Interest-Based Bargaining: Changing Employer-Employee Relations at Youngstown State University

This study is based upon interviews conducted with over two dozen individuals centrally involved with the collective bargaining movement at Youngstown State University of Ohio. (YSU) The experiences and memories of several participants extend back to the 1960’s, at which time they were newly appointed faculty members. Within the group are several retired persons who spoke from the comfortable position of relative political invulnerability. Others were at the time of their interviews actively engaged in university teaching and administration. Initial interviews concerning the newly-established Interest-based bargaining process took place within eight months of the negotiatory events, well before the “ravages of short term memory loss” had damaged the database. Placed alongside the historical “paper trail” this oral testimony enabled the writer to reconstruct and describe with a significant degree of accuracy the events occurring during the negotiation of the 1993 faculty collective bargaining agreement at YSU. In 2004 the author revisited the issues involved through contact with retired, as well as still active members of the YSU community. The new data collected enabled him to “bring current” the earlier investigation, thus providing an update on the evolution of the bargaining process since 1993-4