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YSU workers to get raises & more
By HAROLD GWIN
YOUNGSTOWN
A total of 172 professional and administrative employees at Youngstown State University will get a 4.25 percent pay raise effective next Thursday.
They’ll also be getting a $1,200 “adjustment” added to their base-pay rates on that date.
The total payout will cost the university $731,000, said spokesman Ron Cole.
The raise goes to professional and administrative staff who have supervisory duties but are not represented by any union, Cole said, adding they are referred to as “exempt professional staff.”
That includes vice presidents, deans, directors, assistant and associate directors and others, he said.
The increases were approved earlier this month by YSU’s Board of Trustees as part of the $158.8 million general fund budget, though the budget document presented to the public didn’t spell out the details.
It referred only to exempt professional and administrative staff getting “comparable salary increases” to those negotiated for union-represented employees.
Some 140 Association of Professional/Administrative Staff union employees are getting base-pay increases and other salary improvements that will boost their salaries by about 5.5 percent in the next fiscal year beginning July 1.
The university’s nearly 400 faculty members are in line for a 3.5-percent increase, and nearly 400 members of the Association of Classified Employees union will get a 2.6-percent increase, according to terms of their current contracts.
Cole said the $1,200 being added to exempt professional staff base pay is a “salary adjustment” made to establish a proper balance between the compensation paid to union-represented employees and management personnel.
Over the years, pay increases given exempt professional staff have not kept pace with the level of increases negotiated in union contracts, he said. That has created an imbalance between supervisors and the people they supervise, and the $1,200 is an effort to correct that imbalance, he said.