Lawyer: YSU has smeared ACE, head

By Harold Gwin

The university said the issue is fairness for all ACE employees.

YOUNGSTOWN — An attorney for the Association of Classified Employees union at Youngstown State University has taken the university to task for what he termed the “unconscionable smearing” of the union and its president.

“In a recent barrage of comments and releases to the media and other actions, Youngstown State University has tarnished the reputation of YSU-ACE’s leadership by insinuating that during recent contract negotiations, Association President Ivan Maldonado engaged in self-dealing,” Atty. Ira J. Mirkin wrote in a letter to YSU President David C. Sweet on Wednesday.

“This must stop,” he wrote.

The university revealed last week that it was investigating job classification issues in the new ACE contract ratified in July, focusing particularly on a reclassification that resulted in one employee’s getting a pay raise of more than $20,000.

The university also announced that Craig Bickley, the university’s chief negotiator on the contract and chief human resources officer, had been placed on administrative leave as a result of an investigation into the issue that showed the job classification schedule didn’t match what the trustees had anticipated.

Not all of the pay grades in the new contract corresponded to the pay grades in a state classification schedule as intended, the trustees said.

Subsequent public records requests filed with the university by The Vindicator revealed that Maldonado was the employee who got the pay increase in question after his job was reclassified.

YSU denied publicly pointing a finger at Maldonado.

Spokesman Ron Cole said that, other than Bickley, the university hasn’t named any specific employees in any of its official public comments about the matter.

The university respects the privacy of individual employees as relates to personnel matters, he said.

At the same time, the university has been bound to respond appropriately to public records requests under Ohio open-records law, Cole said.

Sweet, in an update sent to trustees on Monday, did identify Maldonado by name and said that the university would take steps to lower his pay grade on his $82,613 salary and recover money he has “incorrectly received.”

Mirkin, in his letter to Sweet, said the university was “apparently derelict in conducting its own due diligence of the wage schedule proposed by YSU-ACE.”

“The buyer’s remorse to which the University has now succumbed does not excuse the University’s unconscionable smearing of Mr. Maldonado and YSU-ACE,” he wrote.

The university at one point contacted the Ohio attorney general’s office to have an investigation done, and Atty. Thomas D. Rooney of Millisor & Noble Co., LPA, was appointed to handle that task.

His report included an e-mail written by Bickley that said Maldonado had adjusted various pay grades upward in the new classification document before it was presented and signed back in February. It became a part of the contract ratified in July.

Maldonado, however, was never questioned by any university representative — including Rooney — during that investigation, despite the fact that the union invited the university to submit any questions that it had in writing, Mirkin wrote.

He said that Maldonado is being “unfairly victimized by the University’s public relations campaign to direct attention away from its own failure to fully evaluate its agreement with YSU-ACE before ratifying it.”

Cole said the board of trustees has a fiduciary responsibility to the university as a whole, and responsibility to make sure that its contracts and polices are followed.

In this case, the board was made aware of problems with implementation of the new contract as related to job classifications and has taken steps to correct those problems, he said.

The issue at hand is not directed at any employee or employees but focuses on a fair implementation of a contract for all ACE employees, Cole said.

The university met with ACE leadership in early November in an attempt to resolve the issue but was rebuffed, he said.

gwin@vindy.com