Teachers, local officials may lose ability to negotiate work contracts under bill

COLUMBUS — Teachers and local government employees would lose the ability to negotiate pay, benefits and working conditions under sweeping legislation that would also prohibit collective bargaining for some 40,000 state employees introduced by Republican lawmakers Wednesday.

Senate Bill 5 also would basically end binding arbitration in stalled labor negotiations for police and firefighters, who are not permitted to strike. The bill is sponsored by Sen. Shannon Jones, R-Clearcreek Twp., and has support from Gov. John Kasich.

Jones said the world has changed drastically since a Democratic-controlled state government in 1983 enacted a comprehensive public employees bargaining law. The public has a right to know how public workers are compensated and managers need flexibility to get the most out of workers, she said.

“I am not doing this to punish public employees who serve the people of this state day after day,” Jones said at a Senate committee hearing, packed with a standing-room-only crowd of mostly public employees.

The bill also would:

• Ban public employee strikes.
• Weaken binding arbitration for police and firefighters.
• Limit a local union’s right to bargain for health insurance.
• Eliminate automatic pay increases for public employees.
• Strip teachers of the right to pick their classes or schools.

Bryan Statzer, president of FOP Local 104, representing workers in the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, said the bill showed “animosity toward public employees.”

Joan Hunter, a corrections officer at the Dayton Correctional Institution and a member of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, called the bill a “jobs buster.”

Kasich, a Republican, stopped by the hearing briefly. Asked if he was good with the bill, the governor said: “Of course.”

Well it's about time these sorry a** politicians do something right for a change.