Ohio House Guts Public Employees' Collective Bargaining Rights

CWA, Coalition of Allies, Prepare to Put Issue Before Voters in November

CWA members Ron Gay, Local 4300, and Diane Bailey, Local 4310, watch as boxes of petitions with 65,000 signatures opposing Senate Bill 5 are delivered Tuesday to the Ohio statehouse.
CREDIT: Tom Dodge/Columbus Dispatch.

Ohio House Republicans voted Wednesday night to kill collective bargaining rights for 350,000 public workers, but the fight is far from over as unions and their allies prepare to put the issue on the state ballot in November.

"It is an outrage that the Ohio Legislature took this radical step," CWA District 4 Vice President Seth Rosen said. "The Republican leadership ignored the views of the majority of Ohioans and the bipartisan opposition in both the House and the Senate. We can and will take this issue to the people and put it on the November ballot for a citizen veto and reject this attack on good jobs and strong communities."

Rosen and other CWAers were among about a thousand union members and other workers who packed the statehouse for hearings Tuesday and for votes in both chambers Wednesday. The House voted 53-44 to pass the bill; the Senate, which passed an earlier version, passed the revised bill by a single vote, 17-16. Onlookers booed and shouted, "Shame, Shame!"

Rosen said the process of gathering petition signatures for a November referendum will begin in April. A large army of foot soldiers is ready to go, thanks to the "Good Jobs and Strong Communities" coalition that Rosen and CWA helped launch last month. Find the coalition on Facebook.

The coalition’s unions, neighborhood groups, civil rights organizations, churches, social justice advocates and other allies are committed to overturning the law, seeing the clear link between workers' rights and good, family-wage jobs that in turn build strong communities, Rosen said.

Like politicians in other states, Kasich and Republican lawmakers are trying to blame Ohio’s financial troubles on public employees, a claim Democrats attacked head-on in debate Wednesday. "Unions didn't cause the problems in the budget. They tried to resolve it," said Rep. Kenny Yuko, detailing the wage cuts, furloughs and benefit changes unionized public workers negotiated to help Ohio balance its budget.