News

Dear colleagues, Your UFF-FSU Bargaining Team and the representatives of FSU’s Board of Trustees (BOT) met on June 3 for the latest round of negotiations. The administration has not yet responded to our initial article drafts on Salary (Article 23), Leaves (Article 17), or Artificial Intelligence Use (Article 32), so the breadth of negotiations was quite limited. What we did discuss ranged from weird to galling. Weird: as I mentioned last week, the BOT team opened Article 10 (Evaluations) to provide a review every five years for in-unit administrators (e.g., department chairs) who are members of the faculty, but have been prohibited by the BOG and the BOT from going through

Dear colleagues, Last week’s bargaining session was held on Wednesday, May 27 and it was a doozy. This update would be overly long if I recounted all the drama, but I’ll offer a synopsis along with links to all the proposed contract language: Why does Article 3 matter? UFF activity is needed to defend the rights of ALL in-unit faculty. Both bargaining and helping our members maintain the rights that we have negotiated in our CBA through the grievance procedure (Article 20), takes a tremendous amount of time—as much as teaching a course, as much as writing an article. Working to secure our rights and to advocate for better contract

Two farmers meet at a local pub and agree to barter: “I’ll give you wool from my sheep if you give me milk from your cows.” The dairy farmer delivers gallons of milk to the shepherd and, a month later, attempts to collect wool, only to be told, “oh, I never actually said that I had any sheep.” Last week, we opened Article 17 (Leaves) in an effort to provide real paid family leaves for FSU faculty, not just loans against our sick leave, and not only for new parents but for any of us who find ourselves in caregiver roles. The Board of Trustees opened Article 3 (UFF Rights),

Dear FSU Colleagues, Welcome to the 2026 bargaining season! We will keep you updated as negotiations continue. Our first bargaining session was held May 13. This year is a reopener year, which means both UFF and the BOT team can open two articles in addition to salaries, which we negotiate every year. The UFF team proposed that the teams agree to only open salaries, but the BOT team did not agree to that proposal, so the UFF team proposed opening Article 17, Leaves, and a new article, Article 32, regarding Artificial Intelligence (we are asking for input on that as we proceed; please see below). The BOT team opened Article

The UFF-FSU and Administration/Board of Trustees teams have concluded negotiations for the 2025-2028 Collective Bargaining Agreement. We reached Tentative Agreements on ten articles, five appendices, and two Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) documents. The 2022-2025 Collective Bargaining Agreement, as previously amended, can be found here. Below are summaries of the Tentatively Agreed upon language. You can click on each article to compare the new and old language. Art. 1-Recognition. Status quo. (no changes) Art. 9-Assignment of Responsibilities. Adds that faculty members in departments that offer academic courses shall develop guidelines for the consideration of effort related to teaching assignments; guidelines must be approved by a majority of the faculty and are subject

Dear FSU Colleagues, We are happy to announce that we have settled all open articles for the 2025-2028 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA)! The teams met on Wednesday to discuss Article 23, Salaries, and after several rounds of proposals and a clear signal that the BOT team was at the limit, we settled on the following:   Final Promotions (already implemented) 12% / 15% Sustained Performance Increase (SPI) for top ranked specialized faculty every 5 years 3% Post-Tenure Review: Professors 3% Meets / 5% Exceeds Post-Tenure Review: Associate Professors $4,000 Bonus Meets / $6,000 Bonus Exceeds Performance  1.75% Department Merit  0.50% Deans’ Merit 0% Market Equity $0 Performance Bonus $1,000 Administrative

Dear Colleagues, We have good news to report from last week (August 21)’s bargaining session. After many weeks of negotiations, the UFF and Board of Trustees teams have tentatively agreed to language on Articles 17 (Leaves) and 18 (Inventions and Works).  Article 18 (Inventions and Works) We finally arrived at a definition of “Scope of Employment” and on language that covers disputes of intellectual property ownership. Both faculty and the administration agreed that this new language was fair and clear. It was also vetted by our union’s lawyers at FEA. Scope of Employment refers to the range of duties, responsibilities, and activities reasonably expected as part of a faculty member’s university

Dear colleagues, At last week’s second bargaining session (on Thursday, August 14) we made even more progress on Article 17 (Leaves) and I think that we are very close to agreement. We also took a baby step in our salary negotiations—the administration has moved from 1.7% raises up to 1.8% raises (combined across-the-board and departmental merit). Here is a more detailed summary of what transpired.  Article 17 (Leaves) At our last update, we let you know that the administration has agreed to our proposal that FSU: This week we got them to agree to two more things that we have been insisting upon:  Under the existing system, most faculty were never able

Dear colleagues, I am happy to report some progress in bargaining this week: we made substantial improvements to both Article 17 (Leaves) and to Article 18 (Inventions and Works) during our August 11 bargaining session. I wish I had good news to report about Article 23 (Salaries), but the administration is still only offering a total of 1.7% raises (combined across-the-board and departmental merit), but we will be back at the bargaining table tomorrow (Thursday) at 3:00. More on all that below. Article 18 (Inventions and Works) After going back and forth and hearing our Vice President for Research’s concerns about adhering to rapidly changing federal laws or possibly losing the ability