Issue 2 opponents push stance at Toledo briefings
10/14/2011The concessionary contract agreed to by AFSCME Local 7 with the city of Toledo proves that Issue 2 is unnecessary, a Toledo city councilman and an AFSCME union representative said yesterday.
But Toledo Mayor Mike Bell said Issue 2 helped push the union to make the cuts he said the city needs to maintain services.
Councilman Steven Steel and Steve Kowalik, a spokesman for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees local that represents about 800 city service workers, touted the drawn-out Local 7 negotiations as a victory for collective bargaining.
"Local 7 gave concessions to the tune of $3 million, which is a pretty significant step toward putting our fiscal house in order," Mr. Steel said.
"Certainly [these] very difficult but now successful negotiations with AFSCME Local 7 provethat [Ohio Revised Code] 4117 works," Mr. Steel said, referring to the section of state law governing collective bargaining with public sector unions that has been in place since 1984. Issue 2 on the Nov. 8 election ballot is a referendum on a law scaling back public employee union bargaining rights.
Unions and their Democratic allies have been waging an effort to overturn the law since it was passed by the Republican-controlled legislature in March and signed by Republican Gov. John Kasich.
Mr. Steel, a Democrat, was joined by fellow Democrat Lisa Sobecki, vice chairman of the Toledo Board of Education, and Don Yates, president of the school district's administrative union, the Toledo Association of Administrative Personnel. They cited agreements with TPS's unions in which bargaining units agreed to pay cuts and to increase health-care contributions.
Mayor Bell said yesterday that the unions gave concessions because of the threat of Issue 2 and the threat in 2010 of using the city's $48 million deficit as "exigent circumstances" to impose unilateral cuts.
"There's got to be an adverse impasse for them to be willing to come to the table," said Mr. Bell, a political independent. "When I came to them with the $48 million deficit they said ‘that's your problem, Mayor. You fix it yourself.'?"
"What I was trying to do was make sure the taxpayers got the best deal possible," the mayor said.
He said if council had adopted a fact-finder's report, as he had requested last month, the city would have saved an additional $1.5 million over the three years.
Council refused the mayor's request to impose the fact-finder's report and requested the administration and the union return to bargaining. Council approved the tentative agreement Tuesday and the union's membership ratified it Wednesday.
The three-year agreement provides that Local 7 workers triple their contribution to medical coverage, start paying 7 percentage points of their 10 percent employee pension contribution by 2013, and receive no pay raises the first two years.
The union could then renegotiate with the city for wages in 2014.
The news conference was one of two events held yesterday by opponents of Issue 2.
State Rep. Michael Ashford (D., Toledo), backed up by protesters from the Occupy Toledo demonstration taking place a few blocks away in Levis Square downtown, accused Gov. John Kasich of causing a decline in jobs since his budget was enacted in June. Mr. Ashford and about 20 people from Occupy Toledo tried to go to the office of the governor's northwest Ohio regional representative in Government Center to deliver a letter asking for a meeting to discuss job creation.
Josh Thurston, an organizer for SEIU Local 1199's Fighting for a Fair Economy project, said the protesters were met in the upstairs elevator lobby by four state troopers and were not allowed to hand over their letter, or allowed into the governor's regional office.
"I'm a little disappointed that the governor's office feels it necessary to exclude people's opinions. We are Ohio taxpayers. Our opinion matters just as much as John Kasich's corporate friends and lobbyists down in Columbus," Mr. Thurston said.
Press Secretary Rob Nichols said that the group should call ahead for an appointment next time, and defended the governor's record on job creation.
Contact Tom Troy at: tomtroy@theblade.com or 419-724-6058.