by Sean Trainor
Last March, the United Faculty of Florida at the University of Florida (UFF-UF) entered negotiations with representatives of the UF Board of Trustees (BOT) on a new, three-year collective bargaining agreement (CBA). Eleven months later, these negotiations are ongoing.
Negotiations have dragged on for so long that the previous CBA has now expired – though, under Florida law, the two-fifths of UF faculty covered by the agreement continue to enjoy its protections until a new CBA is ratified.
Who’s to blame for these never-ending negotiations? It’s not the UFF-UF bargaining team, which presented most of its proposals last spring. Instead, responsibility for these delays falls squarely at the feet of the BOT bargaining team.
For much of 2019, the BOT bargaining team either sat on their hands or advanced empty proposals aimed at ‘cleaning up the CBA’s language.’ Then, in the last two months, the BOT team has begun churning out revised articles. Seemingly oblivious to their role in the delay, they now demand that UFF-UF respond to these articles quickly.
Despite this flurry of activity, the BOT bargaining team has not responded to UFF-UF’s most important proposals, including the union’s comprehensive proposals on family, medical, and parental leave as well as subsidized childcare.
UFF-UF advanced these proposals back in April 2019, at one of the first bargaining sessions in the current series. At that session, UFF-UF bargaining team members Hélène Huet and Lisa Scott urged the UF administration to reinstate the university’s successful parental leave pilot program from 2010-2013 and expand the program to support family and medical leave as well. Under this program, UF faculty and staff were eligible for 19.5 weeks of paid parental leave. Huet and Scott also proposed language that would require the university to offset the skyrocketing costs of childcare.
These proposals, Huet and Scott argued, would improve quality of life for parents, their children, and aging family members; bring UF’s benefits package into line with other top-tier public universities; and help address inequities among UF employees.
Since April, the BOT bargaining team has repeatedly expressed interest in both paid family and parental leave – though, to date, these statements have not congealed into a concrete proposal. This inconsistency is typical of the UF administration. After abandoning their successful parental leave pilot program in 2013, the UF administration agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in the 2017-2019 CBA. Under this MOU, the university pledged to establish a taskforce charged with developing a comprehensive leave policy for campus. In three years, this taskforce has met twice and failed to produce any proposals.
Moreover, while dragging their feet on family and parental leave, the BOT team has stated, on multiple occasions, that they have “no interest” in subsidizing childcare.
Despite these delays, however, bargaining has already produced several major wins for UF faculty – particularly, non-tenure track faculty who lack the job security of their tenure-line colleagues.
First, UFF-UF has won contract language that requires UF to provide a justification when it refuses to renew the contract of a non-tenure track faculty member. Previously, UF was not required to provide any justification for non-renewal decisions.
This change is important as it will allow non-renewed employees to file a grievance against the university – and potentially retain their position – should they believe the university’s justification is inappropriate.
Secondly, the faculty union bargained for contract language that will make summer pay eligible for retirement credit and benefits. Under this policy, the university will now have to provide matching contributions to an employee’s retirement plan, not just for their normal contractual work, but for their summer work as well.
Finally, while UFF-UF has lost the fight for mandatory multi-year contracts for non-tenure track employees, our proposals on this topic have convinced the administration to take advantage of existing contract provisions and begin offering multiyear contracts to select non-tenure track faculty members.
In short: UFF-UF has recorded some significant wins over the past eleven months. But we still have a long, uphill battle before finalizing the CBA.
Here’s what you can do to help us win a just CBA, complete with family and parental leave and subsidized childcare:
- Plan to attend our upcoming bargaining sessions (full bargaining schedule available at uff-uf.org)
- Write to the UF Board of Trustees and demand action on paid family and parental leave (contact information available at trustees.ufl.edu/contact-the-board)
- Invite your friends and neighbors on the UF faculty to join and support the United Faculty of Florida: because a robust membership is our strongest weapon!