Bargaining Update (November 29, 2005)

When collective bargaining negotiations finally began November 18, 2005, your faculty union, the United Faculty of Florida (UFF), and the university administration (UA) reached agreement on several procedural matters and expressed a shared commitment to several specific goals. However, the UA has not yet agreed to honor all the existing provisions of the 2001­2003 Collective Bargaining Agreement (the faculty "Contract"), as recent legal rulings have affirmed it must do. Thus, unfortunately, it appears that the UA is continuing to fight the same battle it just lost in court.

This stance makes it unlikely that the UA will quickly settle the ongoing litigation it has not yet resolved. Such a stance may also complicate and impede the bargaining process, although both parties have expressed a desire to try to make progress in bargaining despite the ongoing litigation.

As many of you know, during the past three years, the UA has argued that the rights and protections contained in the faculty Contract were no longer in effect and that the UA had no obligation to bargain a successor contract. The UA also argued that it could unilaterally change the wages and working conditions of the nearly 2000 faculty in the bargaining unit (i.e., all UF faculty except those in the Health Center, IFAS, and the Law School), without having to reach agreement with your faculty union, and proceeded to make such unilateral changes repeatedly. The UFF challenged those actions, and the UA fought those challenges, in unusually extended and contentious litigation over the last three years.

Recently, the 1st District Court of Appeals (DCA) and the Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC) ruled unanimously that the UA was wrong on all counts. In a blistering decision on February 14, 2005, the DCA (reinforced by PERC on September 9, 2005) ruled that the UA should never have tried to nullify the provisions of the 2001-2003 Collective Bargaining Agreement and that the provisions of the old Contract must remain in effect until a new Contract is bargained. (Under collective bargaining law, neither party may nullify the provisions of a contract by "running out the clock.") The DCA further ruled that the UA always had and continues to have a legal obligation to bargain any change in bargaining-unit salaries or working conditions with the UFF, which PERC has confirmed is the exclusive bargaining agent for faculty in the bargaining unit.

While the UA is now offering to bargain a new Contract, it nevertheless seems to be insisting on keeping in place the unilateral changes it made unlawfully over the past three years. In a formal consultation with UFF on November 14, the UA acknowledged that it has not explained to deans, chairs, or the faculty senate what the Court's ruling means. Nor has it taken any steps to reinstate the rights and protections specified in the 2001-2003 Collective Bargaining Agreement or to discontinue policies that contravene those rights and protections, which the Court's decision would require.

Your union has volunteered to help facilitate resolution of the UA's legal difficulties by

(1) offering to let stand the three years of salary increases that the UA did not bargain; and

(2) permitting to remain in effect the recently implemented changes in tenure and promotion policies, many of which the union has been advocating for years—while the parties negotiate the due process procedures and other protections that would ensure that those policies are fair and enforceable.

However, your union is insisting that the UA honor all other remaining provisions of the collective bargaining Contract.

Why shouldn't the UFF just say "what's done is done" and move on, in order to speed up negotiating a new Contract?

Allowing the UA's unilateral changes to stand would be unwise for a lot of reasons. Here are four:

(1) It would abdicate UFF's legal responsibility to protect the rights faculty have to a measure of real control over changes in their working conditions. By trying to retain its unilateral changes, the UA is quite literally trying to cancel out the faculty's fundamental legal right to bargain any and all changes to their terms and conditions of employment.

(2) It would encourage the UA to continue its unlawful behavior. Even if the faculty and their union agreed with all the changes the UA has made (and we do not agree with some of them), acquiescing to a violation of faculty rights is hardly the way to safeguard those rights.

(3) It might set a damaging legal precedent. Your union would surely find it more difficult to prevail in court against any future violations of collective bargaining law if it has implicitly condoned earlier violations.

(4) It is horrible bargaining practice. The UA is attempting to play a version of the old strategy, "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is negotiable." If, before bargaining begins, UFF accepted all of the changes the UA has wanted to implement (but clearly did not want to negotiate), the UA would have little reason to deal seriously with any faculty concerns that were not fully in step with the UA's previous intentions.

So your union is insisting on a full restoration of the rights and protections specified in the current Contract, with two exceptions: we will accept the already distributed salary increases, and we will permit temporary implementation of the new T&P changes (pending the negotiation of them). If the UA persists in its refusal to honor the provisions of the current Contract, UFF will go back to court to enforce the rulings that the DCA and PERC have just issued.

To reiterate, the UFF and the UA have agreed to proceed with bargaining even while litigation continues. We will try to operate "on parallel tracks" (bargaining and litigation), to the degree that is possible, in the hope that the unresolved legal disputes will not undermine progress in contract negotiations.

Further collective bargaining updates will follow and will be posted on the UFF website at www.uff-uf.org.

Sincerely,

Connie Shehan, President
United Faculty of Florida
238 Norman Hall, PO Box 117055
Phone: 392-0274
Email: president@uff-uf.org