This letter is being circulated among UWF faculty:
Dear fellow UWF faculty member,
As the chief negotiator of your UFF, I feel the need to object, most stridently, to the characterization of the current impasse situation provided by UWF’s chief negotiator, Jane Halonen. To analyze her message, claim by claim, is all I can do, for now, but be re-assured that UFF will continue to fight for your rights as this process continues.
To begin with, Halonen says:
- “After many months of collective bargaining with UFF to negotiate the Collective Bargaining Agreement, it appears that we have reached an impasse. Therefore, the University decided to pursue the impasse resolution process to resolve the issues being negotiated, including compensation, effective May 26, 2009.
As you may recall, the Chief Negotiators representing UWF and UFF had communicated the conclusion of interest-based bargaining for the full collective bargaining contract in September of 2008. Included in those negotiations was an increase in the base salary for promotion from associate professor to professor from 9% to 13%. This promotion increment represents the highest rate in the SUS for this transition.”
“Included in those negotiations” were many other things of interest to you, and the mention of the promotional raise is a red herring implying that we stood in the way of a promotional raise for faculty. We of course supported this proposal from last year (despite our counter-offer which represented the same overall cost to UWF, but included graduated raises of 10% to Associate and 12% to Full, and which would have benefited more faculty). Even given the small number of faculty that this13%-to-Full promotional increase would have helped–less than 2% of us–we did thankfully accept this offer. It is simply inaccurate to suggest otherwise.
- “However, UFF declined to forward the Agreement for ratification based on reported confusion about the term “Reserved†as used in the Article 25 on Salary. When both sides returned to the table for that clarification, UFF proposed a 3% raise for 2008-09, 2% for 2009-2010, and 2% for 2010-2011.”
This is partially false and wholly misleading: our beginning and ending position on the only issue we needed to resolve (Article 25, Salaries) was indeed 3% for this year’s contract (July of 2008-09). We never proposed a “3% raise for 2008-09, 2% for 2009-2010, and 2% for 2010-2011. We did, in a final effort to avoid impasse, make a counter-offer to their $1250 bonus offer which included a 2% raise over two years because of our willingness to forego negotiating for salary in the 2009-2010 Reopener. As stated below, they rejected this offer.
The administration would not budge from reserving the right to administer “discretionary” salary adjustments to select personnel, while claiming that salaries to the rest of us were to be “reserved” to a later, unspecified, date. When we asked for clarification of this “reserved” clause–and that is all we asked for, mind you–they replied with a packet of articles tying any sort of bonus to a whole set of concessions involving anonymous qualitative evaluation of teaching, released time for service, and the very ability of UFF to represent you. Again, these items had all been previously agreed upon—we had even conceded reduced developmental leave for library faculty—and we believed the only item left for discussion was the salary article with no definition of “reserved.”
- “In this deteriorated economic climate, UWF does not believe that agreement with a recurring salary obligation is fiscally responsible. UWF counter-offered a $1,000 bonus for 2008-9 based on the recent university budget assessment and has been unable to endorse the subsequent 2% salary increase proposal offered by UFF for 2008-9 and 2009-10. UWF counter-offered a $1,250 nonrecurring wage enhancement for 2008-9. UWF remained committed to the 13% salary increase for promotion to professor, but also proposed full disclosure of student evaluation data for faculty annual evaluation.”
UWF’s own analysis belies these claims: the “Stephenson Report” shows $1.7 million in recurring monies available to the President’s Office for use in “strategic initiatives;†receipt of Federal “stabilization” funds totaling close to $5 million over the next two years; increased tuition rates; and finally, out-of-cycle raises of around $150,000 to certain administrators in this year alone. Needless to say, THESE salary adjustments did not require UWF to lay off staff as is so frequently asserted or implied by the administration about faculty raises. To award 350 faculty times a one-time $1,000 or $1,250 bonus is small change in this light (and does less-than-nothing to improve the growing equity and salary compression and inversion issues facing our faculty)—as would be a 3% raise, given our sub-standard pay rate.
Yet the UWF administration declares impasse, letting a Special Magistrate make a recommendation on these matters to our Board or Trustees. (Meanwhile, unit directors and chairs are given muddled directives to decide how they would allocate their share of the Federal “stimulus” funds and mere days to propose their needs to the administration. I have a suggestion: how about using them to retain and recruit UWF’s greatest asset, its faculty, as the recent Strategic Plan demands?)
Halonen’s message concludes:
- “State law defines the impasse resolution process. At a hearing to be conducted at the campus, all of the unresolved bargaining issues are explained to a Special Magistrate, who is chosen by the parties. The Special Magistrate then makes a recommendation for the resolution of the matters at impasse and either side may reject these recommendations. After the parties address these recommendations, any unresolved contract issues are then submitted to the Board of Trustees or a subcommittee of the Board of Trustees for final resolution.
We are eager to distribute the compensation we proposed to recognize faculty for their efforts as soon as possible. Therefore, we welcome the opportunity to bring closure to this cycle of negotiations…”
I can only read this as ironic. The administration has consistently neglected to “recognize” the faculty who have been required to do more with less, who haven’t seen a raise, or Cost-of-Living-Adjustment in three years, in a year when most other SUS institutions have managed to do so. It has resisted negotiation for several months and then attempted to re-open agreed-upon articles of the Contract, to the point of bringing us to impasse, all in a cynical response to our request that they clarify what the “reservation” of salaries to an unspecified date might mean for faculty. None of this suggests a willingness to compensate faculty or bring closure to this cycle of negotiations.
If you have any questions regarding these issues, please let me–Nick Power–or any of the other members of the UFF bargaining team–Gayle Baugh, Susan Walch, Frank Sansone, Steve Vodanovich–answer them.
Together we stand, divided we fall!
Sincerely submitted,
Nick Power, Chief Negotiator, UFF
