Panel: Follow our recommendations

The report suggests removing all previous bargaining members on both sides.
By HAROLD GWIN
Vindicator education writer
YOUNGSTOWN -- The Labor-Management Review Panel appointed by Youngstown State University President David Sweet wants its recommendations on improving campus labor relations to be implemented as presented.
The seven-member panel, headed by Provost Robert K. Herbert, met with YSU's board of trustees Monday in what Dr. H.S. Wang, trustee chairman, described as an education session for the board.
The trustees won't take any action on the plan, he said, stressing that its findings are up to the administration to implement. The trustees have confidence in the president and he will be forming action plans to deal with the report, hopefully within a month, Wang said.
The panel made it clear it thinks its recommendations to resolve labor issues and hard feelings stemming from strikes by both the faculty and classified employee unions in August should be implemented in full.
The panel hopes the report will be implemented expeditiously, said Atty. Dennis Haines, a panel member.
"We have a serious problem," said Dr. Thomas Shipka, chairman of YSU's philosophy and religious studies department and another panel member.
The university has never had strikes by two major unions at one time, two union votes of "no confidence" in the president and such extreme hard feelings over what happened, he said.
The classified employee contract was only recently signed and the faculty contract has yet to be signed, although agreements in both contracts were reached in August, Shipka said.
Recommendations
The report has recommendations for the administration, the unions and the trustees.
Among other things, the panel's report suggests that two top administrators involved in the negotiations, John Habat, vice president for administration and finance, and Hugh Chatman, executive director for human resources and labor relations, can no longer effectively serve the university in any capacity.
Shipka said he fears that both sides may try to "piecemeal" the report, accepting only the parts they find acceptable. That would just be the first step to repeating the same labor relations crisis, he warned.
Sweet told the trustees that he has already implemented at least one recommendation, removing all of the administration bargaining team members from the next round of negotiations.
The report suggests that the two unions do the same. The faculty union has said it wants to meet directly with the panel for some clarifications. The classified employee union is waiting to see how the administration reacts to the proposals.
Naming a new director of faculty relations and having that person report to the provost rather than the president is another proposal that will be implemented soon, Sweet said.
He also accepted the recommendation that he take the lead in re-establishing a relationship with the unions and is looking at how to implement a recommendation to create an ombudsman for nonfaculty employees.
Joint action needed
A number of the recommendations will require joint action by the administration and unions, some others will be explored, while still others will be subject to extensive discussion, Sweet said. The latter category includes the suggestion regarding Habat and Chatman.
The trustees met with the panel in an open 75-minute session before going into an executive session to specifically discuss those named in the report.
The trustees wanted to know what caused the strike and why the panel felt compelled to use names in its report.
Haines said the panel heard a list of reasons for the classified employee strike, including a refusal by the administration to engage in early negotiations, the untimely release of an adminstration-commissioned salary study of classified jobs, an administrative team member calling a classified union member a "union thug," the firing of the classified union president just before negotiations began and what the union felt was an ill-conceived administrative proposal for an early retirement incentive plan.
Unresolved grievances
There were also 35 unresolved classified employee grievances at the start of negotiations, reflecting the mindset of those involved in the talks, said James Morrison, retired chairman of YSU's psychology department and a panel member.
All of those things supported a claim by the union that the administrative team had "a chip on the shoulder" left over from negotiations three years ago and was trying to get something back from the union, Haines said.
Information filtering back to the trustees didn't appear to be accurate and communications broke down on both sides of the table, said Eugenia Atkinson, executive director of the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority , a former YSU trustee and another panel member.
It became clear that the process broke down partly because of the parties involved, so the panel felt some key players responsible for managing that process should be replaced, Shipka said.
Haines declined to reveal specific comments made to the panel by the administrators named in the report, but said they made a couple of essential points regarding their stance in negotiations: Every employer has the right to say no and it takes a strong person to say no, and, in their view, an overwhelming number of YSU employees are satisfied with the negotiations.
All the panel could do was recommend a cure for the ailment, Shipka said after the meeting with trustees.
"If they want the cure, they'll have to take the medicine," he said, adding that applies to all parties.
gwin@vindy.com