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YSU trustees approve new faculty contract
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Youngstown State University trustees approved a new three-year contract with the university’s faculty union that provides bonuses and salary increases but eliminates or reduces other faculty compensation.
The board approved the pact, which was OK’d last week by the union, by a 7-2 vote with trustees Harry Meshel and David Deibel opposed.
“There’s no question we have outstanding faculty at this university,” Meshel said at a special trustees meeting Tuesday. “They’ve proven themselves over and over. I do have to question the intellectual level of the union leadership they have.”
Meshel referred to the union’s negotiating team agreeing to terms of the first tentative agreement reached in November and then urging membership to reject it, calling it unethical and childish. The union rejected the earlier tentative agreement.
Someone who would do that “shouldn’t be on the negotiating team and should not be running the ethics department either.”
Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez, the faculty union’s chief negotiator, is the director of the James Ethics Center at YSU.
Meshel’s “remarks, made in ignorance of the facts, should not be dignified by any further comment,” Palmer-Fernandez said.
Annette Burden, president of the YSU-Ohio Education Association, the union representing faculty, believes Meshel is misinformed.
“It is unfortunate that the remarks made by Mr. Meshel were a result of gross misinformation,” she said in an email. “Remarks such as these tend to be harmful to the fostering of a more healthy relationship between the faculty who have given so much in support of the university and the board of trustees who are appointed to look after its financial interests. I hope that we can move beyond this pettiness and work constructively to collectively support our mission as an urban research university.”
Meshel also was critical that with roughly 370 faculty, only 207 voted on the contract. The contract was approved by 17 votes. Meshel credited the administration’s negotiating team for its work.
“Anyone can argue with me,” he said.
“I created collective bargaining for public employees [in Ohio]. I’ve supported unions my whole life because they support working people. I’d like to see this leadership support working people.”
Meshel was a long-time state senator.
The contract is retroactive to 2014 with pay freezes and no bonuses the first year. The second year, there is a 1 percent base pay increase and a $2,000 bonus for professors, $1,500 for associate professors, $1,300 for assistant professors and $1,000 for instructors.
The third year, the base-pay increase is 2 percent, and the bonuses are $1,000 for professors, $750 for associate professors, $650 for assistant professors and $500 for instructors.
The average faculty salary is $72,657. With benefits, that average increases to $95,907, university officials have said.
YSU’s total 2015 operating budget is $173 million.
The union is giving up extended teaching service and the contract also includes a reduction in summer pay. ETS allows faculty to continue working at YSU for up to five years after their retirement.
This year and the second year of the contract, those eligible for retirement would receive a $40,000 buyout paid over four years in place of ETS.
That option is available the third year.
Faculty members who teach during the summer are paid 3.25 percent of their salary per credit hour.
The summer school cap is at $70,000 in the latest agreement, a reduction from $80,000 in the pact that expired last August.
The contract also reduces faculty pay for sabbatical and web-based courses.
“The elimination of ETS and the reductions in compensation for web-based courses and summer pay will provide significant savings to the university during the term of this agreement and after,” a news release from the university says.
Trustees Chairwoman Carole Weimer said the contract strikes a balance between trying to provide modest compensation increases and allowing some long-term savings for the university.
“We look forward to working collaboratively with the faculty and all YSU employees as we continue to strive for what is best for our students — a strong financial future and a culture of academic excellence,” she said.