our colleagues across the university elected to join us. Filling the room sent a clear message that your UFF bargaining team represents a large and diverse faculty and that we collectively reject the administration’s claims that we are well compensated compared to faculty at peer universities and that FSU lacks funds to offer more than meager raises. (You can see our written refutation of the Administration’s claims here.)
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