GOP LAUNCHES WAR ON LABOR: OHIO JOINS NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT
By Bill Obbaggy
Editor, The Ohio Labor Citizen
Special to PAI

COLUMBUS, Ohio (PAI)--Close to 6,000 protesters demonstrated outside the
Ohio Statehouse in Columbus on Feb. 22, as legislators – some of whom had to elbow
their way into the building – prepared for a 4 p.m. committee hearing on Senate Bill #5,
legislation to restrict and retract collective bargaining rights from thousands of state and
local workers.

The Ohio legislation mirrors similar assaults by Republican administrations in
Wisconsin, Indiana and New Jersey and thrusts the Buckeye State into the forefront of
the national war on workers.

Several hundred demonstrators, members of the American Federation of
State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Service Employees (SEIU),
the Firefighters, and teachers from both the National Education Association and the
Ohio Teachers Union, among others, were allowed into the building, some to present
testimony. But the doors were closed and barred to the others.

Many who were denied admittance were downright angry, prompting Democratic
lawmakers to seek an injunction to force statehouse officials and the Ohio Highway
Patrol to open the doors and allow more people in.

“This is what we ask for. We want people to participate,” said House Minority
Leader Armond Budish (D), who called it “a sad day” that people have to go to court to
get into the Statehouse and talk to their legislators.

“They come down from all parts of Ohio to participate in government and the
doors are locked. That is wrong.”

Meanwhile, up to 70,000 people continued a second week of demonstrations
in Madison, Wis., ground zero for the war on workers. Right Wing GOP Gov. Scott
Walker has refused to negotiate with representatives of public employee unions, whose
200,000 members face a mandated loss of union representation and an average
financial loss of $5,000 a year in take-home pay.

The Wisconsin State Journal, noting the state will run a budget surplus this year,
declared: “Walker is manufacturing a fiscal ‘crisis’ in order to achieve political goals.”
The paper cited nonpartisan budget figures to make the case that Walker was creating
a deficit in the latest budget with lavish spending items on special interests allied with
his administration.

Press Associates, Inc. (PAI) – 2/25/2011
(Ohio, cont. –2)

Democratic state senators have left Wisconsin and remain in secret locations to
prevent the GOP-majority state senate from moving ahead with a vote.

That tactic won’t work in Ohio, where a simple majority vote is needed for
passage. GOP Gov. John Kasich — who last year told campaign supporters in
Ashtabula that “We need to break the back of organized labor” – helped draft the Ohio
bill and is set to sign it.

The face-offs have stirred sympathy demonstrations from coast to coast, with
some commentators comparing the uproar to the recent 18-day revolution in Egypt
that put an end to Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year dictatorship and set the stage for a new
constitution. Significantly, Egypt’s unions played a major role, launching national strikes
by both public and commercial workers. And Egypt’s new independent union federation
sent a solidarity message to Wisconsin.

In Ohio, members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and
Technicians marched in sympathy on Tuesday outside one of their employers, WKYC-
TV, and over 1,000 members from a cross-section of unions demonstrated against SB
5 at the Canton Memorial Civic Center, as Kasich attended a Chamber of Commerce
banquet.

A caravan of cars filled with members of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s
Association was among groups that set off to join the throngs in Columbus on Feb. 22,
when they were unable to charter a bus.

The assault on 400,000 public employees is only the first item on Kasich’s
agenda. He’s also gearing up to trash the state’s 78-year-old prevailing wage law,
which – ironically – was patterned by a much saner Republican leadership in Ohio
after the federal Davis-Bacon Act, to ensure public works projects during the Great
Depression didn’t fall victim to “fly by night” contractors, and to ensure quality work for
taxpayers’ money.

Chris Howell, a professor of politics at Oberlin College, observed that the
conservative wing of the GOP appears to be “solving” a financial crisis that they were
complicit in creating, but dumping the blame on everyone else.

“We got into this mess because of the greed and stupidity of bankers, and the
willingness of legislators to deregulate the financial sector in the first place and permit a
wide polarization of income and wealth,” he said.

“No plausible case can be made that this economic crisis is somehow the fault of
the elderly poor or Medicaid recipients, or union members, or the unemployed, but it is

these people who are bearing the brunt of budget cuts and deregulation. Using an
economic crisis as an excuse to reduce further the threadbare safety net and labor
market protections – to further a political agenda that far predates our current sorry
economic condition – is shameful,” Howell concluded. ###