Wilberforce, Ohio

The administration claimed at a fiscal and political crisis left it with no choice but to take the actions it did. However, the Central State University (CSU) faculty union has won a series of legal victories over the past few weeks that could pose new financial problems for the state's only historically Black institution of higher education.

The issues of contention, which were settled by binding arbitration, involved salaries and layoffs. Although administrators said they are still assessing the potential cost of the decisions, CSU President John Garland acknowledged that there is not enough money in the university's $24.4 million annual operating budget to pay the back salary and other awards prescribed by the arbitrators.

But Garland has approached officials from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and assured them that he will explore other avenues to try to find the funds to resolve the cases.

In a separate case, the CSU chapter of the AAUP won an Ohio Supreme Court decision declaring unconstitutional a state law that dictated faculty workload.

Robert Marcus, president of CSU's faculty union, said the arbitrators' decisions regarding faculty pay and layoffs "enforce our contract, and that's what was important."

The contract between CSU's faculty union and the university calls for unresolved grievances to be decided by binding arbitration.

In one case, arbitrator Michael Paolucci ruled that eighteen former Central State faculty members who were laid off during a financial crunch in the summer of 1997 are entitled to as much as thirteen months back pay because the university violated a collective-bargaining contract when it terminated them. Paolucci did not order the university to reinstate the laid-off faculty members, and he ruled that the amount of back pay they received should be reduced by the amount they earned in other jobs between August 1, 1997, and September 1, 1998.