Colleagues,

There is a new State retirement rule by which faculty risk losing retirement benefits if they perform even unpaid service – such as sitting on graduate thesis/dissertation committees – for some months after retirement. Over 40 faculty at UF are affected and many more graduate students.

Please note that regardless whether the State or UF implements this rule in any form, it would be a breach of our Collective Bargaining Agreement’s Article 25 on Benefits.

Your union has asked UF administrators to stop telling graduate students to remove potentially retiring faculty from their thesis/dissertation committees, and stop forcing/pressuring/encouraging retiring faculty to step off such committees, or to stop performing other unpaid work protected by Article 25 as they enter retirement.

Meanwhile, UFF statewide has mounted a challenge against the state for imposing rules that impair existing contracts such as our CBA, a constitutional violation. 

However, while we await the result of the rule challenge, retiring faculty should remain aware of the implications of the new rules, should the state prevail in the abovementioned challenge and the rule is implemented.

In Solidarity, 
UFF-UF