As you know, earlier this month your bargaining team declared salary negotiations with the administration to be at an impasse. What follows in an update on the situation.

Under the auspices of the Florida Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC), the union and the administration have agreed upon a Special Magistrate to conduct a hearing on the impasse issues. In addition, the union and the administration have chosen a date for the hearing—November 18—at a place and time to be determined soon.

Hoping to resolve this matter as quickly as possible, the bargaining team had proposed an earlier date for the hearing: September 20 or, barring that, some time in the latter part of October. This range of dates was acceptable to the Special Magistrate but not to the administration, which simply stated, without explanation, that “The University and its witnesses” would not be available on the dates we suggested.

While this delay is regrettable, we nonetheless hope that the impasse hearing will lead to a more reasonable salary increase than the administration has so far offered. We believe that our arguments for this will be seen as compelling. Moreover, we believe that the Special Magistrate will agree with out position that UF must deal with related problems such as salary compression and inversion, and the lowest promotion increases among SUS institutions—problems that the administration refuses to address.

We welcome your questions and your involvement. When we stand together, we do better.

The UFF-UF Bargaining Team
Sumi Helal, Chair (Computer & Information Science and Engineering)
John Biro (Philosophy)
Agnes Leslie (African Studies)
Raúl Sánchez (English)
Candi Churchill, UFF Service Unit Director
bargaining@uff-uf.org