NTT Contract Conversion Update

3/22/16

Implementation Date

The Administration has agreed to acknowledge all promotions from the previous contract through the start of Spring 15. That means that any promotions or status changes (i.e. eligible for Lecturer I, Lecturer II, or post-probationary status) that would have occurred under the 12-14 contract as of the start of Spring 15 will be recognized for purposes of conversion to the new language.

Incorrect Titles, Post-Conversion

The Administration presented the FSU with a master document outlining all the conversion actions taken to date (i.e. new titles given under the 14-17 contract). The FSU notified the Administration of cases where we believed the conversion was incorrect. The Administration has fixed many of these, but we believe there are approximately 25 cases where the conversion was done improperly or where there are still questions about a particular conversion. We presented the Administration with this document and expect to discuss these cases at a meeting soon.

Just Cause Rights

The Administration has acknowledged that the Agreement provides just cause rights to all unit members who acquired those rights under the previous Agreement up to and including the beginning of Spring 2015 semester.

Typical Workload

The FSU and administration reviewed all full-time equivalent (FTE) workload assignments to faculty who moved to continuous appointments. 

1. Those faculty whose percentage of workload has varied over the past three semesters and were given a minimal FTE assignment received an email from the FSU to assure that the FTE assignment is consistent with members’ understandings of their average workload. The FSU advised a few members who responded to the email. If you believe you are in this category but did not receive an email from the FSU please contact the FSU office.
2. Those faculty whose FTE over the previous three semesters is higher than the FTE assignment made in this conversion have either had their current FTE adjusted to reflect the higher average or are being contested by the FSU.  We believe the Administration has properly adjusted all such unit members’ FTE assignments. If you believe you are in this category but did not receive notice from the Administration  regarding  an adjusted FTE assignment, please contact the FSU office.

Calendar versus FTE Year for Promotions

The FSU has asserted all prior service under previous agreements must be calculated according to the language in the respective contract.  The administration has denied this interpretation and the FSU has a grievance on this issue. 



Retroactive Benefits/Salary Floors

The FSU has asserted that all unit members who are half-time or more must be given creditable time for purposes of retirement as of July 1, 2014.  The Administration agrees that all such members are eligible for creditable time for retirement. However, they will only make decisions on retroactively applying this creditable time for retirement for the group as a whole rather than allow individual eligible members to opt in or out. Any member who is retroactively given creditable time would also be mandated to make a contributory payment for this retirement time. Before the FSU can decide on whether or not to allow such members to be retroactively placed into a retirement system, we have requested from the Admin information on how many eligible members are currently in this so as to best determine how many members would have to make automatic payments for 14-15 creditable time.   

Salary floors under the new Agreement were effective as of July 1, 2014. The Administration believes all floors have been retroactively applied and will be checking to assure this occurred (we will confirm this at our next meeting with the Administration sometime soon.

Reappointment Schedule

The Administration has been put on notice that the newly negotiated reappointment schedule must be implemented.   We expect to discuss this at our next meeting.