Demonstrators protest Ohio labor law changes
Toledo councilman testifies at hearing
2/18/2011
Protesters fill the Statehouse Routunda in Columbus as a Senate panel discusses a proposal to overhaul Ohio's labor laws that were approved in 1983. The proposed measure would outlaw collective bargaining by state employees, including those at public universities. Ohio lawmakers continued to debate into the night.
A crush of about 3,800 protesters inside the Statehouse and many others outside punctuated their point with heated debate about the proposed reforms.
D. Michael Collins, who has been on both sides of the bargaining table as a current Toledo city councilman and former negotiator for city police, asked members of the Senate Insurance, Commerce, and Labor Committee to imagine Toledo in the midst of its devastating public employee strike of 1979.
“I would sincerely hope that, when you do your due diligence, close your eyes and imagine your city,” he said. “Imagine your city from every single compass point a burning inferno … Ask [Toledo Sen. Edna Brown] what it was like to sit in her house that evening wondering when the next firebomb would be coming. …We broke down.”
A Senate committee continued debate into the night on a bill to enact the most sweeping changes in state labor law in nearly three decades. Among numerous provisions, the bill would outlaw collective bargaining by state employees, including those at public universities and colleges.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Shannon Jones (R., Springboro), who has been greeted with jeers from the labor crowd during recent hearings, was escorted about the Statehouse Thursday by a member of the highway patrol, who is a union member.
The majority of those in the crowd were there to oppose the bill, their shouts from elsewhere in the Statehouse clearly audible in the Senate committee room.
But for the first time, an organized effort to support the bill led by Tea Party members also weighed in with a rally outside the Statehouse.
“We’re here today because of common sense,’’ said Mike Wilson, president of the Cincinnati Tea Party. “Somehow over the last few years, things got out of line. … Unfortunately, we’ve got to make some hard choices. … All we’re asking is for the public sector to accept a little bit of the pain.’’
While not outlawing collective bargaining at the local government and school levels, Senate Bill 5 would impose new restrictions that the bill’s backers say would tilt the balance of power back toward management.
It would end final binding arbitration as a means to resolve disputes involving police and firefighters, who are already prohibited from striking. It would prohibit the use of seniority as the sole factor in determining who is laid off, allow the hiring of permanent replacement workers by the government during strikes, and take health care off the negotiating table.
Representatives of police and firefighter unions agreed it may be time to revisit Ohio’s collective-bargaining law, which has been largely unchanged since it was passed in 1983. They expressed a willingness to work on increasing transparency, letting the public know more about the competing offers on the table during impasses.
But they said elimination of collective-bargaining rights should be off the table. They also argued that ending binding arbitration, in which an independent third party settles disputes between local governments and public safety employees, would renege on the deal made in 1983. That’s when public safety workers got binding arbitration in exchange for not seeking the right to strike that some other public employees received.
Some supporters of the bill, however, argued that it doesn’t go far enough.
“The people not in this room and who will never be in this room pay for all of this, and they would like their voices to be heard,” Ray Warrick, a Tea Party member from Mason, told the committee. “Please know that, even if you can’t see and hear them in the state Capitol halls. They are out there every day doing their jobs. Please do yours.”
Before the hearing began, Sandusky firefighter Adam Butler said the proposed changes, particularly the mandate that public employees pay at least 20 percent of their health-care premiums, would undermine innovative efforts that the city and firefighters have taken through contracts to avoid layoffs and keep fire stations open.
“We have a wellness program where we get deductible decreases based on how healthy we are,” said Mr. Butler. “It’s been a successful program so far. We work all year around to figure out cost-fighting measures because it’s in everybody’s interest.”
Contact Jim Provance at:
jprovance@theblade.com,
or 614-221-0496.
Last overhaul of collective bargaining was in 1983
Dems OK'd reform with no GOP votes
BY TOM TROY
BLADE POLITICS WRITER
The fact that Republicans now control enough votes in the Ohio General Assembly to roll back major pieces of the landmark 1983 collective-bargaining law makes for an interesting reversal of roles.
In 1983, it was the Democrats who used their voting muscle to enact a law giving Ohio’s 500,000 public employees the right to bargain for wages and working conditions, and in some cases to strike.
That law, which ended an era of public employee strikes, passed both houses of the Ohio General Assembly without a single Republican vote.
The law replaced the so-called Ferguson Act that had applied to labor relations in the public sector for nearly four decades. The 1983 law passed the House, 59-38, on June 28 that year. Two Democrats joined the 36 Republicans in opposition.
The vote one day later in the Ohio Senate was 17-15 along party lines.
Democratic Gov. Richard Celeste signed the bill into law on July 6, 1983, and it took effect on April 1, 1984.
The law loosened restrictions on government workers’ collective bargaining, even as the prohibition on strikes by public safety employees such as police, firefighters, and prison guards remained in place.
Those essential employees, however, were set on a path of fact-finding and mediation that dramatically reduced the numbers of illegal walkouts.
Democrats controlled the House, Senate, the governorship, and all other statewide elective offices. Today, it is the Republicans who control the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of state government.
And today, many leaders of school districts and Ohio cities, including Toledo Mayor Mike Bell, are advocating for some changes in the 1983 law that they say are needed to restore balance that they believe has tipped in favor of public employee unions.