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Russia Today interviews ANSWER organizer and PSL member Corey Ansel on the workers’ struggle in Ohio. |
Senate Bill 5—which
completely bans 61,500 state and higher education workers from bargaining over
wages, and bans 300,000 local government workers from bargaining on health
insurance and other benefits—passed the Ohio Senate in a 17-16 vote on March 2.
Just hours earlier, the leadership of the Ohio Senate had switched people on
committee in order to get the bill out of committee.
SB 5 now moves
for debate and a vote in the House; if it passes there, it will be signed into
law by Gov. John Kasich.
The close vote
was a measure of the strength of the movement that mobilized two rallies of at least
20,000 workers and students in the space of just one week. Hundreds more
crammed into the hallways of the Senate to pressure the legislators, and more
still maintained a presence outside. At
the time of the vote, about 1,000 workers had gathered outside.
Without a doubt,
had it not been for these actions, the vote would have been much quicker and
would have not been as close.
SB 5 is designed
to weaken the power of public workers to get a good contract. The bill makes
public workers in Ohio the only workers who cannot withhold their labor; in
other words, they cannot strike. Without that basic democratic right, employers
can dictate the terms of employment, no matter how onerous, since workers are
left with little leverage to fight back. To put a nail in that coffin, the bill
also bans the use of arbitration when both sides cannot agree to what should be
in a contract.
Fire and other
emergency service workers have had the right to arbitration for as long as
there has been bargaining. All other
employees have had that right, too, when the parties agree to it. Now they will
not. In its place, the law says that city and county councils—who are the
political voice of the employer and who pick the employer representative in
bargaining and give that person direction—will have the power to impose their
decision.
Those measures
by themselves take the heart out of collective bargaining. But SB 5 goes even
further, stating that key components of a compensation package—sick leave,
health insurance and pensions—cannot be bargained at all. Further, the bill
bans automatic raises and establishes favoritism, known as “merit pay,” as the
guiding principle for compensation.
“We could show in a day or two what our real power
is”
Robert Messner |
Robert Messner,
a worker with the City of Green Fire Department who has been protesting at the
Ohio Statehouse for several days, told Liberation News the morning before the
Senate vote that he anticipates about a 15 percent cut in pay if this bill
passes.
Messner has
worked in the fire field for 14 years. When he started around 1998, the base
pay was $20,000; now it is only $25,000. He and his co-workers get no social
security benefits. He explained that he has a family he is trying to support,
and that he and his family have always been Republicans but that this attack on workers has shaken his
faith in them.
Asked what the
thought about the idea of a general strike, he said that he was for it: “We
could show in a day or two what our real power is. It would show how important
what we do is.”
Gaye Reissland |
Gaye Reissland told
Liberation News that even though she is not in a union, she understands how
important unions were to her family when she was growing up, and how important
unions are today for her relatives. She made a sign that exposed the role of
Koch brothers as puppet masters. It pictures Gov. Kasich as a “corporate puppet”
saying “Pay no attention to the corporations behind the curtain” as he steps on
teachers, Teamsters, unions, quality education and more.
Privatization shows what democracy looks like to
Kasich
On Feb. 18, Gov.
Kasich signed a bill to privatize the state’s development agency. Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker signed a similar bill to replace the Wisconsin Department of
Commerce, and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill replacing the Arizona
Department of Commerce.
The bill signed
by Gov. Kasich gives initial public funding to this private agency that will be
governed by a Board that includes the governor and other members appointed by
him. The new agency will be exempt from
most state oversight laws and the public will not have the same access to
information. Development is a public function, but in Ohio it will be managed
by bankers in back rooms.
Over the next
week, the struggle to stop SB 5 will continue. Should it pass, labor leaders
have said that they will organize a movement to have it overturned in a
referendum.
A referendum
defeated a 1958 push by the right wing in Ohio to weaken labor with a “Right to
Work” (for less) law. That year, there were three right-to-work initiatives on
ballots around the country and all of them were defeated. The deceptively named
right-to-work laws weaken unions by making union membership and dues optional.
A ballot
initiative today will be just as important to win, but harder to do so since
the number of union members is much lower.
