From UFF News & Views September 2015

By Tom Auxter, Past President UFF

We have come a long way in the 14 years I have been statewide president. I am grateful for the trust members placed in me as we set out on a decidedly perilous journey in 2001.

Most of all, I am grateful to the strong union activists who created a movement out of a threat to our existence, instead of relying on lawyers to reverse the action or simply giving up when the odds were not in our favor. All of us poured our energy into this struggle. It took every one of us doing everything we could to pull it off.

We regained certification on all campuses (in less than a year) after Gov. Jeb Bush declared we would be decertified and got the legislation passed to abolish our statewide contract.

We organized strong chapters on all campuses to negotiate the best contracts we have ever had — all achieved by leaders and activists at the campus level.

We more than doubled the membership from less than 3,000 to more than 7,000.

FEA, AFT and NEA funded organizing grants to give us the financial backing we needed. Affiliates consistently supported us so we could run a nonstop campaign for 10 years to get these results.

Our legislative campaigns were an annual event as we defeated again and again hostile legislation that would have had the effect of reducing our membership and ability to function.

We made the case repeatedly that higher education is underfunded and produced the documentation to keep this in front of the eyes of the Board of Governors and legislators.

Along the way we joined forces with Bob Graham to pass Amendment 11 establishing a Board of Governors to replace the Jeb Bush plan to have only hand-picked local campus boards that would follow his orders.

We grew the leadership with women and minorities by consistently selecting members from underrepresented groups for the national trainings by NEA and AFT that get members ready for leadership positions.

In the furture, we will do all of these things and more to grow the union and create the world of academic freedom, excellence and justice that is within our reach. For at least the next several years, we will have plenty of adversaries who want to establish a hostile environment for higher education by “reforming” us.

We will make it to the other side if we remember that our task in this environment is to organize or die. They can only kill what we value if we stand by and watch them do it. But if we mobilize our constituencies, those who care about what we care about, we will vastly outnumber them. In doing so, we will defend higher education, and we will prevail and give shape to the future we want to live in.

Our latest challenge comes in the form of so-called “performance funding.” It is a deceptive term because it punishes all performance and excellence except the performance of certain pre-selected winner types the Governor and his allies on the Board of Governors favor. The consequences of this plan to “reform” us are to gradually defund higher education and to resegregate our institutions. Since I have been speaking out at national meetings about this emerging problem in Florida and most other states, I was asked to submit an article to Thought and Action, concluding with how this funding model has affected Florida. It was published in July and will be available as we analyze our situation this fall and adopt strategies to fight this plan. The title is:  “Performance Funding in Higher Education: The Hidden Costs and Consequences.”

This is a farewell address only in the sense that I hope all of us fare well in our efforts. But it is not farewell in the sense that I am leaving the scene and merely giving advice. I am not going anywhere.

I promised Jennifer Proffitt, our new president, that I will stay and remain fully active in the political struggles ahead.

Is this farewell?  I say “Continue the struggle to the end!”