Letter from the President

SPRING 13

Dear Colleagues:

Welcome to the 8th issue of Union News.  We’re covering some interesting and important stories: the Governor’s higher education budget and the recent Advocacy Day at the statehouse, the new 2:2 teaching schedule, proposed changes to retiree health insurance, the importance of the family leave policy for both tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty, a teachers strike in Haiti, and more.

Salary Raises, Etc. We remind you that you got your across-the-board raise (of 0.5%) on January 1, 2013.  Departments and programs are currently working on merit awards (of an average of 1.25%) and these monies will be paid retroactive to January 1st.  Keep an eye out for them.  There’s another round of raises next year too, which will result in about a 10% raise over the 2 years.  Also recall that each tenure-stream faculty has $1,000 to help fund scholarly work this academic year.  You’ve also received a letter indicating your Research and Educational Support Funds (RES) are available.  Make sure to take advantage of both of these.  

Negotiating Parking & Transportation The FSU (with other UMB unions) is in intense negotiations over parking and transportation at the moment.   As you know, the administration proposes to raise parking fees significantly.  Our position is that access, equity, and positive incentives for the use of public transportation should be the basis for any agreement.  That may include income-based and/or geographical-based parking fees, or perhaps dedicated lots.   We’re meeting with the Chancellor about our concerns and we had a productive FSU meeting with Vice-Chancellor Ellen O’Connor on April 3rd, where we discussed the schedule of parking lot closings and made suggestions to reduce the inconvenience to everyone.  Rebuilding the campus is clearly going to cause major disruptions for us all.

Negotiating Non-Tenure-Track Issues These are ongoing; check the FSU website for updates.

Annual FSU Membership Meeting Our annual meeting will be April 16th at 1:00 PM in CC 2540.  We’ll give you some lunch and update you on various issues, including parking. 

Pre-Tenure Workshop Our annual Pre-Tenure Workshop on Fourth-year and Tenure Reviews was held March 28th in conjunction with the Office for Faculty Development.  Thirty faculty or so came along to learn about their and the administration’s rights and responsibilities in the review process.  They also had the opportunity to question 4 recently-tenured colleagues about their experiences.

Salary Anomalies Committee This committee will be awarding $30,000 in salary anomaly adjustments this spring.  Once again the committee will evaluate everyone who had a successful major personnel review in AY 2011-2012.  I know it’s not enough (even though it’s 50% more than the year before); we plan to bargain for a significant increase in the fund in our next contract.

Want to bargain the next collective bargaining agreement? We’ll start bargaining in the Spring 2014.   You might want to think about joining the team now, because you would need to have Fridays free of teaching. You’d also get one course buyout per semester for participating.  Email us at fsu@umb.edu if you’d like to participate. ▪

Regards,

Catherine Lynde, FSU President