A Kasich Supporter Says He Is Wrong on Ohio Senate Bill 5

On October 25th episode of MSNBC's The Ed Show, conservative TV and radio personality Bill Cunningham slams his friend John Kasich for over-reaching with his anti-worker piece of legislation, Senate Bill 5.

Retired Republican Ohio Supreme Court Judge Explains Why He is Voting No on Issue 2

Retired Republican Ohio Supreme Court Justice Andy Douglas tells why he Is voting no on Issue 2 to repeal Senate Bill 5

The Problem With Ohio Senate Bill 5

There are certainly reforms that should be made with how the state relates to its public sector unions. Unfortunately, many knowledgeable people close to the political process believe that the legislators and Governor’s Office rushed Senate Bill 5 through the legislative process and produced a flawed bill. Senate Bill 5 gives governing bodies both executive power to manage their employees—as they rightly should have—but also judicial power to settle labor disputes between management and labor--which they should not have. They should have taken the time to develop a labor dispute resolution process that does not violate the constitutional checks and balances provided by the separation of powers. There needs to be an objective third party that mediates labor disputes. Ohio Senate Bill 5 does not provide for this.

They also should not have mandated a teacher evaluation process that the framework for had yet to even be developed. This amounts to an ex post facto law. Requiring public employees to contribute 10% of their incomes to their retirement and pay 15% of their health care costs is very reasonable, but that is not what this 304-page bill does. It completes undermines the whole relationship between management and labor—which needed to be reformed—but it does not replace it with a system that satisfies the requirements of the law or is better for the good people of Ohio. Hopefully, one way or another these flaws produced by political expediency and simplistic ideology will be remedied with a more effective system than the one created by Ohio Senate Bill 5.

Republican Senator Explains What is Wrong with SB5

Republican Senator Bill Seitz explains why he is opposed to Senate Bill 5.

Republican Senator Explains Why He Is Voting No On Issue 2

Senator Bill Seitz (R) on 55KRC - The Talk Station
Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Kasich's Comments on Talking to Public Labor Unions About SB5

This is the radio broadcast from February 26, 2011 when Bill Cunningham of 700 WLW speaks to Governor Kasich about the merit of S.B.5. The Governor says that he was done talking to the public labor unions of Ohio and it was time for action.

Senate Bill 5 And Collective Bargaining in Ohio

This November the people of Ohio will have the opportunity to decide whether they want to give Governor Kasich and the current Republican-controlled legislature the power to limit the bargaining rights of Ohio’s teachers, police officers and firefighters when they vote on Issue 2—the referendum of the infamous Senate Bill 5. Both sides agree that if not repealed by the voters this piece of legislation is a major change in the labor negotiation process for the state of Ohio.

As it stands now, if the local governing body and the teachers (and all other public servants including police officers and firefighters) can not agree to a new contract; the matter goes into a stage known as “fact finding.” Under current law, an objective third-party is brought in to mediate the situation and make a decision in a process known as “binding arbitration”—meaning the decision of the third-party mediator must be followed by both sides. Under Senate Bill 5, however, if a labor negotiation is unresolved the situation again goes into fact finding. Some try to argue that the fact finding process will make all of the relevant information available and result in the optimal decision being made. However, there is not shortage of information available about the U.S. debt crisis and politicians were unable to reach a decision that satisfied anyone. It will be even more difficult for the public to educate themselves about tax policy, public finance and labor markets related to all of the public services provided. The argument that simply making information available will result in optimal decisions being made by politicians does not seem to be supported by recent events. If the two sides are unable to reach an agreement after fact finding, the original governing body gets to make the final decision this time-- without having a third-party mediate. So, in reality the legislative body does not have to engage in good faith negotiate with its workers. The governing body with authority over the workers can just not agree with the offer from teachers, for example, go into fact-finding and choose their own original offer. The law goes further and effectively abolishes the right of public workers to strike. So, although the law does not technically abolish the right of teachers, police officers and firefighters to collectively bargain; in reality the governing body has no need to “bargain” or negotiate with the workers at all.

This reality caused Republican Senator Timothy J. Grendell, who was hoping the bill would be changed, to testify, "If you can't strike and the city council or the legislative authority gets to impose the ultimate terms, you don't have collective bargaining. From my perspective, you might as well forget going through the motions of a negotiations." Because changes were not made to the bill, Senator Grendell, who earned his Juris Doctor from Case Western Reserve University and his law degree from the University of Virginia, stated that Senate Bill 5 was unconstitutional in his public testimony before the Ohio Senate on March 30, 2011 based on the 1989 Ohio Supreme Court case City of Rocky River v. State Employment Relations Board. This caused Republican Senator Tim Grendell and five other Republican Senators along with all of the Ohio Senate Democrats to vote against Senate Bill 5. So, although Ohio Senate Bill 5 does not technically abolish collective bargaining rights for teachers, in reality it means that governing bodies do not really have to negotiate with their workers because the workers will have no power to bargain. Make no mistake about it—if the voters of Ohio fail to vote no Issue 2, this will be a radical departure from the current process that teachers, police officers and firefighters engage in to negotiate issues related to workplace safety, compensation and even class sizes.

Teachers Aren't the Enemy

Pedro Noguera and Michelle Fine recently wrote an article for The Nation entitled "Teachers Aren't the Enemy." It is to appear in the May 9, 2011 edition of the The Nation. The article provides a good summary of the current attacks on teachers and some of the organizations across the country that are rising up to counter this ill-conceived assault on education. Here is a portion of the article:

"Public school teachers and their unions are under a sustained assault that is still unfolding....

A disturbing bipartisan consensus is emerging that favors a market model for public schools that would abandon America’s historic commitment to providing education to all children as a civil right. This model would make opportunities available largely to those motivated and able to leave local schools; treat parents as consumers and children as disposable commodities that can be judged by their test scores; and unravel collective bargaining agreements so that experienced teachers can be replaced with fungible itinerant workers who have little training, less experience and no long-term commitment to the profession. In this atmosphere of hostility to public schools and teachers, it has become nearly impossible to have a rational discussion among educators, parents, advocates, youth and policy-makers about what should be done....

To have the greatest impact, the unions must find a way to mobilize parents, young people and communities. Without their support, teachers will not succeed in countering these assaults."

Read the Full Article:
"Teachers Aren't the Enemy"

SB5 Would Set Us Back

The Superintendent of Bexley City Schools (Ohio) recently shared his thoughts on Ohio Senate Bill 5. Here is a portion of his comments:

 

"It strikes me as a case of very poor timing to suddenly develop laws to truncate the advantages, negotiations provides for those responsible for growing our economy. In Ohio, we will need to rely more on our intellectual capacities and assets and less on physical inputs or natural resources. I cannot think of a greater source intellectual capacity, than can be found within our K-16 public education community. As Powell and Snellman (2004) state, that an upsurge in knowledge production is associated with the emergence of new industries. 

 

We need to make sure before making any final decision on SB5, that we will achieve the intended ends. Personally, I believe that we are going to experience some adverse unintended consequences as a result of passing such legislation. It is going to take some creative, collaborative, and systemic decision making to keep Ohio at the forefront nationally and internationally."

 

Read His Comments in Their Entirety Here:

SB5 Would Set Us Back

Ohio Senate Bill 5, and Why We Need Collective Bargaining

James J. Brudney--the Newton D. Baker-Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law, Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law--posted this article to the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy on April 13, 2011. It discusses what impact Ohio Senate Bill 5 will have on the state. Here is a portion:

"Ohio’s new law on collective bargaining, (Senate Bill 5) eviscerates rights for teachers, police, firefighters, and other public employees, rights that have been in place since 1983. In order to understand how this has happened, it makes sense to start with the question why should we care? Does access to collective bargaining really matter to us as Americans, beyond those workers who are represented by unions?

The short answer is an emphatic Yes. Collective bargaining is important to us as a nation for several reasons."

Continue Reading the Full Article:

Ohio Senate Bill 5, and Why We Need Collective Bargaining

The Columbus Dispatch on Proposed Changes to Education in Ohio

Public-school teachers are facing a multitude of changes that could diminish their pay checks, benefits and working conditions - among them Gov. John Kasich's proposed state budget, legislation overhauling Ohio's 27-year-old collective-bargaining law and plans to restore fiscal solvency to public-employee pension systems.

An Ohio public-school teacher's average salary is now about $57,000 for 182 official working days.

Among the changes that have been proposed:

• Cutting school funding $1.3billion over the next two years

• Increasing the pension contribution rate, which now is 10percent, by 2 percentage points to save money ($200 million statewide)

• Increasing the pension contribution rate by another 3 percentage points to give the pension system financial stability ($300 million statewide)

• Requiring teachers to pay at least 15 percent of their health-insurance cost (the average now is about 9 percent)

• Taking 15 sick days out of state law, making it a term of negotiation instead

• Limiting the number of unused sick days that can be built up and paid out upon retirement

• Ending continuing contracts

• Eliminating automatic pay increases for longevity, replacing them with merit pay

• Quadrupling EdChoice vouchers to 56,000, funding more students to leave public schools

• Lifting the cap on charter schools, where teachers are paid less

• Instituting Teach for America, which brings in college graduates to teach for two years at low-income schools. Unions in other states have opposed the program.

• Delaying the retirement age from 30 years of service at any age to 35 years and age 60

• Lowering retirement payments to 77 percent of a teacher's highest five years of salary after 35 years on the job, down from 88.5 percent based on the highest three years

• Chopping annual cost-of-living-adjustments for retirees from 3 percent to 2 percent, with no COLA the first five years of retirement

• Streamlining the process to dismiss teachers for poor performance

• Banning collective bargaining for health insurance or limits on a school's ability to privatize services

• Ending work rules as a topic of collective bargaining, such as length of school day, building assignments, class sizes

• Eliminating the ability to strike

• Allowing a school board to implement its own last offer in order to end a bargaining impasse

• Allowing a school board to terminate, modify or renegotiate the collective-bargaining agreement if it faces significant fiscal problems

How Ohio’s budget battle could decide who wins the White House in 2012

That possibility is making some of Kasich’s Republican colleagues uneasy. Last week, The Columbus Dispatch spoke to eight state GOP senators who either “would not express support for the bill or have stated varying degrees of discomfort with it.” Bill Seitz of Cincinnati is one of them. “We need to be careful that we do not turn this into an overreaching effort that jeopardizes our chances,” he tells Newsweek. “We have a history in Ohio, when the legislature overreaches and the public snaps back, you end up losing everything. I would prefer a more consultative process.”

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/27/showdown.html

Shepard Smith Admits Wisconsin Battle Not About Budget

"There is no budget crisis in Wisconsin," said Shepard Smith on Fox News, adding the unions have “given concessions….Bust the unions, and it's over," Smith said....I'm not taking a side on this, I'm just telling you what's going on...to pretend this is about a fiscal crisis in the state of Wisconsin is malarkey," Smith said.

 Shepard Smith Admits Wisconsin Battle Not About Budget

Public Labor Conflicts in America

"Protest organizers in Ohio and Indiana are upset that, in their view, Republicans didn't run on a platform of reining in labor, and that their legislation hasn't yet received ample sunlight....A recent Gallup poll that asked if Americans would "favor or oppose a law... taking away some collective bargaining rights of most public unions, including the state teachers union," found that 61% said they would oppose it."

 Time magazine blog on public labor conflicts in America

Krugman on Collective Bargaining for Public Employees

This is an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times on the Wisconsin battle over collective bargaining (that is similar to Ohio's) written by economist Paul Krugman.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/opinion/21krugman.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

New York Times Article on Collective Bargaining Debate

Here is a quote from The New York Times regarding the recent debate over collective bargaining for public employees, "Public surveys suggest that most voters do not share the Republicans’ fervor for the deep cuts adopted by the House, or for drastically slashing the power of public-sector unions."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/us/politics/21republicans.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Student Achievement and Collective Bargaining Correlated

The five states without collective bargaining for teachers do have four of the five lowest ranks for educational outcomes and the other state, Virginia, is 44th. Here is a link to ACT/SAT scores which is one of the few comparisons that is standard for all states. Allow this statistic obviously does not prove causation it does show a strong correlation between the two.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/states/USCHARTsat.html

 

History Collective Bargaining for Public Employees

This is a link to an article in the New Republic that discusses the history collective bargaining for public employees. I did not agree with everything in the article but I did find it interesting.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/83829/Wisconsin-public-employees-walker-negotiate?page=0%2C0