Dear FSU Colleagues:

On Monday, July 1, the UFF team presented the BOT team with our latest salary proposal, and after a caucus, the BOT team proposed a salary counter proposal along with Article 10 (Performance Evaluations), which once again includes PTR, and a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) that counters our Article 20 (Grievances and Arbitration) proposal from 6/27. They presented their proposals as a package deal, meaning they bundled the remaining outstanding proposals together. Details are below.

Regarding Article 10 (Performance Evaluations), the BOT team had agreed on Thursday, 6/27, to separate the Post-Tenure Review (PTR) process into an MOA, but by Monday, they changed their position due to a very unfortunate and problematic decision by the Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC); the full commission completely reversed the PERC hearing officer’s recommendation that the FSU administration committed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) by implementing PTR without bargaining the regulation. As such, the BOT team reasoned that they have an obligation to move forward with the Board of Governors’ (BOG) draconian PTR proposal that essentially reduces tenure to five-year contracts by inserting it into the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) even though it violates several other articles, including the tenure and academic freedom articles. We are consulting with our legal team to determine the next step(s).  

For Article 20 (Grievances and Arbitration), the BOT team proposed an MOA that outlines a one-year pilot program that would allow for a Step 3 mediation ONLY for suspensions, demotions, and terminations that did not go through the process outlined in Article 16 (Discipline). While we certainly appreciate that the administration is willing to try mediation, most grievances — as we explained multiple times — are not about discipline, but rather in response to other violations of faculty rights spelled out in the CBA. Please see our last bargaining report for a list of examples, including disputes over assignments, starting salaries, or supervisor overreach, among others.

For Article 23 (Salaries), the chart with each team’s ninth salary proposal is below. Places where each team changed their previous offer are in bold.

A few notes regarding salaries:

·         Despite our reservations regarding differentiating between Meets and Exceeds because there were no clear PTR criteria, we proposed smaller salary differentials between Meets and Exceeds.

·         The UFF team proposed that all Professors who were eligible to receive SPI this year should receive it if they hadn’t gone through PTR. The BOT team is proposing that the Professors who were eligible for SPI this year can go to the front of the line for PTR this upcoming year.

·         The BOT team once again struck our proposal that no faculty member at a full FTE should be paid less than $44,000, yet again stating that faculty paid below $44,000 are being paid market rate. They refused to give us any references to where their research is coming from. Our own research suggests a different amount for market rate, and we believe that paying faculty below cost of living in Florida is unjust.

A HUGE THANK YOU to all who attended via Zoom. We appreciate your support! And we’d love to see you in person, especially as we continue discussing salaries, PTR, and the all-important grievance procedure. We seriously consider all feedback on the bargaining process to obtain the best deal for all members of the bargaining unit. Please join us at our next bargaining session scheduled for Wednesday, July 17, from 2–5 in the Training Center across from the stadium and make your voice heard by joining your faculty union.

All the best,

Scott Hannahs, Research Faculty III, National High Magnetic Field Lab

Jennifer Proffitt, Professor, Communication

Co-Chief Negotiators, UFF-FSU

On behalf of your UFF-FSU Bargaining Team

Dear FSU Colleagues:

On June 27, the two teams met and made some positive progress, tentatively agreeing to one article and getting very close to agreeing to another. We also passed salary proposals back and forth across the table.

To begin, the UFF team suggested moving Post-Tenure Review (PTR) out of Article 10 (Performance Evaluations) to a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) that we can work on after finishing regular bargaining. We think it is problematic to put the article in the contract when it contradicts other articles that are not currently open for negotiations. The administration agreed with our suggestion to take PTR out of Article 10, so the two teams appear close to tentatively agreeing to the remaining changes, including replacing the current five-point annual evaluation scale to a four-point scale, and annual evaluations would now be submitted to the Vice President for Faculty Development and Advancement to serve as a check to be sure that all colleges and departments are following the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) (currently, the evaluations stay at the college level).

The teams did tentatively agree to changes to Article 22 (Sabbaticals and Professional Development Leave), which gives non-instructional specialized faculty more flexibility to split professional development leave (PDL) into smaller chunks of time and retains PDL eligibility to every three years.

For Article 20 (Grievances and Arbitration), the UFF team previously proposed two different potential processes to allow for a third party or neutral perspective at Step 3 of a grievance, which we believe is necessary because the legislature banned arbitration for personnel issues. The BOT team struck both of them (NIRD and Peer Panels). At this meeting, we proposed a third process: allowing for a mediator to help resolve grievances during Step 3, and if the two sides cannot come to an agreement, the mediator would prepare a report for the FSU President to consider before the President makes the final decision (the legislation deems university presidents to be the final arbiter of grievances). We are hopeful that the administration is seriously considering our new proposal.

The teams are still quite far apart when it comes to Article 23 (Salaries), but we are slowly moving in the right direction. 

Here’s the weekly chart. This chart includes our 8^th salary proposal and the BOT team’s counter proposal to it. Places where each team changed their previous offer are in bold.

A couple of notes regarding our latest salary proposal.

·         Knowing that some faculty have had to go through the PTR process this year and have received their letters, we have proposed numbers in this proposal. We argued that it is not fair to differentiate between Meets and Exceeds because there were no clear criteria, so faculty did not know what they would be evaluated on for this process, which is why there’s no distinction between Meets and Exceeds in our proposals.

·         We are also proposing that no faculty member at a full FTE should be paid less than $44,000, which would be consistent with the U.S. Department of Labor’s new rules regarding overtime exemption. The BOT team has struck our proposal each time we’ve proposed this, stating that faculty who make less than $44,000 are being paid market rate for their job position. Yet, they are not willing to share with us how they computed the market rate of these low-paid faculty positions.

·         We are glad to see that the administration agreed to adding some criteria for deans’ merit and that they proposed that faculty would be able to request a short explanation regarding the deans’ rationale for their deans’ merit increase.

A HUGE THANK YOU to all who attended via Zoom. We appreciate your support! And we’d love to see you in person, especially as we continue discussing salaries. We seriously consider all feedback on the bargaining process to obtain the best deal for all members of the bargaining unit.

Please join us at bargaining today, July 1, from 2–5 in the Training Center across from the stadium and make your voice heard by joining your faculty union.

All the best,

Scott Hannahs, Research Faculty III, National High Magnetic Field Lab

Jennifer Proffitt, Professor, Communication

Co-Chief Negotiators, UFF-FSU

Dear colleagues,

Our tenth bargaining session of this bargaining season was held on Friday, June 21. Here’s an update on where we are in the process.

Synopsis:

• We passed salary offers back and forth, making modest gains in both the amount of raise allotted and the categories of raise funded.
• We made further progress on the Sabbaticals and Leaves article, which—both sides now agree—will provide more flexibility for specialized faculty without reducing the frequency of their leaves. Only a few details remain.
• We discussed new ideas for mitigating the legislature’s removal of arbitration for personnel matters, creating a situation where faculty cannot appeal to a neutral umpire as part of the grievance process. The administration again handed us an evaluations article that, again, echoed all of the Board of Governors’ and FSU Board of Trustees’ regulations, including placing tenured faculty at risk of losing their jobs (which might happen to as many as 21% of UF faculty’s that went through PTR this year). We are still waiting (as we have been since March) for the full Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC) board to rule on this clear violation of our contract.

If you want to help us advocate for better and fairer salaries, for the protection of tenure, and for faculty governance, there’s no better way to do so than joining your union. And if you’re already a member, WE THANK YOU for your support! We would also welcome your greater involvement. As a music theorist, I certainly had no special skills when I became involved. But as academics, I imagine we’re all pretty good at learning on the job.

Okay, on to the details:

Article 10 (Performance Evaluations):

There was one new proposal by the administration and, at least on its surface, it seems like a good one: currently, our annual evaluations don’t move beyond our deans/directors. They propose that evaluations would now be seen by the Vice President for Faculty Development and Advancement (currently Janet Kistner). They claim that this would serve as a check to be sure that all colleges and departments are following the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). If so, that added step might prevent complaints down the line.

Despite that slightly new verse, the administration team was still singing the same chorus we’ve been hearing since before this season of bargaining even began: they claim that they need to follow the Board of Governor’s regulation and put its language on Post-Tenure Review (PTR) into the contract, despite the facts that:

• it clearly violates other (non-open) articles in our contract,
• the BOG is not party to our negotiations, and
• the preliminary findings by the PERC hearing officer were in our favor, stating that the BOT has committed an unfair labor practice by instituting PTR prior to the conclusion of negotiations, needed to “cease and desist” and pay our legal fees.

Article 20 (Grievances and Arbitration):

We were frustrated by last week’s negotiations on this important article. To recapitulate: the legislature has kneecapped our ability to seek arbitration in the rare instances where grievances are not settled at the university level… and at the university level the administration holds all the cards (they decide, after all). We have been trying to mitigate this legislative attack on our right to seek the judgment of a neutral umpire, and we really (perhaps naïvely) thought that our latest attempt would be embraced by the administration, which surely doesn’t want to appear to favor autocratic justice. Our latest attempt didn’t remove any rights from the administration or give any new rights to faculty; it simply offered faculty the option of seeking the opinion of a Faculty Senate (not union) peer panel to hear their case and make a recommendation to the President before the final decision was rendered. It would provide the faculty and the administration the opinion of a neutral jury before the president makes a final decision and before the faculty member perhaps pursues a court appeal.

We began by quoting from John Budd’s 2021 textbook, Labor Relations: Striking a Balance:

“Unilateral management control undermines the whole point of collective bargaining: Without a balanced dispute resolution procedure for grievances, workers and workplace justice are at the mercy of employers and markets, which is exactly the situation that the NLRA and public sector bargaining laws seek to improve upon.” (Budd, 321.)

The administration had previously crossed off our peer panel proposal, saying that it duplicates a peer panel option in Article 16 (Discipline), but we pointed out that most grievances are not about discipline. Co-Chair Jennifer Proffitt offered a litany of examples of recent grievances (anonymized), highlighting issues such summer course assignments, faculty who have been prohibited from participating in governance, timing of family leave, intellectual property rights, and faculty improperly not being allowed to apply for promotion. After making what seemed like a pretty good case (yes, I’m biased), an attorney on their side referred to our proposal as “nonsensical” and stated that they tuned out as Jennifer was enumerating cases that demonstrate the need for a peer panel that considers issues other than discipline.

Perhaps my sense of what makes sense is askew? Perhaps we were boring? (I think we were scintillating!) But, as we’re the only ones in the room who are regularly evaluated (rewarded, even!) on our teaching skills, I’m guessing that the problem isn’t ours. Come to a bargaining session and see for yourself! We’ll hone our proposal and try again tomorrow (2–5 in the Training Center). We truly believe that our proposal benefits both faculty and administrators.

Article 23 (Salaries):

We are ever closer to agreement on salaries, though Post-Tenure Review remains a stumbling block. We are trying to find a way that we can agree on the reward amount for PTR, even if we cannot come to agreement on the procedure. (Again, PTR itself is a legislative mandate; the way they’re going about it is not.) We appreciate that the BOT has now agreed to devote some money toward market equity, which helps faculty who are compressed or inverted compared to their more junior colleagues.

Here’s the weekly chart! I’ve boldfaced places where each team changed their previous offer.

So it goes. Please join us at bargaining tomorrow (Thursday, June 27) from 2–5 in the Training Center across from the stadium and make your voice heard by joining your faculty union.

In solidarity,

Michael Buchler, Professor of Music Theory, FSU College of Music

On behalf of your UFF-FSU Collective Bargaining Team

Dear colleagues,

Today we will be bargaining from 2-5pm at the Training Center across from the stadium. If you are a member, please join us in person if you can. If you can’t join in person, you may want to attend on Zoom via this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88528923845?pwd=YnRNajhhb01HMVBlQTJDRmRqQlVqdz09#success

Our ninth bargaining session of this bargaining season was held on Wednesday, June 12. Here’s an update on where we are in the process.

Summary:

• We exchanged salary proposals four times. See table below.
• We received new proposals from the BOT on Article 20 (Grievance Procedure and Arbitration) and Article 22 (Sabbatical and Professional Development Leave).
• We presented a new proposal on Article 10 (Performance Evaluations), which includes Post-Tenure Review (PTR).

I’ll expand on these articles below, but I encourage you to have a look at the draft contract language on these Articles and to let us know if you have any questions or comments. As always, joining the union is one of the best ways you can help us advocate for faculty rights and for better pay and benefits. And we encourage you to join us at the next bargaining session: this coming Friday, June 21 at 2:00 in the Training Center across from the stadium. As always, we will also stream it via Zoom.

On to the summaries:

Article 23 (Salaries):

The UFF-FSU team started the ball rolling with our fifth proposal. The highlights of the back and forth are:

1. The UFF insists on keeping the performance increase 3.2% to adjust for inflation. The BOT team marginally increased their latest offer to 2.0%.
2. We maintain our position that there should be no difference between “Meets” and “Exceeds” Expectations in the PTR salary increase.
3. On departmental merit, we came down from 2.0% to 1.5%. UFF values merit, in line with what faculty have told us in the faculty poll. We believe that departmental merit has clear criteria set out in each department/unit’s bylaws.
4. We offered 0.2% for dean’s merit. However, we insist that the dean’s merit must be in specific categories: extraordinary accomplishments, correcting inequity, or contributions not sufficiently recognized by the department. Additionally, we proposed that the faculty member and the UFF should be informed about the specific category of the raise accompanied with a short description.
5. We continue to advocate for market equity raises to help reduce salary compression and inversion. The BOT team continues to zero out this category.

I’ve boldfaced places where each team changed their previous offer.

Article 22 (Sabbatical and Professional Development Leave)

The BOT agreed to keep the Professional Development Leave (PDL) eligibility at every 3 years and accepted the application steps we laid out in our last proposal, including PDL for non-instructional faculty in smaller increments. Moreover, they accepted that a PDL application shall go directly to the administration with a letter from the chair and a chair cannot unilaterally reject it. However, they didn’t accept the roll-over clause for denied applications. The roll-over clause grants a PDL the following year, if it is denied this year for staffing considerations or other reasons. A similar clause exists for sabbaticals.

Article 20 (Grievance Procedure and Arbitration)

Our offer from last week introduced a peer review panel that takes to replace the arbitration process which is currently prohibited by Florida Statues. Our proposed peer panel is similar to the peer review panel in the Article 16 (Disciplinary Action and Job Abandonment) but channels it through the Faculty Senate Grievance committee, which is available to the out-of-unit faculty. Even though the recommendation of the peer panel is not binding in our proposal, the BOT rejected the panel, raising concern about duplication of the peer panel when the grievance is about a temporary or permanent suspension of a faculty member. We pointed out that the grievance may not be always about discipline and can be about infringement of faculty rights.

Article 10 (Performance Evaluations):

In the last bargaining session, the BOT elected to withdraw their previous Article 10 proposal and substitute it with a new one. The new one has a long list of evidence that can distinguish between different ratings, i.e., Meet Expectations and Exceeds Expectations. While the BOT team specifies that the long list of evidence is composed of examples (not an exhaustive list), we found a lot of it vague and arbitrary, as – for example — when it poses that faculty should be in the top 20% of their discipline and their unit to receive a ranking of “Exceeds Expectations.” Does anybody out there know of a list that ranks all faculty in a discipline one by one? None of us knew of such a list. We did not accept their proposal and our new proposal refers to the criteria and evidence that is laid out in department bylaws as suggested in Article 10 for annual evaluations. We understand that different disciplines have completely different criteria, and this can well be addressed in the department bylaws and be reflected in the chair’s letter to the dean, with faculty input.

That’s all folks! Please join us at bargaining this coming Friday and make your voice heard by joining your faculty union.

In solidarity,

Arash Fahim, Associate Professor of Mathematics, FSU College of Arts & Sciences

On behalf of your UFF-FSU Collective Bargaining Team

Dear colleagues,

Our eighth bargaining session of this bargaining season was held on Tuesday, June 4. Here’s an update on where we are in the process.

The short of it is that we tentatively agreed to language in Article 21 (Other Faculty Rights), went back and forth four times with salary proposals, and we received a new proposal from the BOT on Article 10 (Performance Evaluations) that enumerates criteria for each Post-Tenure Review (PTR) ranking. I’ll say more about each of these articles below, but—beyond my summaries—I encourage you to have a look at the draft contract language (especially Article 10) and to let us know if you have any questions or comments. As always, joining the union is one of the best ways you can help us advocate for faculty rights and for better pay and benefits. And we encourage you to join us at the next bargaining session: this coming Wednesday, June 12 at 2:00 in the Training Center across from the stadium. As always, we will also stream it via Zoom.

On to the summaries:

Article 21 (Other Faculty Rights): what we have tentatively agreed to doesn’t go as far as we might like in testing every building periodically for radon or in protecting faculty against active shooters, but it offers a lot more than we’ve seen in the past. In particular, the BOT agreed to better-defined radon mitigation practices and “the University administration, with input from law enforcement, faculty, and staff, will review safety protocols and make recommendations for classroom and building safety in the case of an active shooter. A preliminary report will be provided to the parties by December 31, 2024, with a final report by the end of the 2024-2025 academic year.” We are glad to get a definite date on this so that any change won’t be stalled by study after study with no end in sight. The BOT team also crossed off our proposal to consider letting faculty park in unoccupied student spaces. We continue to push for more accessible parking for faculty through other means.

Article 10 (Performance Evaluations):

The administration’s team elected to withdraw their previous Article 10 proposal and substitute it with a new one. As you might recall, we notified them last week that we didn’t see much point in continuing to pass this one across the table until the full PERC rules on our unfair labor practice complaint (regarding enacting PTR without bargaining it). The administration’s new version continues to echo the Board of Governors’ and FSU Board of Trustees’ regulations, including placing tenured faculty at risk of losing their jobs without due process and subjecting faculty to a second disciplinary review for already decided disciplinary cases (double jeopardy).

That said, we encourage you to go through this new proposal (particularly pp. 12–15, where you’ll find the new additions). It answers a persistent UFF criticism that PTR rankings are done without any published criteria for what exceeding, meeting, or not meeting expectations entails. What are these expectations? The administration has enumerated examples of what might lead faculty to be (differentially) rated. They presented this long litany at the end of the day’s bargaining session, so we didn’t really have time to analyze them, but we encourage you to let us know what you find particularly welcome or problematic (again, focus on pp. 12–15 of this PDF). Your comments are always very helpful as we strategize and craft counterproposals for the next bargaining session.

Article 23 (Salaries):

The UFF-FSU team started the ball rolling on Tuesday with a response on salaries (our third such proposal), followed throughout the afternoon by subsequent responses from them, then us, then them. We’ve now had four rounds and the ball is back in our court. Rather than constructing a narrative, you can see who proposed what and how we/they responded in the chart below. I’ll highlight just four points:

1. Although the BOT has increased the amounts for PTR raises, they still insist on differential raises/bonuses depending on whether faculty are found to meet or exceed expectations (see Article 10 above for what those expectations might be), something we have repeatedly resisted.
2. The BOT team agreed to offer SPI raises to specialized faculty at the highest rank every five years (instead of the current seven-year cycle), matching the PTR evaluation/compensation cycle. Hooray!!
3. In the fourth round, we responded to one of their priorities by offering a small amount of deans’ merit, but only on condition that the deans specify what category of our work was meritorious. The BOT team has not ruled out including guidelines, but also hasn’t (yet) gone quite as far toward transparency as we proposed. We also asked that the two categories of merit raises (departmental versus deans’) be specified in faculty’s “compensation history” on my.fsu.edu. Currently, that just shows “merit raises.” We’re trying to take this out of the black box and make sure faculty receive feedback on why they did or didn’t receive deans’ merit.
4. We continue to advocate for market equity raises to help reduce salary compression and inversion. They continue to resist funding this category.

The upshot: even if it’s slow, there’s progress and movement on both sides. I’ve boldfaced places where each team changed their previous offer.

That’s all folks! Please join us at bargaining this coming Wednesday and make your voice heard by joining your faculty union.

In solidarity,

Michael Buchler, Professor of Music Theory, FSU College of Music

On behalf of your UFF-FSU Collective Bargaining Team