United Faculty of Florida-FGCU Chapter

• 2007-10 Collective Bargaining Agreement [.pdf - 517 kb] in Adobe PDF format

• Summary of the 2007-2010 CBA – An Orientation Document [.pdf - 8.7 mb] in Adobe PDF format

• Ratified 2006-07 supplement [.pdf - 61.8 KB]

• Full text of CBA [.pdf - 3,395 KB]

• CBA Training Document: quick summary of CBA [.pdf - 54 KB]

Impasse Briefing for Faculty

Regrettably, FGCU faculty and administration have reached an impasse in contract negotiations.  Impasse hearings will be held on Wednesday, June 2, and Friday, June 4 (AB5 112, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.).  These meetings are open. We encourage all faculty to participate by coming to observe the proceedings – in part or whole – and see how your union provides a voice for faculty interests.

Each workday from now until June 1, you will receive a Special Hot Topics e-mail.  This email briefly describes the broad issues involved in Impasse for faculty. In the second of four e-mails, we will describe in more detail the core values of the faculty union with respect to these issues.  Later e-mails will present the faculty and administration positions on each issue.

Fundamentally, contract negotiations are about ensuring faculty’s ability to deliver an excellent education to our students. For faculty to provide a quality education, FGCU must:

1. Honor our commitment to FGCU’s educational mission.

We are committed to raising the value of our student’s educational experience, but we are also members of families and communities. We pay mortgages, save for retirement and college tuition, and invest in our local communities.  For us to do our best work, we need to be secure in the knowledge that our University values us and is committed to helping us protect our lives outside of work. That means just, fair, and equitable compensation must be the institution’s first priority, given its array of commitments and available resources. Benefits need to be stringently preserved and strengthened for all members of the University community. Domestic partners and non-traditional families deserve equal benefits, because they are equally committed to this community and University. 

Like many skills and abilities, education gets better with practice. Consequently, we believe that salary and compensation structures must recognize the contributions of experienced faculty and honor that commitment in fair and equitable ways. While we acknowledge the need for the University to remain competitive, retaining faculty always costs less and yields higher productivity than replacing faculty. Moreover, a demonstrated commitment to faculty retention creates an upward spiral in morale, deepening our commitment to the University and strengthening our dedication to do the work it takes to continue to grow and expand the delivery of high quality education, even in parlous economic times.

2. Respect our rights to share in the decisions that affect our lives.

Historically FGCU has been a place where faculty and administrators were able to talk with each other as members of any family would: sometimes disagreeing but always recognizing the value of a shared commitment to a vision greater than any of us individually. Given that this tradition has facilitated conversation and meaningful progress for so long, we are perplexed and troubled to see the deterioration in the culture of collaboration and collegiality here. Thus, we as faculty are not just claiming the right to bargain the terms and conditions of our employment; we are driven by the need to return a sense of collaboration to the process, to share fully in the conversation and decisions that affect the entire University community.

Whether in the classroom, with our colleagues, or in our personal lives, we know that one-sided conversations never yield agreements that last very long, if at all, and FGCU will always be a better place to work when administrators and faculty make decisions jointly. Florida law gives faculty the right to bargain the issues outlined above, but we would prefer to preserve our bargaining rights and remove the current impediment to a collaborative conversation without calling on state law. Instead, we seek a collegial, open dialog in which administrators and faculty are equally invested. We trust that the process currently unfolding will bring meaningful resolution to the problems we face and help us address the barriers that stand between us and FGCU’s continued growth and success. 

3. Assign faculty manageable workloads.

We spend a great deal of unrecognized personal time and resources furthering the aspirations of our graduate students and improving the quality of education for our undergraduates.  Education doesn’t just take place in the classroom, between the pages of a book or online.  Recognizing what students need takes attention and energy. We need unstructured time in the day for the unexpected opportunities we encounter to meet students’ individual needs. Assignments need to include recognition and accommodations for increasing workloads resulting from large classes, graduate supervision or master’s and post-master’s research, or compensation for extracurricular teaching activities such as internship, undergraduate and graduate research mentoring. These concerns are not an abstraction but are rooted in the many long hours we spend outside of the classroom, at our own expense, to ensure the integrity and excellence of the learning environment at FGCU.

What’s at stake in Impasse over Article 9: Assignment/workload

Faculty position: 1. Faculty and administration should collaboratively develop workload guidelines governing faculty work on advance-degree committees and other time spent supervising post-baccalaureate student activities. 2. The faculty contract must recognize work faculty contribute to independent studies, internships, senior research projects and other uncompensated activities by providing faculty with additional time, overload pay or other accommodations for this labor. 3. Assignments must consider how classes have grown over the years and how many programs require increased assessment and other activities that can make workloads routinely exceed the forty hour workweek our contract specifies.

Administration position: The administration initially acknowledged the role of these issues in negotiating faculty assignments, but later withdrew from that position.

What’s at stake in Impasse over Article 23: Salary Compression and Inversion 

Faculty position: 1. The compression/inversion study that is currently in progress should be completed and the administration should commit to fund what it takes to create equity among faculty salaries. 2. Starting salaries for new faculty should be linked to the existing salary structure in each college. 3. Pay for existing faculty should be adjusted incrementally to reflect new hires who start at higher salaries than more senior colleagues. 4. Faculty should not waive our rights to bargain with administration over administrative discretionary adjustments to individual faculty salaries. Instead, we propose that the authority to make discretionary adjustments to individual salaries be linked to overall raises for all faculty.

Administration position: The administration has refused to offer any constructive method for addressing the compensation practices and policies covering FGCU faculty.

Faculty position: Faculty propose to remove any limits on our rights to bargain changes by the administration that relate to salary, benefits, and/or terms and conditions of employment - a right provided by Florida law.

Administration position: The administration refuses to honor this right and will not sign a contract agreement with faculty unless we surrender our rights to bargain changes to explicit terms and conditions of employment and those not explicitly in the contract (i.e. textbook affordability, consensual relationships, etc.).

What is at stake in Impasse over Article 8: Appointment

Faculty position: Faculty who work in the summer should be paid at the same rate as their work in the regular academic year.

Administration position: The administration proposes cutting summer pay by 28% across the board for faculty on nine-month contracts.

Administration position: 1. The administration proposes to remove advertising requirements for faculty vacancies as well as faculty participation in searches. 2. The administration further proposes to remove guarantees that most ranked faculty be hired under rolling contract system. Instead the administration proposes to offer fixed-term contracts at administrative discretion to new faculty hires, including ranked faculty.

 
What is at stake in Impasse over Article 3: UFF rights

Faculty position: Faculty performing service for UFF governance and bargaining should be provided release, as is the current situation at FGCU and standard practice at other SUS institutions. 

Administration position: The administration proposes that UFF should pay full salary and benefits for anyone receiving release time for UFF governance and bargaining service.

IBB Team Joint Announcement #2 – September 2, 2009  

Over the summer the IBB Team* continued to negotiate contract re-openers for 2009-10** started in the spring.  Since our last announcement on June 16, 2009, the IBB Team has engaged in collective bargaining on:

During that time we have continued to discuss workload and salary issues.

Workload

A question was addressed about the impact on workload of “cross-listed” classes. Data was provided for cross-listed classes during fall, spring, and summer for the period Fall 2006 through Fall 2009.  The data reviewed included such things as CRN, title and level of class, and numbers of students in each section. Each instance of cross-listed classes was examined to understand and discuss possible workload issues for faculty.  Most of the instances appeared to show little undue impact on faculty, other instances were discussed.  The discussion indicated such things as:

• Small programs cross-listed similar subject areas in order to be able to offer the class in an expeditious manner to students who would otherwise not be able to get the class.
  
  
• Undergraduate classes included a few graduate students who would otherwise be unable to take the class for graduate credit.
  
  
• Some cross-listed classes were team-taught.

Promotion increases were awarded as of August 7, 2009.  The Team continues to discuss salary issues, including discussions about  the compression/inversion study, budget, and statewide funding.

Benefits

Benefits will be discussed in upcoming IBB sessions.

Notice of IBB meeting times and locations are listed on the Provost’s webpage at www.fgcu.edu/provost/.  If you have any input, questions or suggestions, please contact Monika Renard  (x7386, mrenard@fgcu.edu) or Hudson Rogers (x7011, hrogers@fgcu.edu.)

 For the IBB Team,

Monika Renard  and Hudson Rogers

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As explained in previous announcements:

*          In IBB, the faculty and administration representatives participate collaboratively to identify the interests of both groups, generate and evaluate options, come to consensus on the best solutions, and integrate that solution into the proposed revised contract. 

**         The reopeners under consideration this year included:

• Article 9: Assignment of Responsibilities
• Article 23: Salary
• Article 24: Benefits
• Article 21.2 (possible funds available through Faculty Senate)