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ACE contract implemented by YSU trustees
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Members of the Youngs-town State University classified employees union will have to decide their next step after university trustees voted to implement a tentative contract agreement the union rejected last week by a wide margin.
Trustees at a special meeting Monday voted 7-0 to declare an impasse and implement the tentative agreement with the 282-member Association of Classified Employees. Trustees Drs. Sudershan Garg and John Jakubek were absent.
“That will be up to the membership,” ACE President Connie Frisby said of what happens next.
The union includes accountants, carpenters, computer operators, customer-service workers, custodians, electricians, nurses, laboratory technicians, clerks, secretaries and others across all university departments.
The only comment came from Carole Weimer, trustees chairwoman, and Trustee Harry Meshel, who both thanked the university’s negotiating team for its work and long hours of negotiations.
The approved resolution says the university issued its last, best and final offer to ACE on Feb. 20. ACE submitted a counterproposal that was accepted by the university’s bargaining team, leading to the tentative agreement.
The union rejected that agreement last week with 195 of 231 members voting against it.
“The administration must immediately begin to take steps necessary to ensure that negotiated changes to the employer-based health care plan are implemented July 1” and make changes in starting wages for several job classifications and reductions in paid time-off accruals, accumulations and cash payouts by July 1. Frisby said she attended Monday’s meeting to answer any questions, but no one asked.
“A lot of the changes that we wanted wouldn’t have cost them anything,” she said.
The union’s main concern is job security, Frisby said.
After the union rejected the tentative pact, the university’s director of labor relations talked with Frisby about the union’s issues with the agreement, she said.
“Before we started negotiations, we surveyed our membership, and the top priority is job security,” Frisby said.
The university’s subcontracting for some work is a concern of union members, too, Frisby said.
As employees have retired and not been replaced or been reclassified to other positions, ACE membership has dwindled from about 400 three years ago to fewer than 300.
Among other changes with which the union took issue is the reduction from 63 days to 14 days the notification of layoff or job abolishment, the union president said.
That doesn’t allow sufficient time for members to determine their retirement status through the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System.
“It takes three weeks to get an appointment with OPERS,” she said.
Employees with more than 25 years’ service will lose one of their six weeks’ vacation, dropping to five per year. Frisby said the union had wanted employees who already get the higher vacation allotment to be grandfathered in.
The imposed contract also reduces the amount of personal time ACE members earn and requires seven days’ notice for personal time off. Frisby said people use personal time when they need time off to address unexpected occurrences such as a vehicle repair, a furnace malfunction or other things that can’t be planned.
Among the positions for which starting wages will be reduced are accounting clerks I and II, administrative assistants I and II, secretary and executive secretaries I and II.
Accounting clerk I will drop from $15.07 to $12.93 per hour; accounting clerk II will drop from $15.75 to $13.61; and executive secretaries will drop from $19.34 to $16.98 hourly.
The union has been working under the expired contract since last August.
In other business, trustees appointed the vice president for student affairs at Georgia’s Augusta Technical College as YSU’s associate vice president of student experience. Eddie J. Howard Jr. will begin his duties at YSU next month. His selection follows a national search.