Ohio unions should accept Gov. John Kasich's offer -- or call his bluff, as the case may be -- to negotiate repairs to the new state law that guts the collective-bargaining rights of public employees.

A reasonable, if belated, compromise on Senate Bill 5 would prevent voters from having to pick one of two equally unacceptable alternatives this fall: either endorsement of politicians' destructive changes to government labor law, or unions' obstruction of needed changes.

An agreement reached by Aug. 29 and approved by the General Assembly would remove a union-sponsored binding referendum on Senate Bill 5 from the November ballot. That would spare Ohioans a polarizing, ugly, and exorbitantly expensive campaign, followed by a hold-your-nose choice at the polls. Our state doesn't need these indignities.

But union leaders and their Democratic allies now are displaying the same sort of intransigence that Mr. Kasich and the Republican-controlled legislature showed when they bulled through the union-busting bill last March. Similar all-or-nothing partisan brinkmanship has produced such dismal outcomes as the recent debt-ceiling debacle and credit-rating downgrade in Washington. It's time to stop posturing and start talking.

Senate Bill 5 is a bad, extremist measure. It goes far beyond saving money, reforming government, or making necessary updates to the 28-year-old law that now determines the bargaining rights of 350,000 public workers. It would take away these workers' most basic rights and stack the deck in favor of employers.

The new law prohibits strikes by all public employees, although such walkouts are extremely rare. It gives non-union workers an unfair free ride to collect benefits bargained by unions. It cripples public unions' ability to raise money, recruit members, and lobby effectively.

Poll results suggest that if the election were held today, voters would soundly repudiate Senate Bill 5, although support for repeal may have declined a bit. Wisconsin voters this month recalled two Republican state senators who supported a similar anti-union law there. It's doubtful Governor Kasich would be offering to negotiate now if he felt he was still operating from a position of strength.

Yet unions and Democrats are squandering the chance to improve Senate Bill 5 by insisting the governor and lawmakers repeal the law before they'll talk. You cancel your referendum, Republicans retort. Such he-started-it-Ma attempts to dictate preconditions prevent progress in Columbus as well as Washington.

Killing the most noxious provisions of Senate Bill 5 is necessary but not sufficient. Merely maintaining the status quo in employee-government relations, as unions appear to seek, would be as bad a deal for Ohio taxpayers as the new law is for workers. Union leaders need to offer a plan that goes beyond simple rejection.

The status quo means keeping skewed rules for binding arbitration that fail to take ability to pay into adequate account, forcing local communities to accept labor settlements that they -- and their taxpayers -- can't afford. It means continuing to enable public employees, via taxpayer subsidy, to pay far less for better health insurance than many private-sector workers are accustomed to.

It means hampering experiments with merit pay for teachers that could replace the dead hand of rigid seniority rules. It means requiring many taxpayers to continue to pay for public employees' own contributions to their pension plans -- a device that conceals the full cost of labor contracts. It means double-dipping and "banked" sick pay and other wasteful I-got-mine abuses that need to go.

These are the issues that Governor Kasich and union leaders must discuss now. Compromise isn't a dirty word, even if today's hyper-partisan political lexicon has made it one.

Officials on both sides of the issue who are more interested in making sound public policy than in winning at all costs will bargain in good faith rather than issue non-negotiable demands. That is the essence of democratic government, no less than of enlightened labor relations.

First Published August 21, 2011, 4:15 a.m.