Friday, September 19, 2014
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Will a new Youngstown State University faculty contract mean trick or treat for the university? Maybe it will just be a turkey.
About a month ago, it looked as if a new pact would be reached within weeks. University and faculty union representatives issued a news release announcing that a tentative agreement had been reached on a new three-year contract.
But an update sent this week to faculty members by the union’s chief negotiator and obtained by The Vindicator paints a bleaker picture.
“We are now going into a second month without a contract ...,” the memo from Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez says. “It is a sign of a deeply troubled perhaps dysfunctional institution in which communication and procedures are fractured, and leadership — the [board of trustees] — lacks vision and will.”
Ron Cole, a university spokesman, said in a text message that “meetings have been scheduled to continue to negotiate the remaining health-care issues in the contract. We hope that those discussions will result in an expedited resolution.”
Palmer-Fernandez writes that the reason a master tentative agreement hasn’t been reached is the health-care advisory committee, an entity convened by the university, hasn’t agreed on recommendations. The committee’s next scheduled meeting is Oct. 14.
“Consequently, as matters presently stand there shall be no recommendations from that committee at least for a month,” Palmer- Fernandez wrote.
Once agreed upon, the recommendations must be forwarded to the union’s negotiating team, which must analyze them.
“So I do not see how we can come to a master tentative agreement before Halloween,” he said.
It could then take the time between Halloween and Thanksgiving to complete the agreement “and perhaps post-Thanksgiving for the ratification vote first by the BOT and then by us,” the memo says.
A strike authorization vote should be taken at that time, if not sooner, it says.
“Perhaps sooner is better,” the chief negotiator wrote in the memo. “I am tired of waiting on them. How about you?”
Although no information about the tentative faculty agreement was released last month, information distributed earlier to faculty members and obtained by The Vindicator indicated that items agreed upon included a combination of pay increases and bonuses but also a reduction in summer pay and elimination of extended teaching service.