Bargaining Update
August 5, 2011
Summary: The UFF and the BOT bargaining teams met Monday, August 1st and Wednesday, August 3rd to continue salary negotiations (Article 23 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement or CBA) that began in June and continued throughout July.
The good news is that both sides are in substantial agreement about implementing a three percent (3%) raise; the only disagreement on this issue is whether or not the lowest-paid faculty receive a minimum payment, which is what the UFF proposes and the BOT is considering.
The bad news is that agreement on the salary article has been delayed. The BOT (Board of Trustees) bargaining team claims that the delay might mean that none of the upcoming academic year’s salary changes–including promotion raises and the three-percent raise–can be administered by the start of the new pay period. The UFF is willing to meet continually to reach an agreement, would sign an agreement today that permits these raises to go through, and will negotiate to have any raises applied retroactively if agreement isn’t reached before the first paycheck. The dispute centers on the language of the one-time “merit” bonus. The UFF believes that the evaluation procedures as written in the CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement), elaborated in department bylaws, and approved by various levels of the administration must be respected. The BOT team instead wants to circumvent the language in the contract and retroactively apply a different distribution scheme.