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Arbitrator’s decision should be vacated, YSU says
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Youngstown State University is asking a judge to vacate an arbitrator’s decision to give a fired payroll employee and former union chief his job back.
In July, an arbitrator ruled that Ivan Maldonado, fired in 2009 after he was accused of threatening other employees and poor work performance, should be returned to work immediately. The arbitrator, Michael E. Zobrak of Aliquippa, Pa., determined that Maldonado, former president of the university’s Association of Classified Employees, should have been suspended rather than discharged.
The university, through attorneys George S. Crisci and David P. Frantz of Cleveland, argues in a memorandum filed this week in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that the arbitrator’s award should be vacated in part because he excluded evidence.
Attorney Ira Mirkin, who represents ACE, said he will respond to YSU’s filing in the appropriate time.
“It appears they’re just trying to re-litigate the case that’s already been decided by an arbitrator,” he said. “The courts typically aren’t friendly to such attempts when there’s been a decision to have them decided by binding arbitration.”
Maldonado was placed on administrative leave in March 2009 after he was accused of making threatening and vulgar comments to female employees. While on leave, the university discovered what it determined to be significant errors in his work duties including falsifying information to the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System.
YSU fired Maldonado in July 2009 after two hearings.
“Subsequently, after OPERS conducted a months-long audit, YSU learned of the full extent of Maldonado’s misrepresentations to OPERS: false statements regarding dozens of current or former employees costing YSU tens of thousands of dollars in unnecessary payments to OPERS,” the memo filed by YSU says.
Maldonado and ACE filed a grievance regarding the termination, and the issue moved to arbitration.
The process was stayed pending criminal prosecution. In June 2012, a visiting judge in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court found Maldonado innocent of two counts of falsification and one count each of grand theft, tampering with records, theft in office and theft.
YSU says that when the arbitration resumed with a different arbitrator three years after it began, the arbitrator excluded evidence related to the OPERS audit “because YSU discovered it after Maldonado’s termination, despite its direct relation to one of the bases for his termination.”