The College Fix

Contract negotiations have broken down between the University of South Florida and its staff union, The Oracle reports, in part because the union wants the school to pay for some of its activities.

The USF chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, headed by President Susie Shannon, wants the same things the faculty union gets, but USF chief negotiator John Dickinson isn’t having it, 

specifically regarding allowing Shannon eight hours of her 40-hour workweek to focus on union business. 

“We’re just asking eight hours a week to resolve conflicts, not union business, not to organize, not to send out literature,” [union chief negotiator Hector] Ramos said. 

Dickinson said the university shouldn’t pay Shannon to handle union business on university time. 

This makes the universities pay, he said, for what unions typically pay for by using the revenue from union dues. Furthermore, USF is paying on AFSCME’s behalf, for the union to negotiate. 

The accusations are getting personal and stereotypical:

Dickinson said the university understands if AFSCME cannot afford proper representation, but revenue streams should be transparent to prove it. 

“We want to see how much of that revenue stream is going to Washington D.C. to pay for people who drive around in limousines or take charter flights, and are not being spent on this campus,” he said. 

Ramos said he disagreed with this characterization as malicious misrepresentation, and that revenue streams were publically [sic] available to university administration. 

There’s also a dispute over Internet access, of all things. The union wants some “existing clauses” from university rules and regulations to go in the staff contract, which the school says is redundant because union members can read that information “through the Internet.”

But Shannon said many staff members don’t have “readily-available Internet access,” according to The Oracle.

Um, don’t they work at a university?

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