We're delighted the UBOT recognizes health benefits in recent negotiations.  But it is interesting to note how pre-UBOT administrators, many of whom still run the university, argued against health benefits for years.


The fiscal health of the university hasn't changed much over the last ten years, and UF continues to lag behind its ten self-defined peer institutions (including Stanford, Berkeley, and even some second-tier schools) in providing competitive health benefits to its employees.   Yet, thanks to the hard work of GAU activists at the statehouse, on the campus, and at the bargaining table, the University Board of Trustees now accepts that health benefits are an essential part of a competitive stipend package to make us a tier-one school.

As late as 2003, grads got no health benefits at all.  GAU successfully bargained for what now amounts to a $500 reimbursement towards a university-approved plan.  The "Scarborough" plan is highly imperfect and age-discriminatory, but the dollar amount of the benefit is a massive increase over past years. 

You would think that the reasons for not giving health benefits in the past were monetary.  After all, administrators want us to be competitive with other schools, right?  Wrong.  Before the University Board of Trustees agreed to give benefits in 2004, university attorneys and administrators bent over backwards to make legal arguments about why they couldn't give us benefits.  Of course, no one at the statehouse had ever heard of such an interpretation of the law.   Representatives from both major Florida parties repeatedly balked at the notion that statutes somehow prevented UF, USF, and FAMU (still without benefits), from paying the benefit.  UF stood its ground until after GAU's major re-authorization drive in 2004 signalled rising political power for graduate professional workers on the campus.

Although activist and membership organizing were the primary tools for health benefits success, United Faculty of Florida attorneys (UFF is our state local, under the FEA, AFT, and NEA umbrellas) worked diligently to prove UF wrong on the legal issue.   For the legal argument against UF's position, Click HERE.