Letter from the President

Dear Colleagues,

First of all, welcome to all new FSU members who’ve joined us this Spring.  And before we all get too busy in the semester; let me mention a few important issues to you.

►  Grievances:  The FSU is now fully engaged in what the Grievance Committee calls the “Year of Compliance”.  We’ve put the administration on notice that we’ll be closely monitoring the terms and conditions of the existing agreement to assure compliance.  As a result unit members and the FSU have filed 11 formal grievances, including failure to make course assignments consistent with the priority list, refusal to recognize senior lecturer eligibility, failure to implement the Lecturer 10 year salary increases, unauthorized transmission of faculty course materials in violation of faculty intellectual property rights, and underpayment of faculty below contractual salary floors.  The FSU Grievance Committee will continue its hard work until the University comes into compliance.

►  Major personnel reviews:    The FSU would particularly like to hear from you if you had a negative result in a major personnel review this year.  Please contact Lorenzo or let us know what happened.  

►  Merit awards:  You should have gotten merit awards out of the 1.25% merit award fund this fall.  This would include retroactive pay to July 1st, 2011.

►  Contract bargaining, Spring 2012:  We’ve started bargaining a new contract (for July 1, 2012 – June 30, 2014).  Thanks to all of you who filled out our contract survey and to those who came to the 2 meetings we had this fall, we got a lot of good information about what issues are of most concern to you.   We used this information to develop our contract proposals. There’ll be more information as things develop.

►  Tenure-stream faculty workshop:  This spring we’ll offer another workshop for tenure-stream faculty undergoing personnel reviews next year.  Please look for the date and further information later in the semester.

► Parking and transportation:  A UMB labor-management committee is beginning to bargain over issues of parking and transportation.  The big issues are associated with the new construction and the purchase of the Expo Center.  We’ll let you know as things develop here too.
► Top 10 Reasons to invest in Massachusetts public higher education:  This document is on the FSU website.  It was developed in coordination with the unions from UMass, State Universities, Community Colleges and the MTA.  It’s worth a look.

► Lobby day for higher education funding – March 8th:  Keep this date in mind.

► UMass Board of Trustees endorse former president Wilson’s sabbatical pay of $425,000:  There’s a letter from the PSU about this on our website.   Also worth a look.

Catherine Lynde
FSU President