With Election Day coming up in less than a week, one topic on the ballot that has become a hot issue for policy makers in the Statehouse, as well as teachers and other public employees in Ohio is Issue 2. 
Issue 2 is a veto referendum on the controversial Senate Bill 5 (SB5) which limits the collective bargaining ability for government employees as well as making other cuts in order to trim the state’s budget and save the taxpayers money.
What SB5 does is allows most government employers to deny recognizing collective bargaining about wages, staffing levels, and working hours. The kind of jobs that would be affected are those of teachers, police, and firefighters, along with thousands of other government employees.
A lot of the controversy surrounding this issue stems from similar bills that were passed in other parts of the country including Michigan and, most notably, Wisconsin. To prevent citizens from occupying the Statehouse like Wisconsin residents did, the doors to the Statehouse in Columbus were locked to the public while the senate was in session discussing the bill. SB5 was passed in the senate in early March, and passed in the house on March 31 when it was signed by Governor Kasich.
Almost immediately after the bill received Governor Kasich’s signature, signatures came pouring in by the thousands to put the bill up for veto to spare the bargaining rights of 350,000-400,000 government employees.
Teachers lose their current minimum salary under the bill, and are paid on a performance based scale. Also for teachers, sick leave is reduced from three weeks a year to two. Vacation leave was capped at five weeks a year. It also removed the workers’ right to strike and enforces strict consequences upon an employee that is thought to be striking.
This issue has bitterly split the state down the middle, with Republicans primarily in favor of the bill and Democrats against it. Governor John Kasich is one of this bill’s most outspoken supporters as he credits it with having balanced the government’s budget and put a little money back in the pockets of the taxpayers, but some other Statehouse politicians were not so supportive of the bill. Two democratic representatives agreed to interview for this article to speak against the bill while no Republican supporters agreed to an interview.
State Representative Jay Goyal, of Ohio’s 73rd House district, discussed how SB5 was handled within the State House of Representatives. Goyal described the process as being rushed, and not including adequate time for deliberation or debate.
“The closing of the State House during debate was an unprecedented action to suppress debate, and as far as I know, the State House has never been closed to the public before,” Goyal said.
Goyal voted against the bill, which he described as an unfair attack on the middle class in the State of Ohio.
“While proponents of the bill argued that this bill was necessary for the recession and deficit that Ohio was in, I saw it more as an attack on the middle class as a scapegoat for the people who actually caused the economic recession,” Goyal said.
Ohioans have shown overwhelming support for getting the repeal of SB5 in the general election on November 8.
“The campaign to get the referendum on the state ballot for November gathered close to 1.3 million signatures when only 231,000 were needed. I think that this shows the level of intensity of support to repeal the bill, and to my knowledge, this is the highest amount of signatures that any referendum has received in the State of Ohio,” Goyal said.
Goyal also articulated possible negative consequences of not repealing the bill, including labor strife, the deterioration of the relationship between unions and managers, and the decrease in the quality of services that state public employees will provide to the citizens of Ohio.
“If safety services such as police officers cannot negotiate for staff, and the supplies they need, it is not a stretch to say that they will not be able to do their job efficiently, and this may result in an increase in crime within the State of Ohio,” Goyal said.
Proponents argue that SB5 was necessary because of the deficit and economic problems facing Ohio, but Goyal said that Ohio’s State Constitution requires Ohio to have a balanced budget every two years.
“To say that Senate Bill 5 will help Ohio’s budget problem is incorrect because our budget is already balanced because it has to be,” Goyal said.
State Representative Matt Lundy, of Ohio’s 57th House district was also available to comment on the topic of issue two and was concerned with the closure of the Statehouse to the public.
“I was a reporter for over 20 years, and I mostly covered government issues. I have never seen actions to lock Ohioans out of the people’s house. The lawmakers don’t own that building, the people do and they have a right to be part of the debate on issues affecting them. It was a sad day in Ohio government history,” Lundy said.
“I voted against Senate Bill 5 because I believe our current collective bargaining system is working well. It has been in place since the 1980’s – and growing up, I saw a lot of teacher strikes and since we have had our current collective bargaining system, it’s rare that strikes happen anymore,” Lundy said.
According to government reports there was not a single state workers strike in 2010.
“Our current system is a system in which management and workers can solve their differences and continue to provide services to the public,” Lundy said.
“I did not like the way the process to pass the bill was done. There was no effort by Governor Kasich or the Republican Party to sit down and talk to labor groups in Ohio before moving on the bill. They cited that they had issues with the current system but did not make an attempt to resolve issues with the system as it is,” Lundy said.
But many supporters of the issue remain, and even on this campus.
Junior Tyler Warner, a public administration major, discussed how Senate Bill 5 will allow the public more access to union negotiations for public funds because currently, a majority of collective bargaining deals are done behind closed doors.
“This bill gives the school boards and city councils final say, when there is a disagreement in the budgeting, it will now be open for the public to discuss,” Warner said.
Warner stressed that Ohio has been using the current collective bargaining rules for years, that cities within Ohio have consistently been going into the red, and that SB5 will change the way that cities can budget funds for public employees.
“We need to come to a realization that in this economy, everything is going to hurt. Senate Bill 5 gives managers more power to control spending, which will create more jobs because it allows money to be transferred differently, it gives more creativity and options in budgeting to cut certain salaries to ensure that more people are employed,” Lundy said.
Warner supported closure of the Statehouse, stating it would have cost the state more to keep the building open for a large group of people, and that a group so large would have “blocked progress in getting any legislation done.”
Junior Stephan Shehy, a political science major, disagreed with the way the bill was passed and was originally going to vote against the bill because of that.
However, he will be voting for the bill because “the bill fundamentally provides a way to begin to control spending and to address the problems of our education system,” Shehy said. He went on to describe some of the problems as teacher seniority, which under SB5, seniority cannot be the only reason to give a teacher tenure.
Shehy also listed state funding for education as a problem.
Listing facts from the US Census Bureau and from the Ohio Office of Budget and management, “Ohio has a state budget of $16.5 billion for education. A majority of that goes towards teacher’s healthcare and compensation benefits. What’s left is not enough to cover for other costs within the education system. By making teachers pay more for healthcare and pension, it opens up part of the budget that would be going towards teachers healthcare and compensation, and allows it to be used to cover the other costs within the education system,” Shehy said.
Junior Brandon Lortz also supports SB5.
“Senate Bill 5 brings accountability for people working in the public sector, which will make it more of a privilege to work for the citizens of the State of Ohio,” Lortz, a math and economics major, said, “Through the evolution of this Country and State, we have seen a significant problem with government spending and this bill addresses the issue in Ohio effectively.”
James Weaver, a junior financial economics major, discussed differences between public employees and private employees.
“Public employees currently have an advantage over private sector employees in that they are guaranteed advancements both in pay and in benefits without proper evaluation of performance. Senate Bill 5 gives a requirement to those employees of the public to perform at a set criteria to get raises and increases in benefits. Why should people in the public sector be guaranteed pay raises when the private employees who support them are not guaranteed pay raises?” Weaver said.
Other students are against Issue 2. Paying close attention to this bill are education majors whose futures are determined by the outcome of next week’s election.
Seniors Stephanie Walther, early childhood education major, and Taylor Clark, middle childhood education major, support the repeal of SB5.
“Our country and state hold education to such a high importance that it is completely hypocritical to even consider passing Issue 2 because if it were to pass, teachers would be cut and classrooms could become larger and the quality of education would decrease because of it,” Walther said.
“There are a lot of schools around the Columbus area that are dealing with problems with funding levies and teachers losing their jobs. It is my understanding that more jobs would have been lost without collective bargaining. I believe that things will continue to get worse if teachers lose their bargaining rights,” Clark said.
Tom Christenson, professor of philosophy, can see both sides of this issue but stressed that his views are mainly pro-unions.
“I am a pro labor person. The laborers in this country had a difficult time earning their rights and I do not want to see them taken away,” Christenson said.
Christenson finds it important to put limits on what people can ask for at the bargaining table, especially in an economic state like the current one, but did not like the way in which the bill was passed.
“There are ways to find an economically responsible path through negotiation, cooperation, respect, and dialogue rather than an us vs. them mentality which was used to target and blame teachers and other public employees for the state’s problems,” Christenson said. He believes this strategy backfired and has alienated large amounts of citizens within the State of Ohio.
It seems the clash over SB5 will continue until Election Day, and even beyond. Labor laws have been a topic for disagreement since the industrial revolution, and one state referendum does not seem to be quieting this debate any time soon.
