October 13, 2016
Questioner: Anonymous
Posed to: John White, President, UNF – United Faculty of Florida
As you know, a number of faculty (I have heard 17) felt shortchanged last year when they did not receive the full raise amount they thought they should have gotten. I have heard that the annual cost of remedying this would have been approximately $75,000. Is this correct?
Response:
The salary issue noted in the question refers specifically to the compression and inversion adjustments made as part of the current CBA (the faculty referenced above received the raises due to them following promotion as well as a 4% across the board raise). We believe that the amount quoted would be sufficient in order to bring these particular faculty members’ salaries to where they wish them to be (excluding the additional costs for benefits).
However, the issue referenced in the question could not be solved even if university administration offered that amount (which has not been the case). First and most importantly, these 17 faculty members are a subset of a larger group. It would be unethical for the union to seek or for the university to provide C & I adjustments solely for the benefit of one group while others—including a number of senior faculty—remain compressed and inverted. Second, the operative term in the question is “[the] amount they thought they should have gotten.” Context is important (and the term “shortchanged” is moot). These 17 faculty members sought promotion and tenure in 2013-2014, the year during which our union negotiated the current contract with its 4% across the board raise and $1 million in C & I adjustments. The official date for determining a faculty member’s rank and thus for computing compression and inversion adjustments was—as it has always been for raises—June 30th (the end of the previous CBA and the end of the university’s fiscal year). On that date, these individuals had not yet been promoted as all promotions in rank begin with the start of new contracts in August. Thus these faculty members were not compressed or inverted per the terms and conditions in the CBA (which itself incorporated the C & I computational methodology recommended by the American Association of University Professors). It is also important to note that while the traditional and logical date for determining C & I adjustments did not prove beneficial to these particular faculty members, using a different date would have other significant ramifications.
Our chapter has sought and will continue to seek much needed salary adjustments, including for the individuals in this group.
