In a stinging rebuke to administrators and the Board of Trustees at Florida State University, an arbitrator has ordered the university to reinstate 12 tenured union faculty members who received layoff notices in 2009.
The ruling by Stanley Sergent, a Sarasota attorney who FSU and United Faculty of Florida agreed to have hear the grievance, hadn’t been expected until later this month. But Sergent completed his decision this week, and both sides received copies of the 83-page ruling on Friday.
FSU President Eric Barron said the university will rescind layoffs to all tenured faculty, whether they were part of the grievance or not.
“Our view is that the ruling has been made, and we should treat all faculty members uniformly,” Barron said.
FSU, coping with more than $82 million in cuts from the state, approved a three-year budget in June 2009 that included merging some departments and eliminating others.
More than five dozen faculty members received termination notices, which go into effect at the end of the current school year.
Twenty-one veteran professors with tenure—considered job security in higher education—were among the faculty members who received layoff notices.
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