Florida - Friday August 4, 2023: The United Faculty of Florida (UFF) has filed suit in state court to challenge the arbitration ban passed during the last Legislative Session by Florida lawmakers in Senate Bill 266.
The measure gives final decision-making authority to university presidents regarding personnel disputes.
UFF is the higher education affiliate of the Florida Education Association and an affiliate of the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers and AFL-CIO, representing more than 25,000 higher education professionals across Florida’s public and private universities, state and community colleges, graduate programs and K-12 lab schools.
The UFF lawsuit maintains that the state of Florida is attempting to upend decades of precedent that has given Florida's state university faculty "fair and equitable treatment" in the workplace. UFF is asking the court to uphold that right against further attempts at what it calls "partisan, authoritarian control of Florida’s State University System."
UFF argues that decades of labor practice have shown that third-party, neutral arbitration is a key component of enforcing contractual rights.
"There is no justice in allowing the same university leaders who violate contractual agreements to serve as the final arbiters of whether they have acted fairly," states a release from UFF.
View the UFF lawsuit here.