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Union busters rightly stomped
(by Dave Lange - November 17, 2011)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Union busters rightly stomped
The dust is still settling over the most divisive issue to raise its ugly head over Ohio in a long, long time, but a number of things are perfectly clear about the attempt by Gov. John Kasich and his Republican majority in the state legislature to gut public-sector labor unions.
First, the whopping 61 percent majority of voters who sided with the working class in dumping the radical Ohio Senate Bill 5, Issue 2 on the Nov. 8 ballot, included not just political liberals but a great majority of moderates and a substantial number of conservatives as well.
That Ohio's three largest newspapers -- the dailies in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus -- all heartily endorsed this assault on working people should put to rest the myth of the "liberal media" once and for all.
In doing so, the Cleveland paper wrote, "The law will need adjustments, but vote 'yes' on state Issue 2 to break Ohio away from an unsustainable status quo." The editorial board may be out of touch with real people, but surely it could not believe state politicians would back down one inch, had even the tiniest majority of voters supported the union-busting law.
That was just one falsehood being spread with the collaboration of corporate media. The Cleveland paper's baseless and unsubstantiated claim that repeal of SB 5 would mean "locking in a status quo so unbalanced that it has become a barrier to reforming schools, right-sizing local government and making Ohio more attractive to investment" pretty much sums it up. Not one shred of evidence was provided by the proponents of the law to back that up.
How is the status quo unbalanced? A 2010 study by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence, accounting for similar education and work experience and including both wages and benefits, showed that local government workers earn 7.4 percent less than their private-sector counterparts.
Public school teachers, who were the initial and primary target of SB 5, earn an average salary of about $52,000 in Ohio, ranking 18th among the states and less than the national average. Most neighboring states, including Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan and New York, have higher teacher salaries. So how does that put Ohio at a disadvantage for attracting investment?
For years, public workers and local governments have been collectively bargaining reasonable wage-and-benefits agreements, with small increases or none at all in the current economic climate. Police and firefighters seldom go to arbitration with their government employers, and, when they do, the mutually agreed-upon arbitrators rule on facts, not politicized innuendo. When local governments choose to contribute to medical plans and pension funds for their employees, they do so in lieu of salary increases and because it actually saves them money.
Yet all such mutually beneficial collaboration would be eliminated by the proponents of SB 5 based on the offensive notion that state government should be "right-sizing local government."
Now that the citizens of Ohio have spoken loud and clear, it's time for "right-sizing" state government. The voters did not pick and choose bits and pieces from the pungent SB 5 buffet. They dumped the entire tray of ideological mush in the trash. If the dogmatists and their propagandists pick up the scraps, the people know where to stick them.
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