UFF-FAU was delighted to hear word that at least one of the laid off faculty members in the College of Engineering and Computer Science has been given their tenured position back by Provost John Pritchett, Associate Provost Diane Alperin, and COECS Dean Karl Stevens, with one important catch–the lucky professor will receive their assignment and be evaluated by the head of their original department AND one of the bogus “functional units” set up in April as a pretext to fire this faculty member and four of her/his colleagues in the first place.
Make no mistake, UFF is happy and somewhat relieved that this professor has been given their original position back, but we fear the deal has been designed by the administration to 1) render the UFF grievances against the illegal firings impotent and meaningless–and thus provide faculty with less recourse to contest present and future arbitrary reorganizations, 2) legitimize the phony layoff units and reorganization of the COECS so that 3) the administration can in due time turn around to lay off faculty in whatever COECS units it chooses–perhaps even the same faculty it laid off on May 29, only next time for good.
The university administration and Board of Trustees further violated both the UFF-BOT Collective Bargaining Agreement and Florida Statute 447: Labor Organizations, by failing to alert UFF-FAU that they intended to settle the dispute with the grievant and then attempting to do so. This is disturbing, but follows what is by now a familiar pattern of disregard toward faculty organization and governance. Of perhaps even greater concern, however, is the forthcoming reorganization of the entire university overseen by the administration’s efficiency expert that will allow administrators to threaten the remainder of FAU’s faculty and their families with what these days are essentially economic death sentences–layoffs–while they reward themselves with larger paychecks, more positions, and fancier buildings and offices. Indeed, their combined largesse and economic impunity in these hard times reminds us a bit of the good folks at Goldman Sachs, save a digit or two in the compensation category.
As the “reorganization” of the university proceeds in coming months faculty are apprised to be aware of the creation of and their possible placement into “functional units” or the equivalent, for these are the precursors that hold a very real potential for your elimination via lay off through “reorganization,” which the administration perceives as being the quickest and tidiest avenue toward the disposal of superfluous tenured and tenure track faculty. Still, such reorganization is supposed to proceed through appropriate faculty governance channels, and the COECS’s was in fact unanimously condemned by FAU’s Faculty Senate on June 5. That would be enough for a normal administration and Board of Trustees that sincerely sought a fruitful relationship with its faculty to rethink its ways, rather than spurn the faculty’s recommendations and stubbornly dig in its heels.
Like the devil, the administration and BOT invite us to partake in and accept their own undemocratically conceived and unilaterally imposed structures by which they intend to enforce their own “vision” and will. Such an environment runs completely counter to a productive and normal faculty-administration relationship, and is antithetical to a normally functioning university’s raison d’etre: teaching, research, and service to the profession and community fueled by the unimpeded spirit of creative inquiry.