This new section features questions from FGCU faculty and answers from UFF-FGCU’s acting president, Monika Renard.

Q:  I’ve observed in my college that new faculty receive starting salaries up to $30,000 dollars higher than faculty at the same rank who have been here since FGCU was founded.  Is there anything the union can do to raise the pay of employees who have contributed to the growth and mission of the university and deserve to be compensated for their hard work?

A: Yes, we agree that compression and inversion are serious problems here at FGCU. We hear from our colleagues that this is a problem, and in addition, we experience it ourselves!  The way we work for change is through collective bargaining, our legal method to address issues of salaries, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment. 

Progress report:

· We bring up the issue or inversion-compression at the bargaining table every year.  After much discussion, we were able to get a provision in the 2007-2010 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to design and implement a study of compression/inversion (CBA 23.8).

·   In fall 2008, we formed a committee with faculty from each of the colleges/units and representatives of administration to conduct this study.  We spent many sessions and months developing the process and analyzing the data with the help of a faculty statistician.

· Though the official study was not completed due to time and technical difficulties, we used the data to write a proposal that would address salaries which are compressed and inverted.  We presented this proposal to the administration during bargaining in spring 2009.  Bargaining is still on-going because we have not been able to reach an agreement with administration on this.

What can you do?

If you haven’t already joined the union, please consider it.  A union that represents more than half of the faculty carries more weight to the bargaining table than one that represents a smaller fraction.

If you are a member, help us recruit new members by talking to your colleagues.  Tell them we need their support.

Tell us your concerns.  E-mail us questions and we’ll respond as quickly as we can, either individually, or by posting answers to general questions here.