The collective bargaining agreement between Youngstown State University and the YSU Chapter of the Ohio Education Association governs the employment of every full-time faculty member in the bargaining unit — Lecturers through Professors — whether or not they are members of the Association.
Current agreement: August 21, 2026 to August 20, 2029. [link to PDF] Either party may open negotiations for a successor by giving notice on or before September 15, 2028.
Note: This is the redline version that was ratified by YSU-OEA members and the Board of Trustees. The clean version will be posted when it is available.
How it is organized
Thirty-one articles and three appendices, about eighty-five pages. Articles are numbered by section: a reference to Article 8.1 means Article 8, section 1. When someone tells you “that’s 11.3,” that is where to look.
Open the PDF and search it rather than scrolling. Most questions are answered by a paragraph, and the paragraph is easier to find than the article.
Read Appendix A first if a term seems ambiguous. It defines words the agreement uses in specific ways, and several of them do not mean quite what they mean in ordinary conversation.
Where to look
Money. Article 4 for salary, increments and rates of pay. Article 31 for other compensation. Article 5 and Appendix C for insurance benefits.
Time away. Article 6 for sabbaticals and faculty improvement leaves. Article 7 for every other kind of leave — sick, parental, family medical, unpaid.
Something went wrong. Article 8 for the grievance procedure and its forty-five-day filing deadline. Article 12 for corrective action and termination for cause. Article 2.1 for your right to request representation at an investigatory meeting.
Your appointment. Article 29 for the types of appointment and how long each runs. Article 11 if you are not being reappointed. Article 2 for who is in the bargaining unit and who is excluded.
Advancement. Board Policy 3356-10-30 for tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. Article 10 for promotion from Lecturer to Senior Lecturer or from Associate Professor to Full Professor. Board Policy 3356-10-32 for promotion from Senior Lecturer to Assistant Professor Non-Tenure-Track.
Article 14 for faculty evaluation, alongside Board Policies 3356-10-29 and 3356-10-27.
Your work. Article 15 and Appendix B for workload, alongside Board Policy 3356-10-20 and Academic Affairs Policy 10-C-01. Article 27 for teaching rights and responsibilities (see also the Guidelines for Classroom and Course Conduct and Content). Article 30 for cyberlearning and online courses. Article 9 for departmental governance, chairs, and how faculty voting works.
Board policy 3356-10-23 addressed textbook selection and the required posting of syllabi is in Board Policy 3356-10-26.
Your rights. Article 17 for academic freedom. Article 16 for what may and may not be in your personnel file. Article 26 and Board Policy 3356-10-18 for who owns what you create. Article 25 for the academic workplace environment.
If your position is at risk. Article 13 for retrenchment, alongside Board Policy 3356-10-28 — including the exemption for faculty with thirty to thirty-five years of state retirement service.
The Association. Article 21 for Association rights. Article 22 for dues. Article 23 for how the Administration and the Association deal with each other. Article 18 for retirement provisions. These are the Principles and Practices of Shared Governance.
What is no longer settled here
This agreement is the first negotiated under SB 1. Several subjects that used to be bargained now sit in Board of Trustees policy instead, and the relevant articles say so at the top.
Tenure and promotion, faculty evaluation, peer evaluation, student evaluation of teaching, post-tenure review, workload, and most of retrenchment. On those subjects the Board policy prevails where it conflicts with the agreement, and compliance generally cannot be challenged through the grievance procedure.
This does not mean the articles are empty — read them, because they still contain procedures, dates and definitions that matter. It means the final authority sits elsewhere. → SB 1 and Your Contract explains what changed, and what the chapter can still do.
Article 24, Separability, is worth knowing about. It addresses what happens if a court or the legislature changes the law, and the SB 1 carve-outs are written subject to it. If the law changes, those subjects return to the bargaining table.
Board policies referenced
You will need these alongside the agreement. Read them together, not separately. All Board policies related to Academic Affairs are located here.
- 3356-10-20 workload
- 3356-10-27 peer evaluation
- 3356-10-28 retrenchment
- 3356-10-29 annual performance evaluations
- 3356-10-30 tenure
- 3356-10-31 post-tenure review
- 3356-10-32 promotion from Senior Lecturer to Assistant Professor Non-Tenure-Track
Office of Academic Affairs Policies
- Faculty Development and Research (Research Professorships)
- Teaching Assignments
- Program Closure Procedure
- YSU AI Principles Statement
Memoranda of understanding
MOUs and side letters agreed between the parties during the term of the agreement modify or clarify it, and are binding.
As of Fall 2026, they will be posted here as they are signed.
Older agreements
Superseded agreements are kept here. If a question concerns something that happened under a previous contract, the terms in force at the time are the ones that apply.
Past Collective Bargaining Agreements
If you cannot find it
Ask the President (president@ysuoea.org) or Chief Negotiator (negotiations@ysuoea.org). Working out which article covers a situation is one of the most common questions the chapter gets, and it usually takes one reply.