Message from the USFFA President

Message from Sonja Martin Poole

September 2, 2020

This semester is like no other semester any of us has ever experienced. We are all experiencing unforeseen challenges at work, in our homes and in our communities. Without listing the many things that are impacting our lives right now, I will just say that we are all under a great deal of stress. We are all experiencing anxiety, heartache and distress. We are all in pain in some form or another. The hardships are widespread and deep. I am reminded of this every day and it weighs heavily on me.

I want to point out that the USFFA today is not the USFFA of 45+ years when we were founded. We have grown. We have built on what our founding colleagues created and we are a larger and more diverse union today. Our growth reflects the growth and transformation of our university.

Today we are also a stronger union. We have more people directly involved in the activities of governance and faculty affairs than ever before. With a significant sense of responsibility to our colleagues, our impressive Policy Board representatives are constantly working to propose and erect structures and policies that will enhance our involvement and distinction in the campus community and keep us all accountable to the mission of the university.

We have learned that if we all are really interested in stepping more fully into the role of governance and building on the shared governance structures we already have in place, we need to separate and make distinct the functions of (A) faculty governance – which includes shared governance and joint committees and our own internal governing structures and (B) faculty affairs -- which includes grievances and all issues related to our traditional labor union responsibilities. This distinction may mean that we introduce a second VP role to the executive board that focuses on grievances and CBA-related issues and chairs the grievance committee, while the first VP continues to focus on staffing and overseeing internal, division- and university-level committees, governance, and chairs the committee on committees (pending a possible name change, of course). These -- along with changes in our association structure, finances and the role of the president -- are things we need to consider if we want to remain a viable association that will be around in the long run.

There are two major issues that are going to be our primary focus this year. The first is we are due for another round of bargaining – per our contract, next year we are scheduled to renegotiate our contract. But we also may have to go back to the table earlier depending on how things play out with the pandemic-related university budget shortfall. We need to prepare for both. And for this we will be relying heavily on our faculty representatives to the University Budget Advisory Committee (UBAC). The second issue that will be our focus his year is the shared governance piece which also involves a type of bargaining. We will need to sit at the table with the administration to agree on and create a shared governance structure that from our perspective involves upholding our principles of transparency, inclusion and democracy. One of the considerations that we need to incorporate into our deliberations is how to incorporate the Associated Law Professors (ALP) and PTFA into our Policy Board – so that we can become a true association of university faculty.

(This is an edited version of remarks Sonja Martin Poole delivered at the Sept 2 Policy Board meeting.)