Official Updates from USFFA

Results of the Vote

May 31, 2020

Dear Colleagues,

Here are the results of the two proposals we voted on over the past two days:

1. Authorizing the Negotiation Team to enter into the five point agreement:

Total voting members: 397 (84.6% of total members)

Yes: 365 (91.9% of votes cast)—Proposal passes

No: 32 (8.1% of votes cast)

2. Proposal to delay sabbaticals

Total voting members: 396 (84.4% of total members)

Yes: 362 (91.4% of votes cast)—Proposal passes

No: 34 (8.6% of votes cast)

We do not celebrate this result. Frankly, we find it unacceptable that the administration threatened our members’ careers and, in some cases, their immigration status. USFFA members spent valuable time fighting for our colleagues’ jobs, during a pandemic when our university needs all hands on deck to plan for an uncertain future. 

USFFA has been working in good faith with the administration, has come to the table through our shared governance bodies, has repeatedly offered shared sacrifice, and has insisted on protecting the most vulnerable members of our union and the broader university. The administration has committed to these principles in words, including President Fitzgerald’s statements, earlier this spring:

  • At Policy Board earlier this spring: “As Sonja said as she took on the role of your association president: we all share the core values of this university and the best way to protect those values and the students we serve is to stand together. I stand with you, and I look forward to our work together in the weeks, months, and years ahead” 

  • And, facing the difficult financial decisions that the University is making “we will make decisions rooted in our Jesuit values and educational principles as expressed in cura personalis and cura apostolica”

But the actions of our administration in fostering an adversarial process, and in targeting some of our most vulnerable members—including by sending confusing emails to probationary faculty and librarians while the vote was taking place—has not matched these words.  

Nonetheless, this vote also represents considerable hope for the Faculty Association and hence for our University: 

  1. Once again, our membership has demonstrated how highly engaged we are. Nearly 85% of our members voted in a 24-hour period. This sends the very clear message that we are united and activated.

  2. Our members have indicated that solidarity is our highest priority.

  3. Our collective strength will be crucial to our success over the next month.  The next stage of negotiations will need the support of as many of our members as possible. When we stand together, we can insist on addressing the profound logistic and financial challenges of the University of San Francisco, through shared governance, and in ways consistent with our Mission and Values. 

Please stay tuned for ways that you can support our union. Your continued engagement will determine our success at the negotiating table in June, as we will be working out the details of a very complicated agreement. We recognize that we asked you, as members, to digest a tremendous amount of information, and make a highly consequential vote in a very short time, and appreciate that you rose to the occasion. That said, we commit to a more proactive process going forward, and reassert our commitment to communicating that process.

Please remember that is our “yes”, not the administration’s. We will now use our power as a union to demand that the administration work with us in good faith, and to hold them to their words, in the spirit of the Mission and Values of the University of San Francisco.

—Your Negotiating Team
Sonja Poole (SOM)
Xornam Apedoe (SOE)
Dorothy Kidd (Arts)
Jennifer Parlamis (SOM)
Christina Purpora (SONHP)
Mike Webber (Arts)
Justine Withers (Library)
Naupaka Zimmerman (Sciences)