Presidents Remarks
June 17, 2020

President’s Remarks, USFFA General Membership Meeting. June 17, 2020 

I want to open this meeting by thanking you all and by sharing an update on negotiations. As you can see in the agenda, there will be lots more coming through the meeting, so I am hoping that many of your questions will be answered over the next hour. 

I want to start by thinking about the big picture. This has been a very intense couple of months. I am so appreciative of the work and energy of all of our members. You have mobilized in a way that has not happened in a long time. This incredible level of engagement has been overwhelming—in a good way. Members are weighing in with advice and counsel, offering to roll up their sleeves, identifying the gaps, and then filling them in. As I look ahead to what we need to do in the short- and long-term, I can see that we are setting ourselves up to be a very powerful force on campus. We’re starting to understand—and activate—our collective power. 

What I know for sure and what is becoming very apparent is our work here is not just an individual pursuit. This whole thing—this union, this association—is about the collective, and making sure we’re all taken care of. In May, we were put in a very difficult position as a union. We cast a hugely important vote. It wasn’t easy, but I think we sent a very clear message— we’re unified in solidarity with one another, and we are concerned not just about ourselves, but about each other. This is what a union does: it offers us a space to act together, with a voice that’s much louder than any sole individual’s. 

As we work collectively in this space, there are a few things I want you to know. 

First, we are listening to all voices and incorporating all of your concerns into our actions. Our work will never be about prioritizing one group over another. Yes, in May we focused on probationary faculty—that was because we were facing a threat that would fundamentally and disproportionately impact their employment at USF. But that does not mean that we are not thinking about the entirety of the membership in our negotiations: not only probationary faculty and librarians, but also permanent librarians, term faculty, along with tenured associate and full professors. 

We know that all of you are deeply concerned about the future of USF, and your own livelihoods during this difficult time. We see that you are working hard, but that you are also tired and fearful. We know that you have extended families to care for and bills to pay. We know that some of you are single-income earners, with high rents and mortgage payments to cover; we know that others have debt from graduate school, medical bills—or just getting through life in the San Francisco Bay Area. I want you to know that we do not take lightly any one of the sacrifices that any of us are being asked to make. And I want to assure you that we are fighting to protect all of our members' jobs, salaries, and benefits to the greatest extent possible. Our preference would be to avoid pay cuts entirely, and we are working in every way that we can to minimize the impact of the financial crisis, across the board. 

Second, I want to clarify what’s happening with Term Faculty contracts. At the end of May, members voted on a proposal that included an agreement with the university to amend the 30-day notice from spring 2020 and summer 2020 term faculty contracts to a new notification deadline of May 31, 2021. The administration still has yet to reissue term contracts without the 30-day termination clause. However, the USFFA has a Memorandum of Understanding with the University. I have followed up with the administration on this issue and they have confirmed that they stand by the agreement. It has been signed and it is legally binding. 

I want to assure you that the negotiating team is pursuing a strategy of working closely with the administration on issues outside of our negotiations. That is: if we can help USF reduce the expected shortfall in any way, which would then reduce the burden on our members and all other employees, we want to do that, and are working hard to do that now, even as we enter this next phase of negotiations. Among other things, we are advocating that the university leverage its financial position to pursue a line of credit, and to draw from the endowment and operating reserves before calculating the USFFA’s percentage contribution to the net revenue shortfall. 

I also want to clarify again that we are doing everything we can to ensure that any cuts that must be made are temporary cuts, which continues in the spirit of the agreements already ratified: for example, as you know, in May the union accepted a temporary pay freeze, which would be reversed if the expected revenue drop does not materialize. This is part of why we’ve pursued this negotiation process outside of a CBA reopener. We are working in good faith with the administration to handle the crisis at hand, but we want to protect the agreements in our CBA that we have fought hard for over the years. 

One thing that’s not on the table right now is your health and safety. As you know from last week’s workshop on health and safety issues, we have a group of expert faculty working on strategies for workplace safety during the pandemic. Mike Webber will say more on this later in this meeting. 

Over the next week and a half, there is a lot of work to do. We are finalizing our own proposals, presenting them to the university, and reviewing what the university is bringing to the bargaining table. This is an iterative process. It’s also moving very fast, as we aim to honor the promise of our May vote to finalize these negotiations before June is over. Our target date for a membership vote on the final June deal is Friday, June 26. 

Over the weekend, our USFFA survey response team conducted a third survey. Today, in this meeting, you will first hear from our survey research team, as they unpack the results of this third survey, which as you know focused on workload and related matters. You will then hear our negotiating team’s initial proposals to our administration, with time for discussion. We need your input to ensure that we secure the best deal we can for all USFFA members. We know we’ve been sharing out a lot of information lately -- FAQs each week, presentations, and more. It’s all archived on our website, and note that the open comment link on the homepage is there for you to submit your ideas. Do know that we are reading and incorporating your submissions, and members have been using this feature of the website quite a bit since we added it about a week ago. I can’t underscore enough how important this is. Your continued engagement helps us to better understand the diversity of our membership and ensures that we do not only hear the perspectives of those that are the most vocal/visible. 

Some people are bringing us full-fledged bargaining proposals and we are adding them directly to our options. Others are sharing arguments to support existing proposals. Others are submitting particular cases that help us understand how members experience a particular policy in different ways. In a bit, Keally willl provide specific examples of ideas that came from members that we are already using. 

Even as negotiations continue, I haven’t forgotten that we’ve got larger issues to address. As Naupaka Zimmerman on our negotiating team said recently, it’s like the house is burning, but we also have a crack in the foundation. We have to do first things first: deal with the fire—this is June. And then my aim is to get back to work on the foundation, for example, the challenge of building true shared governance through our collective work. 

In closing, I want to come back to the big picture. This struggle is about longevity; it is about staying focused on why we came to the University of San Francisco. At a very basic structural level, what we’re trying to do here is to fulfill and protect the mission of this institution. We’ve had our differences—with the administration, and with each other. But my strong hope and belief is that this experience will ultimately bring us closer together. As Kimberly Rae Conner said in her union blessing on May 27: “Together may we find the courage and strength to live out our love in deeds more than words, in the workplace and the marketplace, sheltered at home and among each other. May we continue to seek opportunities for beatitude, in these troubling times and always.” 

I’ll be here during the open comment section of the meeting, so I can take questions during that time. Later in the meeting you’ll hear more detail about the current state of proposals under negotiation. Now I want to hand it over to USFFA VP Keally McBride to talk about specific ways we have incorporated your feedback and have benefited from your engagement. 

In Solidarity,
Sonja Martin Poole
6/17/20