Statement of UFF-UF President John Biro (Received September 19)
After four years of negotiations, the United Faculty of Florida (UFF) and the Board of Trustees (BOT) are at impasse on significant issues of fundamental faculty working conditions. Over the past few months it has become transparent that the Trustees have been doing everything they can to avoid completing an agreement. Recently, instead of wrapping up the new Contract and immediately reopening some articles, as previously agreed, they have tried to nullify already finished articles and start over. No Contract can be completed if one party keeps signing agreements, then later backing out, again and again.
In the past, UFF has accepted stopgap administrative proposals to avoid impasse, in the hope of concluding the negotiations in good faith. Unfortunately, the Trustees’ repeated refusal to seek compromise on the remaining issues or to honor the agreements they have already made makes clear that such a conclusion is no longer possible.
For the United Faculty of Florida, commitment of funds to programs and enforceable contractual criteria and procedures are essential bottom lines. The BOT, however, insists on total discretion over key criteria and procedures, and refuses to commit specific funds.
Aside from the already agreed-to articles that the BOT now wants to renege on, the main issues still unresolved are:
BOT: No salary plan.
UF faculty salaries have gone from being in the middle range of reporting AAU universities to being now in the bottom 10%. At the same time, UF administrative salaries have risen into the top 10%.
Sabbaticals and FEOs
BOT: Cut the number of sabbaticals, commit no definite funding to FEOs for bargaining-unit faculty, and refuse to put FEO rights into the Contract so those rights can be enforced.
BOT: Awards and funding entirely at the discretion of the President.
Result: The proportion of awardees to applying faculty has declined every year and is now less than half the proportion for promotions generally. Indeed, after the selection procedure was changed last year, the percentage of awardees fell even further—to less than half of those judged to have qualified for the raise.
BOT: Faculty could be assigned, against their will, to create original works to be owned by the BOT.
Faculty would be stripped of rights to their intellectual property and could be, in effect, conscripted to produce online courses and other materials that the BOT would then own and control.
If you have any questions, contact John Biro at president(at)uff-uf.org