Salary Negotiations

Dear Colleague, As you know, for the last couple of months UFF/UF has been trying to negotiate with the UF administration about salaries for 2010-2011. Our aim has been to ensure that a method of distributing raises is put in place that rewards merit, is fair and transparent, and does not exacerbate the existing inequities resulting from a long history of inadequate funding for, and unsystematic determination of, faculty salaries.

In the hope of reaching agreement, the Union has presented a number of different proposals to provide for stable baseline salary parameters, yield merit-based raises indexed to national norms by rank and discipline, mitigate continuing salary inequities, and give additional merit raises beyond those provided through the basic salary scale.

The administration has thus far refused to agree to any modification to the plan it announced soon after receiving the Union's first proposal. It insists on discretionary “merit" pool, distributed on an essentially ad-hoc basis by department chairs and college deans. It has not responded to any of the union's proposals for a compromise (including one to split the difference, with half of the raise distributed its way, half according to the union's plan), insisting that the union agree to its plan exactly as announced. That is not negotiating.

Most faculty know to what anomalies the usual method of deciding “merit” raises has led over the past years, indeed, decades, with no reliable mechanism in place to recognize sustained meritorious performance over time. Funding for salary increases has been unreliable and the actual raises inconsistent from year to year, making the rewarding of merit hostage to luck. Faculty deserve better. We need a transparent and systematic method that assures that our achievements are consistently, predictably, and fairly rewarded over time, even when they cannot be fully recognized in a given year. That is what the Union is working to achieve, and that is what the Administration, for whatever reason, continues to resist.

Sincerely,

John Biro, President
United Faculty of Florida
308 Yon Hall, PO Box 117055
Phone: 392-0274
Email: president@uff-uf.org