IFO Services
The Inter Faculty Organization (IFO) is the union for approximately 3,000 full and part time faculty at Minnesota’s seven state universities. The IFO President and Board of Directors are elected by faculty and represent your concerns. Services include:
Negotiations
Every two years the Negotiating Team, made up of faculty representatives from each campus and staffed by Connie Howard, IFO General Counsel, and Tiffany Nelson, IFO Legal Assistant, negotiates the compensation and working conditions for Minnesota state university faculty. Your salary, health and dental care, severance pay and separation benefits, life and disability insurance, faculty development and travel money, sabbatical rights, and many other forms of compensation are covered in this contract.
Contract Enforcement
Once your contact is negotiated, the IFO enforces the fair implementation of the contract. Local grievance officers and Pat Arseneault, IFO Director of Grievances & Equity, assist and represent faculty in the grievance and arbitration processes.
Government Relations
Most of the money to pay faculty salaries and benefits comes from the state legislature. The legislature also sets pension benefits and must ratify the IFO contract once it is negotiated. In addition, the legislature passes laws on a wide range of issues, such as teacher licensure, human rights, and appropriations for state buildings that affect faculty members both professionally and personally. Russ Stanton, IFO Director of Government Relations, staffs the Government Relations Committee and lobbies on behalf of faculty to improve faculty compensation and further the interests of public higher education.
Equity Advocacy
The IFO is strongly committed to equity and diversity. Pat Arseneault and IFO Legal Assistant, Tiffany Nelson, staff the Salary Equity Committee, Feminist Issues Committee, Multicultural Issues Committee, Benefits Equity Committee and GLBTA Issues Committee and assist members with issues involving discrimination, harassment, reasonable accommodation and equity.
Faculty Governance
The IFO is the officially recognized representative of faculty at the seven state universities. The IFO appoints faculty members who serve on MnSCU committees and represents faculty concerns to the administration through the Meet and Confer process and through meetings of the IFO President and Chancellor of MnSCU.
Academic Affairs
Faculty members Cathy Summa, Winona State University, and John Schneider, Metropolitan State University, on partial reassigned time, are the IFO Academic Affairs Coordinators and staff the Academic Affairs Committee. The IFO appoints faculty representatives to a variety of MnSCU committees and task forces on academic policy issues including credit transfer, teacher preparation, and graduate education.
Retirement Information
Each fall Russ Stanton conducts pension plan workshops for new faculty members to assist them in choosing a pension plan and investment options that are most appropriate for their goals and anticipated career pattern. Russ also provides retirement workshops and meets with hundreds of faculty members nearing retirement to help them maximize their retirement benefits under the IFO/MnSCU Contract and state retirement programs. Over the years, the IFO has lobbied through and/or negotiated an impressive array of retirement-related benefits and options including supplemental retirement employer-matched contributions, early separation incentives, severance pay, phased retirement, the annuitant re-employment program, tax-free post-retirement healthcare savings plans, and final year promotional steps.
MnSCU Budget Monitoring
IFO representatives provide input to MnSCU on both developing MnSCU’s biennial legislative appropriation request and allocating legislative appropriations out to MnSCU institutions. The IFO’s Government Relations Committee, made up of faculty representatives from each campus and staffed by Russ Stanton, tracks MnSCU finances, which is especially important for negotiation purposes.
IFO Accomplishments
Contract Ratification
The IFO negotiated and secured legislative ratification of the 2007-09 contract providing an 11.39% compensation increase – the largest increase of any of the state employee unions. The contract provides a one-step increase on 7/1/07, and a two-step increase plus a 2% salary enhancement on 7/1/08, and an additional 2% enhancement in January of 2009. The career steps were reinstated (giving an additional two-step increase at 10, 20, and 30 years of service), five steps were added to the top of the schedule, and the HRA was increased by $200.
Funding
In 2007, the legislature passed the largest funding increase for MnSCU in history – $151 million (12.6% increase). In 2008, the IFO fought Governor Pawlenty’s plan to cut MnSCU funding by $26 million to solve a budget shortfall. The final cuts passed by the legislature were only $7.9 million. At the IFO’s urging, all of the cuts came out of the MnSCU central office – with no reductions to the campus level budgets. The IFO also supported the MnSCU bonding request that resulted in $280 million for buildings and improvements on campuses.
Pay Equity
Each year, the IFO participates in the joint IFO MnSCU salary committee review of the salaries of new hires and faculty awarded promotions and terminal degrees, which results in equity step increases for many faculty. Every five years, the joint salary committee conducts a comprehensive study of all faculty salaries. The most current study analyzed faculty salaries for the 2005-06 academic year and resulted in $1.2 million for salary equity step increases.
Faculty Advocate
The IFO processes many grievances on behalf of faculty for violations to the terms and conditions of employment under the IFO contract. While some of these issues may be resolved at the local level, 17 issues were appealed to the state level for resolution or arbitration in the past academic year.
Academic Affairs
The IFO is actively participating in the design and development of initiatives that impact academic policy. These initiatives include support for teaching and learning, assessment, transfer policy, instructional technology, and graduate education. The first applied doctoral programs offered by state universities began fall 2007.
Retirement
In the fall of 2007, the IFO conducted 9 workshops to help new faculty make an informed decision on which retirement program—the Teachers Retirement Association or the Individual Retirement Account Plan—best fit their needs. The IFO conducted another 13 workshops for faculty nearing retirement to help them maximize their retirement related benefits under the contract. About 270 faculty attended workshops and/or received individual counseling.
Participate in Your Union
Only IFO faculty who have completed an IFO membership application are eligible to serve as IFO representatives on IFO local and statewide committees, vote on the IFO contract and in local elections, or to seek an IFO elected office. Contact your faculty association president to find out how you can get involved. If you are not a member, click HERE to join.