Sweet alters panel's plan on labor ties 2 executives will keep jobs but won't negotiate pacts

The president rejected a call to fire the two administrators.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Youngstown State University's executive director of human resources will be reassigned, and neither he nor the vice president for administration will be involved in future employee contract negotiations.
Neither man, however, will lose his job.
The university also will get a new director of faculty relations.
Those are key points in YSU President David C. Sweet's response to recommendations compiled in early January by a Labor-Management Review Panel he appointed to find ways to improve labor relations on campus after strikes by both the faculty and classified employee unions in August.
Wins support
Sweet presented his response Thursday to the YSU trustee board's Internal Affairs Committee, and the committee voted unanimously to support his position.
The trustees are asking the president to implement his responses expeditiously, said Trustee John Pogue, committee chairman. "We hope that the unions would do likewise," he said.
Among other things, the labor panel had suggested that John Habat, vice president for administration and finance, and Hugh Chatman, executive director of human resources and labor relations, could no longer effectively serve the university in any capacity.
The panel put the blame for most of the labor unrest on their shoulders.
Sweet said he disagreed with the recommendation that Habat and Chatman have to go.
He did, however, say that Chatman will be reassigned within the university, and that the office of human resources will now report directly to the president, not the vice president of administration.
The new director of faculty relations will report to the provost, not the president, and won't be involved in contract negotiations. Dr. Thomas Maraffa held that job as well as the titles of special assistant to the president and coordinator of the enrollment maintenance plan. He will remain responsible for the latter two jobs.
Creating positions
Sweet said he will create similar positions to work with the other unions on campus. He said specific personnel moves resulting from his action plan will be announced today.
Sweet said he also will convene a standing Labor-Management Council, another key recommendation from the labor panel, in March.
All administration members of current labor negotiation teams for faculty and classified contracts will be replaced, in accordance with the panel's recommendations, Sweet said.
"The steps I have outlined in this report will allow for constructive labor-management relations built on trust and mutual respect," Sweet said. "It is time to fully focus on our reason for being here -- the education of our students."
Rehiring issue
Sweet also backed away from a panel recommendation that Christine Domhoff, president of the classified employee union, be rehired.
Domhoff's job with YSU's Metro College was eliminated last year just as negotiations were about to begin, and she has challenged the job loss through a series of grievances.
Sweet said the matter is now in arbitration, and it would be inappropriate for the administration to interfere with that process.
Domhoff, aside from her personal stake in Sweet's response, said she was disappointed the president didn't come out strongly in support of all of the panel's 24 recommendations.
She said she fears that Habat and Chatman will still be involved in future negotiations, but from behind the scenes rather than at the bargaining table.
"From what I can see, we're at a standstill," she said after hearing Sweet's report. "I don't think we've moved forward. I don't think we moved in a positive direction."
Both the faculty and classified employee unions endorsed the labor panel's full list of recommendations in a press conference Tuesday.
Offer to step down
The members of the union negotiating teams offered to step down, as the labor panel suggested, but said they would do so only when Habat and Chatman were no longer employed at YSU and only after Domhoff is rehired.
Both Domhoff and Dr. Stanley Guzell, chief negotiator for the faculty, indicated the unions' position won't change.
Implementation of the panel's recommendations piecemeal won't work, Guzell said. "That won't improve the labor relations climate," he said.
Sweet said it was never a given that he would automatically accept the report in its entirety, pointing out that he has to be accountable and responsible in ways the panel and critics on campus are not.
Habat's statement
Habat issued his own statement Thursday, saying the pressing issues that led to the strikes were the trustees' directive that employees begin to contribute to the cost of health care and the university's desire to create a new wage structure for classified staff.
A deeper reason was resistance to efforts seeking incremental change and reduced operational costs in a financially constrained environment, he said.
He called the labor panel's call for his job "unsupported and meritless."