AFL-CIO president leads union push on Ohio vote

AFL-CIO pres­i­dent Richard Trumka, cen­ter, speaks with Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity stu­dents at a union hall in Cleve­land Mon­day. The stu­dents joined Trumka and local union mem­bers going door to door in the area urg­ing a no vote on Ohio Issue 2. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Mark Duncan)

THOMAS J. SHEERAN

Asso­ci­ated Press

CLEVELAND — AFL-CIO pres­i­dent Richard Trumka led orga­nized labor’s final push Mon­day in a fierce elec­tion bat­tle over Ohio’s col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing law. Gov. John Kasich head­lined election-eve ral­lies back­ing the law.

The issue on Tuesday’s Ohio bal­lot asks whether to keep the law lim­it­ing the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights of more than 350,000 pub­lic workers.

Trumka spoke at a union hall in Cleve­land before head­ing out to knock on doors to talk to vot­ers. He told cheer­ing blue-collar work­ers that if labor loses its fight over col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights for pub­lic employ­ees, rights of other union work­ers will be in jeopardy.

“Because if they can take col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing away from one seg­ment of our econ­omy, they can take it away from the next seg­ment and the next,” he said. “That’s not going to hap­pen, because col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing is the lad­der to the mid­dle class. It’s how we built the mid­dle class.”

Kasich, a Repub­li­can who signed the bill into law, planned to lead elec­tion eve ral­lies in the Cincin­nati area in sup­port of Issue 2.

He sent a final-day Twit­ter post to fol­low­ers on Mon­day cit­ing five rea­sons to vote yes. Among ele­ments he cited were a require­ment that pub­lic work­ers pay 15 per­cent toward their health care; a pro­hi­bi­tion against tying raises solely to senior­ity; and the fact it makes it “harder for bad teach­ers to hide behind the pro­tec­tions of a union contract.”

The bal­lot issue was attract­ing big names on both sides in the final days. That included an endorse­ment from for­mer Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Sarah Palin and robo­calls favor­ing a yes vote by singer Pat Boone, as well as boosts to the oppo­nent side from the Rev. Jesse Jack­son, for­mer U.S. Sen. and astro­naut John Glenn, and MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,” which planned to air Mon­day and Tues­day from Columbus.

“These peo­ple in Ohio tomor­row are going to ren­der judg­ment if this is an over­reach,” the show’s host, Ed Schultz, said in an inter­view with The Asso­ci­ated Press.

Kasich has said the law will help hold down taxes and make the state more appeal­ing to business.

The Cleve­land rally had an Ivy League fla­vor, with 56 stu­dents from Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity and Barnard Col­lege, who trav­eled from New York to Ohio, respec­tively, to back the union effort.

“We under­stand that this is an issue that has a lot of national reper­cus­sions. It’s almost a human rights issue,” said Dylan Glendin­ning, a New Prov­i­dence, N.J., sopho­more who spoke for the group.

The stu­dents arrived Fri­day, knock­ing on doors in Cleve­land and sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties in Geauga and Lake counties.

The leg­is­la­tion affects more than 350,000 police, fire­fight­ers, teach­ers, nurses and other gov­ern­ment work­ers. It sets manda­tory health care and pen­sion min­i­mums for union­ized gov­ern­ment employ­ees, bans pub­lic worker strikes, scraps bind­ing arbi­tra­tion and pro­hibits bas­ing pro­mo­tions solely on seniority.

We Are Ohio, the labor-backed coali­tion fight­ing the law, had raised more than $24 mil­lion as of mid-October. Build­ing a Bet­ter Ohio, the business-fueled pro­po­nent cam­paign, has raised $8 million.

Posted by AP News on Nov 7 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.