Retrenchment is the way that lay-offs are described in academia.
SB 1 would like to give all of the power to the Board of Trustees and the university or college administrations. One of the best illustrations for the importance of being able to negotiate retrenchment comes from the history of YSU-OEA.
In a retrospective for the YSU-OEA’s newsletter, YSU Philosophy Professor Tom Shipka described the conditions back in 1972 and 1973 when the first collective bargaining agreement was negotiated:
We had unionized under the cloud of retrenchment and, understandably, job security was uppermost in our minds and no issue received more attention during the long, hot summer of preparations. J. J. Koss, Economics, deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the impressive provisions on retrenchment in our labor agreement because he was adamant on a variety of points –objective criteria to be met before retrenchment would be attempted, layoffs of part-time faculty before full-time faculty in a department, transfers and loans to other appropriate departments, if possible, before any retrenchment, layoffs by reverse seniority provided the remaining faculty had the qualifications to teach the courses required to be taught, and others. Had he not been as stubborn and rigorous as he was in the summer of 1972, often in the face of my anger and impatience, our job security and that of future generations of YSU faculty would have suffered.
A key decision made by the YSU Board of Trustees and administration in the summer of 1972 was to hire an outside attorney as chief negotiator instead of appointing an administrator for this important task. He was John Weed Powers of Manchester, Bennett, Powers, and Ullman in Youngstown, a seasoned labor relations veteran who was perceived by many as the darling of entrepreneurs and the scourge of organized labor in the Mahoning Valley. Faculty leaders were worried about this decision on the grounds that few hired guns understood the culture of higher education. I remember phoning my father, a labor leader who knew the local labor relations turf as well as anyone, to inform him about the university’s selection. His response was, “Tom, you’ll be dealing with a real pro but an honorable person. Your group will get a respectable contract if your people deal honestly with him.” As time passed, I found that he was prophetic.
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The dominant issue early in the negotiations was the administration’s retrenchment plans. The faculty team demanded a justification for the layoffs called for by President Pugsley which the administration was slow to produce. A turning point was December 11, 1972, when administration negotiators announced that letters of non-renewal would not be sent out after all. Although rumors on campus had hinted at the retrenchment of 12 full-time faculty, the only data submitted in negotiators referred to the need to reduce the faculty by 44 FTE (full-time equivalent) faculty, with no specificity as to the mix of full-time and part-time. President Pugsley submitted his letter of resignation as president several weeks after this announcement; some speculated that the trustees had failed to support his retrenchment plan and he interpreted this as a vote of no confidence in him. An unadvertised evening meeting of the trustees was then held at the president’s mansion, at 1010 Colonial Drive in Liberty, at which the trustees both accepted Pugsley’s resignation and named John J. Coffelt, then Vice-President for Administrative Affairs, as Pugsley’s successor. Soon thereafter, Robert Williams stepped down as chair of the trustees and John Newman succeeded him with an announced intention of taking a hard line in the negotiations.
Attorney Powers had confided to me several times that he was encountering problems with the trustees. An ominous turn of events took place in spring, 1973, as the two sides were making steady progress on a variety of issues on the table. In an attempt to settle all remaining differences, the teams conducted a marathon negotiating session which ran from 10:00 a.m. on
day one through 5:00 p.m. on day two, with breaks only for meals and caucuses. During these 31 hours negotiators on both sides were amazed at the vigor of Elizabeth Sterenberg, the oldest member of our team. News reporters had gotten wind of the marathon session and reported it
repeatedly on radio and television. These reports apparently angered certain trustees who felt that their right to review all tentative agreements was being subverted. Suddenly, Attorney Powers was summoned from the negotiations to an emergency meeting of the board and negotiations were suspended. Subsequently, Powers reported that his authority to proceed had been withdrawn and that he had been ordered to produce all tentative agreements for review by the trustees. Shortly thereafter he reported further that he had been instructed to inform our team that the trustees did not intend to honor a number of the tentatively settled items. Powers was on the verge of resigning and I pleaded with him to remain on the grounds that he was indispensable to the avoidance of a strike and to an eventual settlement. He acquiesced.
The leaders of the faculty union convened the faculty for a strike vote. Our objective was to demonstrate to the trustees that we did not approve of their conduct, that we wanted to return to the table to conclude the long months of negotiations, and that we were prepared to take unprecedented actions to salvage collective bargaining. The meeting was held in Schwebel
Auditorium and, by secret ballot, the faculty authorized the leadership to call a strike by a margin of 200 to 59. Within two days, the trustees met and restored the authority of their negotiators and the negotiations quickly resumed. The faculty and the trustees ratified the agreement without further controversy. The faculty vote was 206-8. As soon as the trustees did this, however, they sent a letter to the Ohio Attorney General seeking an official ruling on the legality of collective bargaining and of a number of the provisions of our new agreement. To the consternation of some, no doubt, the Attorney General supported the legality of collective bargaining and of the provisions in the agreement about which doubt had been raised.
Although the faculty negotiators did not achieve all of their objectives, we made important progress. We had secured the first master agreement covering a faculty in Ohio public higher education. (The faculties at the University of Cincinnati and Kent State Universities would draw heavily from our contract and our experience later on when they unionized.) We had won a
salary equity fund which was used primarily to redress salary inequities suffered by women. We had negotiated a comprehensive salary and fringe benefit package with outstanding insurance coverage. We had gotten a grievance procedure culminating in third party arbitration. We had negotiated a much improved system of faculty promotion including elected department and university-wide committees. We had improved job security significantly through strong language on retrenchment and an appeals process in the case of layoffs, non-renewals, and terminations for cause. We had negotiated a sensible summer teaching policy built on the principles of rotation and equal opportunity. We had brought institutional uniformity and accessibility to files on faculty. We had negotiated a right of the YSU-OEA to receive important budgetary and other data. We had negotiated the ground rules for the restructuring of the Senate to assure that it would be primarily a faculty body, that it would elect its presiding officer, and that it would not conflict with the bargaining process. And we had set the wheels in motion to establish a system of faculty evaluation and a campus credit union through joint faculty-administration committees.
Boards of Trustees are appointed by the Ohio Governor. Because SB 1 revises the term limits from 9 years to 6 years, this means that Governors will have the opportunity to appoint more Trustees, including those who may be more aligned with their political ideology.
SB 1 also stipulates that Boards of Trustees are to receive training to serve on Boards. It is unlikely that the training will be friendly to collective bargaining rights or faculty rights.
Retrenchment is defined in SB 1 as: “a process by which a state institution of higher education reduces programs or services, thus resulting in a temporary suspension or permanent separation of one or more institution faculty, to account for a reduction in student population or overall funding, a change to institutional missions or programs, or other fiscal pressures or emergencies facing the institution.”
With retrenchment being non-negotiable, there is little to stop retrenching from the top down, laying off the faculty with the most experience (read: most expensive) to replace them with part-time faculty (adjuncts) who are less expensive. Part-time faculty do not have the same collective bargaining protections as full-time faculty. In fact, it is against the law in Ohio for part-time faculty to unionize.
As Honesty for Ohio Education points out about this part of the legislation:
- Under this definition of “retrenchment,” colleges and universities could terminate classes and programs without valid cause. One student dropping a class could be used to shut down an entire department.
- There are concerns that students could suddenly be left without the classes or programs they need to enter their chosen field.
- Many educators would be left without any job security.
Without job security, this also makes attracting great professors to Ohio very, very difficult.
OH SB 1 Petition 