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Ohio Protesters Rally for Bargaining Rights

February 28, 2011

Riding the wave of pro-worker demonstrations in Wisconsin, thousands of protesters assembled in Ohio this week to oppose passage of a GOP-sponsored bill that would weaken public workers’ rights.

Teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other union members took to the Ohio Senate offices and converged on the state capitol in a show of solidarity against Republican lawmakers’ attempt to strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights and repeal the state prevailing wage law.

Ohio Senate Minority Leader Capri Cafaro highlighted the negative impact that the collective bargaining bill would have on working families:

We can't grow Ohio's economy by destroying jobs and attacking the middle class. Public employees in Ohio didn't cause our budget problems and they shouldn't be blamed for something that's not their fault.

Republicans amended the bill Wednesday to allow for bargaining over wages only. It would eliminate collective bargaining for health care, sick time and vacations and repeal the state prevailing wage for government construction contracts.

Gov. John Kasich and other Republican lawmakers argue that the bill is needed to reign in the state’s $8 billion budget gap.

But pro-worker economists say that the legislation’s boosters are merely shifting blame to a segment of the work force where employees are actually underpaid compared to their private sector counterparts. The Economic Policy Institute released a briefing paper this month about a Rutgers University study that found:

On an annual basis, full‐time state and local workers and school employees are undercompensated by 6 percent in Ohio, in comparison with otherwise similar private‐sector workers. When comparisons are made for differences in annual hours worked, the gap remains, albeit at a smaller percentage of 3.5 percent.

Marietta Local 972 Business Manager Steve Crum stressed the need for solidarity. The local is preparing to start member-to-member phone banking to gin up opposition to the bill.

Crum and local President Troy Ferrell joined protesters at the state capitol in Columbus Tuesday. “There was a lot of energy there,” Crum said:

People were mad over legislation, mad that nobody wants to listen. I would venture to say that this was the first protest for a lot of people who are personally affected, since this is the first attack on public employees in nearly three decades. A lot of our members are married to state employees like teachers, so this hits home for them and their families.

For IBEW members specifically, I think this is the first wave of what could come down the line. If our opponents are successful at beating back collective bargaining for state workers, we’re next. Right-to-work and anti-PLA laws won’t be far behind. So we have to make this our fight. The old saying “an injury to one is injury to all” couldn’t be more true in this case.

Dave Appleman, Fourth District International Representative, agrees:

My feeling is that whether you’re a public employee or not, this is only part of the battle. Kasich and his crew are out to wipe out unions totally. If an IBEW member thinks this isn’t our fight, that is wrong. We better be in it – because we’ll be next.

Former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland – who lost re-election last year to Kasich – joined this week’s protests to lend support to union workers:

This [bill] has little to do with balancing this year’s budget. I think it’s a power grab. It’s an attempt to diminish the rights of working people. I think it’s an assault on the middle class of this state and it’s so unfair and out of balance.

Kasich, who has worked as a Fox News contributor, spent half a decade as an investment banker with the former Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers – the group whose 2008 collapse helped trigger the recession that has hit working people in Ohio disproportionately hard.

Click here to join the Facebook group Stop Senate Bill 5 in Ohio.