YSU faculty and staff on strike

Inside Higher Ed: Youngstown State University Faculty Strike

The picket line is getting crowded around the perimeter of Youngstown State University.

All 390 full-time faculty members went on strike Tuesday after rejecting the university’s most recent contract proposal. With classes set to begin August 29, they joined the 400 secretaries, computer programmers, landscapers and other employees who walked off the job last week.

The major hangups in negotiations for the faculty contract are salary and health care premiums, the same issues as for the employees who struck last Tuesday. Youngstown State offered faculty members a 3 percent raise for each of the next three years, and asked faculty members to pay 1.5 percent of their salary for a family health care plan, or 0.75 percent for an individual plan. Previously, university officials said, Youngstown State was the only public university in Ohio that had not asked employees to contribute from their salaries for health insurance.

The Vindicator: YSU faculty reject pack, strike

YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown State University’s faculty union overwhelmingly rejected a three-year contract with 3 percent annual salary increases.

The contract also called for the union, with about 380 members, to pay an amount equal to 1.5 percent of their annual base salary toward health insurance premiums for family coverage and an amount equal to 0.75 percent for single coverage beginning Jan. 1, 2006.

Also, YSU employees whose spouses have jobs that offer health insurance would have to pay $100 a month to the university to keep their spouses on the YSU plan.

Faculty union officials declined to discuss their contract proposals.

But Thomas Maraffa, YSU’s chief negotiator on this contract and special assistant to the president, said the union sought annual salary increases of 3.5 percent, 5 percent and 4.5 percent.

The union wanted employee contributions to be an amount equal to 1 percent for family coverage and 0.5 percent for single coverage, beginning July 1, 2006, Maraffa said.

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