Foes of Ohio union law target new labor limits

Sup­port­ers against Sen­ate Bill 5 cel­e­brate in Novem­ber after the bill was defeated in Colum­bus, Ohio. The orga­ni­za­tion behind the 2011 cam­paign against Ohio’s sweep­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing law says it’s ready to unleash its army of vol­un­teers and hun­dreds of thou­sands of email and social media fol­low­ers against an emerg­ing right-to-work ini­tia­tive in the state. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

JULIE CARR SMYTH

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — The labor-backed orga­ni­za­tion behind a 2011 cam­paign against Ohio’s sweep­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing law said Mon­day it’s ready to unleash its army of vol­un­teers, email con­tacts and social media fol­low­ers against an emerg­ing right-to-work ini­tia­tive in the state.

We Are Ohio also plans to join the fall cam­paign against an elec­tions law over­haul that shrinks the early vot­ing win­dow and makes other changes, its rep­re­sen­ta­tives said dur­ing a news conference.

Jim Adkins, a union plumber at a state prison, said the group will empha­size that “right-to-work is wrong for Ohio.”

“We believe it’s wrong because it destroys jobs in our local com­mu­ni­ties,” said Adkins, who works at the Ohio Refor­ma­tory for Women. “It means lower wages and fewer ben­e­fits for every­body in Ohio.”

Ohioans for Work­place Free­dom emerged days after the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing bill was rejected. The group is gath­er­ing sig­na­tures for a likely 2013 bal­lot issue that would keep work­ers from hav­ing to join a union or pay dues, even though they are cov­ered by a union contract.

Adkins is a mem­ber of the Ohio Civil Ser­vice Employ­ees Asso­ci­a­tion, whose chap­ters and polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee donated more than $1.2 mil­lion to We Are Ohio’s effort last year to reject the GOP-passed col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing bill.

We Are Ohio still has $730,000 in the bank, accord­ing to its lat­est cam­paign finance report.

Spokesman Den­nis Willard said the group also has 17,000 vol­un­teers, 450,000 email addresses and 100,000 fol­low­ers on Face­book. Sup­port­ers turned back a law lim­it­ing the bar­gain­ing rights of 350,000 police, fire­fight­ers, teach­ers and other pub­lic workers.

Mike Patrick, who heads the IT firm Patrick Solu­tions in Grand­view, was the first to sign We Are Ohio’s peti­tion last year. He said Mon­day he opposes the right-to-work amend­ment because he believes it will under­mine Ohio’s middle-class stan­dard of liv­ing — and that will drive busi­nesses away.

The Work­place Free­dom group’s Chris Lit­tle­ton said to under­stand the eco­nomic impacts of com­pul­sory union mem­ber­ship you have to look beyond aver­age wages. He said cost-of-living also must be taken into con­sid­er­a­tion when mak­ing state-to-state comparisons.

“The only rea­son we’re doing this … is because it’s the right pol­icy for the state of Ohio,” he said. “Every­body res­onates with the idea that work­ers should get to choose whether they join a union. They should have that freedom.”

Adkins said not hav­ing to pay dues for the ben­e­fits one gets from union mem­ber­ship is like not pay­ing install­ments on your bank loan.

It is still unclear whether Ohioans will get to weigh in on the elec­tions over­haul bill. It has been on hold since Sep­tem­ber, pend­ing a chance vot­ers have this fall to accept or reject it.

The Republican-led Sen­ate has intro­duced a bill repeal­ing ele­ments of the law. That move has been met with resis­tance from both GOP House Speaker Bill Batchelder and Fair Elec­tions Ohio, the coali­tion fight­ing the bill. Both ques­tion the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of repeal­ing the law now that the ref­er­en­dum has qual­i­fied for the ballot.

Posted by AP News on Mar 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.