HOW BARGAINING POSITIONS WERE DETERMINED

In Summer 2001, when it was still assumed that bargaining on a new faculty contract would begin in 2002, UFF organized 9 faculty task forces to study and make recommendations for improvements in the collective bargaining agreement.

Membership on the task forces was open to all faculty members who wanted to participate, both inside and outside the bargaining unit, regardless of whether the faculty member belonged to the union. UFF wanted an open process, providing full discussion of alternatives and maximum opportunity to develop the best practices for achieving top-tier status.

Each Faculty Task Force studied a different part of the 2001-2003 BOR-UFF Agreement (which still governs all UF terms and conditions of employment until your faculty bargaining team and the Administration negotiate a replacement Agreement specific to UF). The 9 task forces areas were as follows:

Salaries (including the development of a stable long-term salary structure);

Health Benefits, Retirement, Parking, Other rights & benefits;

Academic Freedom, Nondiscrimination, Diversity issues;

Tenure and Promotion, Appointment, Non-Reappointment, Layoff & Recall, Disciplinary Action;

Shared Governance;

Intellectual Property Rights, Distance learning, Conflict of Interest;

Sabbaticals, Family Leave, & all other leaves;

Assignment, workload issues, Evaluations, Personnel Evaluation File;

Legal Rights of collective bargaining representation, consultation access, released time to administer the Contract, Grievance Procedure, Terminology, definitions, etc.;

Each Faculty Task Force carried out the following tasks:

Identified the problems that needed fixing or improvement.

Compared UF practices with practices at top-tier universities (where it recognized that, on occasion, we might need better provisions than those at top-tier universities, in order to change deep-seated habits and create the proper attitude for developing a top-tier atmosphere and culture, the task force identified the best practice rather than the average top-tier practice).

Recommended the policies and provisions that the task force thought would best enable UF to close the gap between itself and top-tier universities, to think and act the way top schools think and act.

Your UFF faculty Bargaining Team received the recommendations and translated them into formal contract language in preparation for making proposals during collective bargaining negotiations. When the Bargaining Team had finished this conversion, it met with each task force to get formal confirmation that the draft contract language accurately captured the task force's intent and receive formal approval for the tentative proposals. A few proposals were sent back for minor revisions, but the respective task force or task forces (where proposals overlapped the jurisdiction of more the one task force) ultimately approved each and every proposal.

After bargaining was delayed at UF for over three years, and several other state universities had successfully bargained new collective bargaining agreements, your Bargaining Team updated the task-force-approved bargaining positions to include any improvements that had been bargained by faculty at other universities which were also appropriate for use at UF.