Bargaining Update – Next Session November 20th
11/8/2024
Dear Colleagues,
After months of delayed negotiations (more on that below), we finally presented all our proposals to the Administration on September 19th, September 26th, and October 3rd. On October 17th, Admin responded with brief responses to three proposals and a new proposal of their own. Their stated intention is to give a comprehensive response to all our proposals, though they have already cancelled the scheduled bargaining session where that response was to be given.
You can see all our proposals, as well as the Administration’s first proposal here. We encourage you to read them (if you can’t read them all, the summary of the proposals can be seen here). One thing you’ll notice: there are a lot of them, and they cover a wide array of topics that will have a significant impact on members’ work lives. These are proposals worth fighting for. We hope you will help us in doing just that by joining us at the bargaining table and pushing the administration to agree to them. Our next bargaining session is November 20th from 3-4:30pm in Campus Center 3540. Stay tuned for registration announcement.
In the meantime, here is a summary of a few key proposals (with info on our other proposals to come in the following weeks):
- Salaries, Promotional Raises, And Stipends- Increases of a few thousand dollars to all promotional raises, increases of a few thousand dollars to all salary floors, an increase in the per course rate for Summer/Winter courses, a new automatic longevity raise for years of service, a retention pay raise for members who successfully complete a 4th year review, stipends and course releases for program directors (graduate and undergraduate), university funds to cover all costs related to visas and Green Cards, a doubling of the salary anomaly pool, and more.
- Non Tenure Track Faculty- the elimination of the Associate Lecturer and the automatic conversion of all current Associate Lecturers to Lecturer (meaning higher salaries and potential for eligibility for future promotions), changing promotional eligibility to hire date rather than total full-time equivalent years of service (meaning less time to promotion), and more.
- Work Conditions- guarantee of accessible gender-neutral bathrooms, computers to be provided to all members, and more.
Now, about those delayed negotiations: our side was ready – with proposals in hand -- to begin bargaining in March of this year. The Administration delayed the start of bargaining until the Fall semester by starting a fight over whether we could bargain via Zoom or not. This was a completely unnecessary fight that the Administration also picked with each of the campus unions, often insisting that one union had to bargain in-person while another had to bargain via Zoom. We kid you not.
After presenting our final set of proposals on October 3rd, the Administration agreed to present a comprehensive response to all our proposals on October 31st. They cancelled the meeting on October 30th. We are yet to receive anything substantive from the Administration after months of bargaining. We are in the process of scheduling more bargaining sessions but it is clear that, thanks to these delays, bargaining will continue into the Spring semester.
One final note. So far Administration ineptitude in bargaining is not jeopardizing our state-mandated raises because the legislature will not fund those raises until sometime next semester. However, if the Administration does not get serious about moving bargaining along this could become an issue.
Sincerely,
The FSU Core Bargaining Team
Caroline Coscia, Senior Lecturer II, Political Science
Ellen Frank, Senior Lecturer II, Economics
Keith Jones, Lecturer, Africana Studies
Maria Hegbloom, MTA Field Representative
Jessica Holden, Librarian IV, Healey Library
Lorenzo Nencioli, FSU Senior Staff Member
Jason Rodriquez, Associate Professor, Sociology
Heike Schotten, Professor, Political Science
Steve Striffler, Professor, Labor Studies