The Battle of Ohio: "Vote NO on Issue 2" Can Turn Back Anti-Union Attack

October 12, 2011

The Battle of Wisconsin was at the center of last spring's struggle to defend workers' rights. For the next three weeks, ground zero in that struggle will be Ohio. A ballot-box victory there could be an important step in turning the tide against the enemies of labor.

On Election Day, November 8, we won't be watching for the outcome of a race between two candidates. Instead, we'll witness an exercise in direct democracy. The voters will directly decide whether to preserve workers' rights to build unions and collectively bargain in Ohio.

When they vote on a referendum called Issue 2, Ohio voters will be able to repeal Senate Bill 5 (SB 5). That's the union-busting bill pushed by Republican Governor John Kasich and passed last March by the Republican majorities in the Ohio House and Senate. The legislature voted after weeks of mass protests at the capitol in Columbus and across the state. The protests didn't stop the bill, but they had an impact on public opinion, and even convinced several Republican senators to vote against the bill. It passed the Senate by just one vote, and Kasich quickly signed it.

SB 5 takes away the rights of public employees to bargain over just about anything except wages. It imposes a big share of healthcare and pension costs on workers. It also takes away the limited right to strike that most Ohio public workers have had since the 1980s. It says that if a public employer and union cannot reach agreement on contract terms, the employer will decide what goes in the contract. It takes away the right of public employee unions to negotiate "fair share" contract clauses which require non-members to pay a representation fee to the union. In short, if this law goes into effect, it will cripple public employee unionism in Ohio, and lead to further attacks on worker rights in both the public and private sectors, in Ohio and elsewhere.

But thanks to the efforts of thousands of union members (including Ohio UE members), as well as other volunteers, SB 5 has not gone into effect, and if the "NO on Issue 2" side wins on election day, it never will. That's because under Ohio law, the voters can get the final say on newly-passed legislation if they collect enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot.

THE MILLION-SIGNATURE MARCH

Under existing Ohio law, opponents of SB 5 had 90 days from the date the governor signed the bill to gather signatures equal to 6 percent of the vote in the 2010 election. That's a little more than 231,000 signatures.

UE members got involved in the petition drive. Jeff Niceswanger, president of UE Local 718, told the UE NEWS last summer that, going door-to-door in his hometown of Zanesville, he got 150 signatures and met only four people who refused to sign.

On June 29, the day before the deadline, 6,000 union supporters marched through Downtown Columbus to the office of the secretary of state, where they delivered petitions with 1,298,301 signatures. That was five times the number they needed, and the event was dubbed "the million-signature march.

Polls show that the labor side on Issue 2 - the "NO" side - is ahead, but the union-busting side is gaining strength with its campaign of deceptive TV ads funded by big business, including the infamous Koch brothers. Karl Rove, the political mastermind behind George W. Bush, is also involved in the anti-union campaign, which is misleadingly named "Building a Better Ohio."

This group has even resorted to twisting the words of a Cincinnati great-grandmother, Marlene Quinn, to advance their anti-worker smear campaign. After union firefighters rescued Quinn's little great-granddaughter Zoey from a burning house, she was so grateful to the firefighters that she appeared in a TV ad for the "NO on Issue 2" campaign. But the Yes on Issue 2 side took footage of Mrs. Quinn from that ad and, in a classic political dirty trick, manipulated her words into an anti-union message in one of their own ads! This is the kind of sleazy tactic UE has seen employers use during organizing campaigns. Mrs. Quinn called this "dishonest and downright deceitful" and We Are Ohio, the pro-union coalition, is petitioning TV stations across the state to pull this deceptive ad off the air. (So far 30 stations have done so.)

In the days ahead, UE locals across Ohio will be getting information to their members and organizing for maximum turnout and a strong "NO on 2" vote on November 8. At the same time that anti-Wall Street protests are spreading across the country, a big win for workers in Ohio can help to turn the country around and get us moving in the right direction.

You can follow the Vote NO on Issue 2 movement at the website of We Are Ohio.