In 2025 Ohio enacted Senate Bill 1, the Advance Ohio Higher Education Act. It changed what faculty unions in Ohio are permitted to negotiate. Our current agreement is the first bargained under it. This page explains what changed, what it means, and what the chapter can and cannot do now.
What SB 1 changed about bargaining
- Agreements are limited to wages. Workload, tenure, retrenchment, and faculty evaluation are excluded from collective bargaining.
- Faculty strikes are prohibited.
- Post-tenure review is mandated and set by Board policy rather than negotiated.
For agreements entered into after the law took effect, where a Board policy and a contract term conflict, the policy prevails.
What moved out of the agreement
Identical language now heads Articles 10, 11, 14 and 15. Each names a Board of Trustees policy adopted under ORC 3345.45 – 3345.457, states the subject is not bargainable under ORC Chapter 4117, and provides that Board policy prevails over conflicting contract terms.
- Tenure and promotion — Policy 3356-10-30
- Faculty workload — Policy 3356-10-20
- Annual performance evaluations — Policy 3356-10-29
- Peer evaluation of faculty — Policy 3356-10-27
- Student evaluation of teaching — Policy 3356-10-29 (ITL Resource)
- Post-tenure review — Policy 3356-10-31
- Retrenchment — Policy 3356-10-28, except for faculty with 30 to 35 years of state retirement service
One important exception
The tenure policy gives back a grievance route that the agreement took away. Board Policy 3356-10-30 states, in both the tenure appeal and the terminal year provisions, that a faculty member who believes the procedures in the policy were not followed may file a grievance under the collective bargaining agreement. The Board’s own policy creates that right.
This matters because it draws a line members need to understand. A grievance about tenure cannot argue that the decision was wrong. It can argue that the process was not followed — a missed deadline, a committee improperly constituted, a step skipped. The policies are full of dates and requirements, and every one of them is something the university has to meet.
No equivalent language appears in the post-tenure review policy. That distinction is deliberate and worth checking before you rely on it in any particular case.
This may not be permanent
Each of these provisions is written subject to Article 24, Separability, which addresses the impact of judicial decisions and legislation. If SB 1 is overturned or amended, the subjects it removed from bargaining become negotiable again.
The chapter did not concede tenure, workload, evaluation, and retrenchment permanently. The agreement is drafted so that they can come back. That was a deliberate choice by the negotiating team.
What the chapter can still do
- Enforce every term that remains in the agreement. Salary, benefits, leaves, sabbaticals, appointment types, non-reappointment procedure, academic freedom, intellectual property. The grievance procedure is intact for all of it.
- Represent you inside the Board processes. The Association appoints two of the five members of the annual evaluation appeal committee. The chapter can help you build documentation and hold the university to its own deadlines.
- Represent you and advocate for you with Administration. The Association uses its open communication with Administration. The President of YSU-OEA meets with the Provost on a regular basis.
- Bargain wages — salary structure, raises, overload and summer compensation.
- Work through shared governance. Workload, program decisions and evaluation rubrics are now settled in departmental governance documents, college processes, and the Academic Senate.
- Advocate politically — at the Statehouse, with the Board of Trustees, and through OEA and NEA.
- Document what happens across campus, so that a pattern is on the record even where an individual case has no remedy.
What happened with the referendum
A campaign to repeal SB 1 by statewide referendum, launched by YSU faculty, did not gather the signatures required to reach the ballot. The law remains in effect.