Dear colleagues,

We had our seventh bargaining session of this bargaining season on May 29. Here’s an update on where we are in the process.

Your UFF faculty team decided that it was not productive to keep passing the same proposals on evaluations (Article 10) back and forth across the table until PERC (the Public Employees Relations Commission) rules on our claim that the Board of Governors’ and our Board of Trustees’ regulation on post-tenure review is an unfair labor practice. To recap: the hearing officer sided with us back in March, but the full PERC board has yet to rule. We don’t know when they’ll hand down their decision. The university is saying they are just following the law, but we believe they are exceeding the law. The PERC Hearing Officer said that the university “should have known better” than to implement post-tenure review without bargaining, should “cease and desist,” and must pay us back legal fees. We hope the full commission will affirm our clear right to collectively bargain the BOT’s regulation and will not allow tenure to be undermined by arbitrary legislative and administrative fiat.

In bargaining Article 20 (grievances), we changed our direction and proposed a different substitute for arbitration (which, for personnel matters, has been outlawed by our state legislature). We suggested that the Faculty Senate Grievance Committee could play a role in hearing appeals to grievance decisions. The peer panel’s decision would not be binding, but it would provide another set of faculty voices to help inform the President’s final ruling. Ultimately, we hope that the legislature’s new law will be ruled unconstitutional in the lawsuit we brought, but meanwhile we will do what we can to try to prevent administrators from holding all the cards. We earnestly believe that administrators should not want to hold that much power; where one side has unchecked power, the potential for claims of abuse is high.

Let’s talk about salaries (Article 23): the administration improved slightly upon their previous offer, raising departmental merit to 0.75% (from 0.5%) and sticking with 0.5% in “dean’s merit” (= raises that are distributed by the deans alone, with no guidelines or faculty input) and a 1.5% “performance increase” (effectively an across-the-board raise to everyone rated above “official concern”). Even in aggregate, their offer doesn’t come close to this year’s 3.2% increase in cost of living. And it doesn’t include any money for market equity adjustments for long-serving faculty who are still compressed or inverted compared with their more recently hired colleagues.

The BOT team also doubled down on their proposal to reward faculty who have gone through post-tenure review in ways that we find upsettingly lopsided: associate professors would get a bonus of $2,000 or $4,000, depending upon whether they’ve been rated as meeting or exceeding expectations and full professors would receive a 4% or 2% salary bump. Again, we reject the notion that they need to have differential rankings for faculty who pass the PTR evaluation. Just like we don’t get ranked when going up for promotion (you get it or you don’t), we don’t need to be ranked here, especially when these expectations that we’re said to meet or exceed are not only completely undefined, but the administration refuses to define them. Adding insult to injury, the 2% raise is smaller than the 3% Sustained Performance Increase that full professors would previously have gotten (and which specialized faculty are still slated to receive) without the bureaucratic calisthenics and existential dread of PTR. Our position is clear: everyone who goes through this should get the same reward. We think 3%—the same as an SPI raise—is fair.

We hope you will join us at bargaining this week on Tuesday (not Wednesday), June 4 at 2:00 at the Stadium Training Center, which can be accessed from Stadium Drive (across from the stadium) or from Jackson Bluff (across from the Palace Saloon). Or feel free to join us on Zoom at his link.

And if you haven’t already done so, please join your colleagues in the union and help us fight for the rights and well-being of every faculty member.

In solidarity,

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

On behalf of your UFF-FSU Collective Bargaining Team

Dear FSU Colleagues,

On May 22, we finally received a response to our salary offer from April 3. We also talked about Article 20 (Grievances and Arbitration), Article 21 (Other Faculty Rights), and Article 22 (Sabbaticals and Professional Development Leave). Let’s begin with salaries:

As a reminder, the two teams are quite far apart when it comes to Post-Tenure Review. The BOT team continues to propose the draconian PTR guidelines passed by the Board of Governors that basically reduce tenure to five-year contracts. The BOT salary proposal splits PTR between four categories: Associate Professors who Meet Expectations would only receive a $2000 bonus for receiving Meets Expectations; Associate Professors who Exceed Expectations would only receive a $4000 bonus; Professors who Meet Expectations would receive a 2% raise to base salary; Professors who Exceed Expectations would receive a 4% raise to base salary. One of our major concerns is that there are no criteria to distinguish between Meets Expectations and Exceeds Expectations. If you are a tenured faculty member, you could receive Exceeds FSU’s High Expectations or Substantially Exceeds FSU’s High Expectations for the past 5 annual evaluations but can receive a PTR rating of Meets Expectations and not know why as the decision is arbitrary. Furthermore, the BOT PTR proposal includes Does Not Meet Expectations, which means you only get one year to improve or be dismissed, and Unsatisfactory, which would mean you are dismissed immediately.

UFF’s proposal is based on annual evaluations and only has two categories: Meets or Does Not Meet Expectations. Everyone who Meets Expectations would receive a 3% raise, and those who do not receive a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP).

For specialized faculty, the BOT’s Sustained Performance Increase proposal of 3% to base only includes the top rank every 7 years, which is status quo. The UFF proposal includes the top two ranks every 5 years.

For the performance increases, the UFF proposal is based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data on inflation, which was 3.2% at the time we made our first proposal on April 3. The BOT team proposed just 1.5%, effectively an “across the board” salary reduction of 1.7%.

When it comes to merit, UFF had proposed that 4% of the total salary base (around $8 million) be allocated based on department merit criteria. The BOT proposal only includes 0.50% for department merit and another 0.50% that is divided according to whatever the deans determine is worthy of merit this year, (and each dean has their own unknown criteria when allocating this money). UFF does not agree with deans’ merit without clear and transparent criteria so that faculty know how they are being evaluated for such merit—it’s impossible to work toward meeting unstated criteria. For our counter, we proposed 3% department merit and no arbitrary deans’ merit. The UFF is not willing to waive the right for criteria determining merit to the administration. Instead, the administration, if they so desire, can give discretionary raises though Administrative Discretionary Increases (ADI).

For Market Equity, which remains a $14 million problem, the UFF team had proposed $2.5 million allocated to market equity. The BOT team proposed zero. If we want to continue to be competitive, fixing the market equity problem is key. Performance raises less than the rate of inflation only exacerbates the problem. In our counter, we proposed $2 million.

As a last item, the BOT team removed the $40,000 (~$20/hr) salary rate floor that the UFF had proposed for all faculty.

The other proposals will sound similar to the previous week’s proposals. For grievances and arbitration, the BOT team’s proposal once again rejected our NIRD proposal that would allow for an independent panel at Step 3 of a grievance (our proposal is based on a process already in place at FIU); the BOT proposal inserted language from the law that was passed that eliminated arbitration, and thus, the final decision regarding grievances that deal with personnel issues would be made by the University President.

For Other Faculty Rights, the BOT team agreed to our request of retesting buildings that had radon issues no less than 10 years after the previous test, but not to our request that all buildings be tested every 10 years. Our last proposal asked them to reconsider their position.

For Sabbaticals and Professional Development Leave, the UFF team once again proposed that Professional Development Leave remain at every 3 years, as it has been for many years without issue.

Our next bargaining session is scheduled for Wednesday, May 29, from 2-5 at the FSU Training Center (across from the stadium). We greatly appreciate those of you who attend bargaining. The BOT team notices when faculty attend sessions, so if you can, please plan to attend in person, or you can attend online; we will send the Zoom link before the next bargaining session.

The key to a strong Collective Bargaining Agreement is you! If you are not a member, please join. If you have questions about membership, please contact [email protected].

All the best,

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

Jennifer Proffitt, Professor, Communication

Co-Chief Negotiators, UFF-FSU

Dear FSU Colleagues:

The two teams met to bargain on Wednesday, May 15, and to cut to the chase, we still haven’t heard anything about salaries, despite the fact that we were told (four weeks ago) that we should expect a response three weeks ago. As noted last week, we are, as always, especially eager to bargain salaries, and we were told Wednesday that we may see a salary proposal at next week’s bargaining session. What we did discuss was Article 20 (Grievance Procedure and Arbitration), Article 21 (Other Faculty Rights), and Article 22 (Sabbatical and Professional Development Leave).

As discussed in a previous bargaining update, due to recent legislation that prohibits arbitration for personnel issues (please note that this is currently being challenged in court), we had presented a new process called the Neutral Internal Resolution of Disputes Procedure (NIRD) that would allow for a neutral third party to adjudicate a grievance that was not resolved satisfactorily at the Step 2 level. Without a process like NIRD, the final decision would be determined by the University President, which can certainly be problematic when it comes to fairness and due process. A grievance process where the review of the decision is by the same decision maker is fatally flawed. It is rare that a grievance moves to the final level (Step 3), but nonetheless, a neutral process is essential to ensure impartiality in decision making. The BOT team deleted the NIRD in their last proposal. We added it back.

We are very close when it comes to Article 21, which covers environmental and safety issues. The BOT team agreed with our safety proposal, which calls for a review of FSU’s campus safety plan with input from faculty and staff. However, the BOT team’s proposal did not outline how often buildings would be evaluated for radon. Ours does.

For Article 22, the BOT team agreed to codify a specialized faculty process for determining who receives a one semester full-pay Professional Development Leave. However, the BOT once again proposed changing how often specialized faculty members could apply for Professional Development leave from every 3 years, as it has been for many years without concern, to every 6 years. We heard from several specialized faculty members who were alarmed by the move from 3 to 6 years. If you are a specialized faculty member who has an opinion about the BOT’s proposal, please contact us.

Our next bargaining session is scheduled for this Wednesday, May 22, from 2-5 at the FSU Training Center (across from the stadium). We greatly appreciate those of you who attend bargaining. The BOT team notices when faculty attend sessions, so if you can, please plan to attend in person, or you can attend online; we will send the Zoom link before the next bargaining session.

The key to a strong Collective Bargaining Agreement is you! If you are not a member, please join. If you have questions about membership, please contact [email protected].

All the best,

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

Jennifer Proffitt, Professor, Communication

Co-Chief Negotiators, UFF-FSU

Dear colleagues,

First, we hope that you all made it through Friday’s storms in good shape! Our parent union, the Florida Education Association, has a page of resources for people who need help during natural disasters. Please don’t hesitate to reach out for assistance.

On to the update, which I’m afraid will sound a lot like recent weeks’ updates. We still haven’t heard anything about salaries, despite the fact that we were told (three weeks ago) to expect a response two weeks ago. We are, as always, especially eager to bargain salaries long before our fall contracts begin. All raises—including those for promotions and post-tenure review—hang in the balance.

And speaking of post-tenure review (PTR), your UFF-FSU team proposed a simple and very clear algorithm for PTR in Article 10 (Evaluations). Here is the version that we proposed (look at the new material on p. 10), and here is the version that the BOT offered in response (look at pp. 10–12). Our proposal adheres to the law passed last year by the Florida legislature but removes all the draconian measures that we believe have been unconstitutionally imposed by the Florida Board of Governors. See last week’s update for the litany of terrible things that the BOG wants to inflict (e.g., removal of due process, double jeopardy for disciplinary action, and the effective end of tenure and its important protections).

If you’d like some legal context, here is what the legislature passed, mandating PTR (search for “tenure” and read part (6)(b) on pp. 5–6 of the pdf, which lists four criteria for evaluating PTR). Compare that to the BOG’s regulation on PTR, which, like poison ivy in Tallahassee, perennially regrows, no matter how many times—and in how many ways—you remove it. In particular, you might note that the legislature specified that the BOG’s plan must include “recognition and compensation considerations, as well as improvement plans and consequences for underperformance.” Well, the BOG simply decreed that there will be compensation (A raise? A bonus? A $1.79 Wal-Mart gift card? Who knows?! We won’t have any idea what FSU intends until they pass a salary offer—Article 23—across the table) and their idea of an improvement plan is simply that you’ll be fired if you’ve been declared “unsatisfactory.” I know that none of the BOG appointees ever meanders anywhere near an actual classroom, which is just as well: can you imagine if they had to make a syllabus and articulate grading policies?

In other news, we agreed with the administration’s proposal that we adopt a four-point evaluation scale (instead of our current five-point scale), but we steadfastly pushed back on their attempt to double the amount of time specialized faculty must wait between Professional Development Leaves (see Article 22, Sabbaticals and Professional Development Leaves). We also came closer to agreement on both environmental and violence protection measures for faculty and staff (see Article 21, Other Faculty Rights). We are, however, further from agreement on Article 20 (Grievance Procedure and Arbitration). We want an in-house procedure (that Neutral Internal Resolution of Disputes Procedure [yes, NIRD], detailed two weeks ago) to resolve disputes; they think it would be better if faculty skipped the whole grievance process and went directly to court over personnel disputes. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised that lawyers would advocate for more lawsuits, but since one of their lawyers helped write the original NIRD language during FIU’s collective bargaining, we naïvely imagined that that they would approve of their own language. We assumed that they would also rather avoid litigation, but perhaps their lawyers give them a bulk discount.

That’s the pith of it. Let us know your thoughts, join your union to help make us stronger, and come again to bargaining this week in person or online. Same Bat Time (2:00 on Wednesday); same Bat Zoom Link.

In solidarity,

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

On behalf of your UFF-FSU Collective Bargaining Team

Dear colleagues,

On Wednesday, May 1, the UFF-FSU and BOT teams met for our fourth collective bargaining session devoted to our 2024–25 contract. Thanks to all those who attended and offered input and comments!

If you’re looking for salary updates, you’ll be disappointed to hear that we still haven’t received a response from the administration to the proposal we submitted four weeks ago. Further, the BOT has still refused to back down over a draconian post-tenure review (PTR) policy that PERC’s Hearing Officer has said that they are implementing illegally in his Recommended Order. The full PERC has not yet ruled on the recommended order.  This week’s topics were performance evaluations (including post-tenure review) and faculty safety—with a bonus foray into improving faculty parking on campus. Read on for summaries and click the links to see the actual articles with the proposed changes.

Details

Article 10 (Performance Evaluations): The administration team kicked things off by handing us a revised version of Article 10, which included a number of interesting morsels and one regurgitated serving of post-tenure review:

• The administration suggests reducing the number of annual evaluation rating categories from five to four, eliminating “substantially exceeds” and also eliminating the lofty sounding “FSU’s high expectations” from every category. The proposed new ratings would be:
  • Exceeds expectations;
  • Meets expectations;
  • Official concern; and
  • Does not meet expectations.
• For faculty eligible for promotion and/or tenure, the administration proposes that annual appraisals of progress may be combined with the narratives that accompany our annual evaluations.
• For faculty who wish to appeal their annual evaluations, the administration proposes a two-step appeal process rather than the current three-step process. Currently, faculty may appeal their evaluations to (1) the “appropriate higher-level reviewer (dean or equivalent),” then (2) to the Vice President for Faculty Development and Advancement (presently Dr. Janet Kistner), and then we may (3) have that decision reviewed by the Provost (presently Dr. Jim Clark). The BOT proposes that we skip step (2) and appeal college-level decisions directly to the Provost or their designee.
• And, finally, the BOT reinserted all the BOG-constructed language on Post-Tenure Review into the contract, despite the PERC Hearing Officer’s Recommended Order finding “the FSU-BOT committed an unfair labor practice by making unilateral changes to a mandatory subject of bargaining.” That unilateral change has reared its head again. The University maintains that they must follow whatever the BOG says, despite the fact that the BOG is not a party to our contract. Most egregiously, this language includes both double jeopardy for any faculty who have been subject to discipline (it can re-emerge during post-tenure review and lead to dismissal) and it allows faculty to be fired without due process. It does not allow for faculty input on the evaluation, leaving your fate mostly to your chair and your dean on their own, though the provost weighs in at the end, and it does not mention criteria for review or tie reviews to any prior evaluations, so the process is arbitrary. Your union is challenging this issue all over the state and will continue to fight this clear threat to tenure, both in the bargaining room and in the courts. Maintaining tenure matters to the entire university—its reputation, its ability to recruit good students and faculty, its research agenda, its ability to get grants, and its ability to maintain a climate conducive to academic freedom for all faculty.

Article 21 (Other Faculty Rights): Your faculty union bargaining team proposed the following improvements to our contract:

• We specified that buildings where radon mitigation systems have been installed should be periodically inspected by a “Radon Mitigation Specialist certified by the Florida Department of Health.”
• We proposed a joint labor-management committee to study “tangible and practicable measures for protecting faculty, staff, and students in classrooms, labs, libraries, and offices from armed aggressors…” and we specified that the University shall implement the plan no later than June 1, 2025. We acknowledge the need to study the issue before acting, but studies can be endless and we want to enforce a reasonable deadline for making improvements.
• We tried to alleviate what appears to be an increasingly difficult parking situation by specifying that our faculty and staff parking permits will allow us “parking privileges to any unreserved parking space on campus, whether designated as faculty/staff or student.”

We will meet again to bargain on Wednesday, May 8 from 2:00–5:00 at the Training Center across from the stadium. Will we see the administration’s long-awaited response on salaries? Will we create a post-tenure review system that is less burdensome and perilous to faculty? Will we have more places to park our vehicles? Tune in via Zoom or come join us in person! (There’s actually plenty of parking there!) We’d love to hear your ideas about your contract. And we greatly appreciate your membership. If you haven’t yet joined, please do. Your membership helps us bargain a better contract and it helps us protect members by enforcing that contract vigorously.

In solidarity,

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

On behalf of your UFF-FSU Collective Bargaining Team