Category: Bargaining

After the bargaining session this afternoon and a few minutes before I sent out a bargaining update, the Trustees’ Chief Negotiator sent the following out to in-unit faculty:

On behalf of the USF Board of Trustees’ bargaining team, I am pleased to share the following update on the collective bargaining efforts between the University and the faculty union.

USF’s Board of Trustees remains steadfast in its commitment to raising faculty base salaries even in these increasingly difficult economic times. On August 22, 2008, the USF Board of Trustees first proposed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that would have immediately awarded faculty salary increases. Unfortunately, this proposal was rejected at that time by the faculty union. Earlier today the faculty union presented the USF Board of Trustees’ bargaining team with such a MOU for in-unit faculty. We expect to provide a response very soon.

That’s not quite my memory of the Trustees’ proposed MOU. But if the Trustees decide that the MOU put on the table today serves their interests, I will be satisfied and won’t particularly worry about the spin they put on it beforehand. An agreement is an agreement by both parties.

The next collective bargaining session between UFF-USF and the USF Board of Trustees will be July 11, 3-5 pm, in SVC 2080.

The bargaining teams for UFF-USF and the Board of Trustees met this afternoon. Before the meeting, the chief negotiator for the BOT team let UFF-USF know that they were waiting until the BOT approved the 2008-09 budget before presenting proposals on the salaries and benefits articles. The UFF-USF chief negotiator presented the chapter’s third proposal on salaries. (Since June 2007, the BOT team has not presented any counter-proposal on salary.) UFF-USF also presented a proposal on one of the technical articles (on amendment and duration).
There was discussion but no concrete language proposed on several other topics.

At the end of the fall, the joint USF-UFF committee to look at domestic partner health insurance benefits submitted its recommendations to both sides. At the March 7, 2008, collective bargaining session, the UFF team put language almost identical to the committee report on the table.
As Chief Negotiator Bob Welker noted, the committee’s recommendations represented the work of both sides, and while those recommendations are not binding on the parties, UFF does not want the work to be wasted; regardless of financial circumstances at the moment, the two sides should be able to negotiate eligibility conditions and the general shape of benefits for when the financial circumstances allow the creation of the program.