Ruling forces YSU to spend $846K on back pay

July 17, 2010 at 12:10a.m.

By HAROLD GWIN

YOUNGSTOWN

It cost Youngstown State University $846,000 to comply with a federal arbiter’s ruling that it violated a union contract and owed some employees back pay.

In all, 158 members of the Association of Classified Employees union received back pay amounting to $846,000 as a result of that ruling, said Ron Cole, director of university relations.

The payments cover the period from August 2008 through June 2010, he said.

Lee R. Franklin of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service said in late April that the university violated its contract with the classified employees union when it converted members’ wage rates from an old job scale to the Ohio job classification plan.

He directed the university to recompute the wage rate of each union member who had a pay-grade change as a result of the 2008 conversion and to pay them the difference in wages and all applicable increases retroactive to Aug. 15, 2008, the effective date of the contract.

Franklin had estimated that as many as 200 of the 390 union members might be affected.

The university chose to abide by the arbiter’s ruling but initially had estimated the number of those getting back pay much lower, suggesting that at least 80 employees would be affected. The final count came in at nearly double that number. Pay adjustments would range from a few pennies per hour to more than $1 per hour in some cases.

At the time of the arbiter’s ruling, Cole said the university and the union had agreed to the wage-rate conversion as part of the contract, but how that was to be done was “a gray area,” and the university “implemented the conversion in a manner we felt was agreed upon.”

The union disagreed and filed a grievance over the issue, and the case wound up in binding arbitration.

In his ruling, Franklin said testimony presented over the course of two hearings in November and December 2009 showed that the university failed to follow the conversion system worked out by a joint university/union committee.

No employee was to be financially hurt by the conversion, but evidence presented shows that some were, Franklin said.

The union represents administrative assistants, secretaries, computer-center employees, maintenance workers and others.