Labor tension at YSU could undermine enrollment effort

Let us be clear: The three-year proposed contract rejected by the faculty at Youngstown State University had been agreed to by negotiators for the faculty union and the university after intense, lengthy talks. The pact was not foisted upon members of the Youngstown State University-Ohio Education Association by the board of trustees, which approved it last week.

We make note of that fact because public comments following the faculty’s rejection seemed to suggest that there were no union representatives at the negotiating table.

Both Dr. Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez, the chief negotiator, and Dr. Annette Burden, the YSU-OEA president, said members of the faculty are demoralized because they view the proposed contract as a continuation of the “concessionary” three-year pact that expired in Aug. 17.

Palmer-Fernandez also noted that faculty would have been hit with a 4 percent reduction in take-home pay when the various provisions were price-tagged.

And yet, he, Burden and other members of the negotiating team agreed to the three-year contract with the university after contentious issues involving health care insurance were resolved.

Why couldn’t they sell the agreement to the membership? We’ll never know definitively, but it is clear that the resumption of negotiations will not guarantee an agreement.

That’s because the administration and the board of trustees aren’t in a position to meet further demands for higher pay raises and other inducements given the fiscal challenges confronting Youngstown State.

As we noted recently, the open-access, urban institution has had to absorb a significant cut in state funding — $8.7 million from fiscal 2011 to fiscal 2015 — and to deal with a decline in revenue as a result of a sharp drop in enrollment.

Indeed, the number of full-time students has been falling for the past four years, and this semester, which ends in mid December, there were 834 fewer students on campus than the fall of 2013.

Although the administration, under President James P. Tressel, and the trustees have launched an aggressive student recruitment campaign, the chances of a significant increase in the number of full-timers are slim to none.

We are reminded of a comment made by Gov. John Kasich about Ohio’s public universities and colleges:

“Higher education needs significant reform. We can’t allow their costs to go through the roof. They’re going to lose market share. There’s no doubt about it.”

Community college expansion

Youngstown State is losing market share — to the ever-expanding Eastern Gateway Community College and to the four-year institutions within driving distance of the Mahoning Valley.

YSU also is in danger of pricing itself out of the population it is designed to serve given the tuition increases over the past several years.

Now, with the dark cloud of labor unrest hanging over the campus, there is a very real threat of enrollment declining even more than it has been each year since 2010.

The proposed contract rejected by the faculty was obviously the grand compromise that was needed to avoid a total breakdown of labor-management relations.

Today, however, there’s nothing but uncertainty about the future of Youngstown State.