Another Legislative Session, Another Cut

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The Florida Legislature has imposed yet another compensation cut on many faculty members. This year it wasn’t a pay cut per se, but a substantial cut in benefits to members of defined-contribution retirement plans, namely ORP and FRS Florida Investment Plan participants. We are still studying the details of a bill passed on the last day of the 2012 regular session, but it appears to cut 2.28 percentage points off of the State (or employer) contribution. As of July 1, 2012, the State’s contribution will drop from about 7.43% of gross salary to approximately 5.14%, costing most ORP-plan faculty members something on the order of $1800 per year, not including the foregone earnings that those funds might have accumulated in the future when invested in retirement accounts.

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Judge Fulford's Ruling on Pay Cuts

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“UFF Takes Sides, Yours” is a bumper sticker motto.

Its importance is underscored in yesterday’s ruling by Judge Fulford to the
effect that the legislature cannot ignore its contractual obligations to
university faculty members and other participants in the Florida Retirement
System (whether pension or ORP).  The battle over the effective 3% pay cut
imposed by last year’s legislature is clearly not over, but yesterday’s decision
is nonetheless a major victory for FSU faculty members and other public
employees.

That victory was made possible by the dues of UFF members and others whose
dues supported the legal challenge led by our FEA affiliate.

If you are not already a member, please join the UFF and help to build and
maintain a strong voice for faculty.  You can find a membership form at:

https://uff-fsu.org/art/memform.pdf

To quote another UFF bumper sticker, we can do together what you cannot do
alone.

Links to selected documents relating to yesterday’s ruling by Judge
Fulford:

Tallahassee Democrat story in today’s paper:

https://uff-fsu.org/art/td20120307.pdf

Judge Fulford’s ruling:

https://uff-fsu.org/art/FulfordRuling20120306.pdf

FEA News Release:
https://uff-fsu.org/art/FEA-NewsReleaseFinal-20120306.pdf

FEA Q&A #1:

https://uff-fsu.org/art/FEA-Q&A1-20120306.pdf

FEA Q&A #2:

https://uff-fsu.org/art/FEA-Q&A2-20120306.pdf

 

Report on University Welfare for Faculty Senate, February 22nd, 2012

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Ratification voting is underway.  If you are in the faculty bargaining unit and did not vote already, please do so on your way out today.

Aside from ratification, I would like to talk about reading assignments today.  I will try to be brief and give you more time for your reading.

One document I urge you to read is the summary of what we are voting about.  This summarizes everything we were able to resolve during roughly the past year of bargaining.  There were many other things that we discussed, some very important to the Senate.  Our bargaining co-chairs, Dr. Scott Hannahs of the Mag Lab and Dr. Irene Padavic of Sociology, prepared an excellent summary of the past year’s negotiations, including many of the issues that we are continuing to negotiate.  It is only two pages, and it is excellent reading on some critical issues.  Both documents are available at our web site and will pop up if you search there for “ratification.”

One key issue is the reclassification of specialized (non-tenure track) faculty.  As recognized in the 2006 Faculty Senate report on specialized faculty, this issue necessarily ties into FSU’s commitment to tenure.  Sec. 8.3 of our contract states “Commitment to developing and maintaining a tenured faculty.  The Board agrees that it is in the best interests of the University, the faculty, and the students to maximize the ratio of tenured and tenure-accruing E&G appointments to the number of non-tenure-accruing E&G appointments among those appointments including significant teaching responsibilities.  As Drs. Padavic and Hannahs report, however, “The chief … sticking point is the BOT team’s disinterest in any contract language that would follow through on the commitment of the FSU Constitution, the Faculty Senate, and the Collective Bargaining Agreement to preserve a tenured faculty.”

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