[ECP] Corporate union busters draw first blood in Ohio
- From: "K.E." <admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: K12NewsLetters@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2011 21:24:41 -0500
"By any means necessary"?
Date: Thu Mar 3, 2011 6:36 pm ((PST))
Corporate union busters draw first blood in Ohio
By Bob Fitrakis
Corporate union busters draw first blood in Ohio
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
March 3, 2011
The national corporate campaign to destroy America's public sector unions has
drawn first blood in Ohio.
But a counter-attack centered on one or more statewide initiatives or
constitutional amendments has become highly likely.
While thousands of protestors chanted, spoke and sang inside and outside the
statehouse for the past two weeks (SB 5 Rally), the Ohio Senate voted 17-16 on
Senate Bill 5, a bill that will slash collective bargaining for state workers
by banning strikes and giving local officials the right to settle disputes. The
bill, among other things, also eliminates all paid sick days from teachers.
The vote came amid shouts of "shame on you" and widespread booing from the
diverse crowd of teachers, police, firefighters, construction workers, state
employees and more.
Photograph by Bob Studzinski
The bill decimates a legal framework in place since 1983. The vote was
surprisingly close as six Republicans joined ten Democrats in opposition. The
seventeen yes voters were all Republicans.
In order to vote the bill out of committee, Republican Senate President Tom
Niehaus had to remove two key Republican senators who opposed the bill from
crucial committees. Both Senators Scott Oelslager of Canton and Bill Seitz of
Cincinnati were yanked from their posts. The removal of Seitz broke a committee
stalemate and allowed the bill to come to the floor with a 7-5 vote.
Ultra-conservative Senator Timothy Grendell of rural Chesterland, Ohio
demounced the bill as "unconstitutional" pointing out that it prohibits union
members from talking with elected public officials during negotiations and
labels such activity as an unfair labor practice. Seitz echoed this theme:
"It's an unfair labor practice if they exercise their First Amendment right to
call up their Councilman."
Photograph by Bob Studzinski
The bill now goes to the Ohio House, where it is fast-tracked and anticipated
to pass by mid-March. In the House, the passage is being orchestrated by House
Speaker Bill Batchelder. The Free Press has reported in the past of
Batchelder's ties to the secretive Council for National Policy.
Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates describes CNP members as not only
traditional conservatives, but also nativists, xenophobes, white racial
supremacists, homophobes, sexists, militarists, authoritarians, reactionaries
and "in some cases outright neo-fascists."
The Democrats do not hold enough seats in either house to deny the GOP a
quorum, as is being done in Wisconsin and Indiana.
Ohio's multi-millonaire Governor John Kasich, who got rich selling junk assets
as a managing partner for Lehman Brothers to public pensions in Ohio, will sign
the bill as soon as he gets it. Kasich was selected last November with a large
last-minute contribution from Rupert Murdoch. Kasich is also a former Fox news
commentator, who emerged in Ohio politics as one of Richard Nixon's
freshly-scrubbed youth and was initially supported by followers of Reverend
Moon.
Kasich has blamed budget problems on state workers. But a rich person's repeal
of Ohio's estate tax has cost the state a long-standing multi-million-dollar
revenue stream. Like Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Kasich also has
rejected a big federal grant ($400 million) to upgrade the state's passenger
rail system, which would have created at least a thousand direct jobs and
thousands more indirectly, along with a jump in state tax revenue.
Kasich meanwhile has given his chief of staff a substantial pay hike over that
his predecessor. He has hired at least four commissioners to sit on a "job
creation" panel with annual salaries of roughly $150,000 each. The commission
has been structured to operate without formal accountability to the legislature
or taxpayers of the state. Kasich has already succeeded in privatizing the
state's department of development.
Kasich tried to ban the media and the public from his inauguration. He has
warned opponents that they had better "get on the bus or get run over by the
bus."
Unlike Wisconsin, Ohio has no recall law. The only apparent route to
overturning this union-busting legislation may be with a statewide initiative
or a constitutional amendment. As the statehouse filled with union protestors,
talk spread of how and when that might be done.
Polls are showing overwhelming support for public workers, in part due to the
blatant attack on Ohio's police and firefighters who are now barred from
negotiating on safety issues. The bill bans binding arbitration used in the
past to settle negotiations, and instead allows management to pick the
settlement it wants.
Ohioans may also consider a constitutional amendment to guarantee hand-counted
paper ballots. Electronic voting is dominated here by the successor to the
Ohio-based Diebold corporation and the ES&S corporation, and other
Republican-controlled voting machine companies. The privatization of Ohio's
voting and voter registration rolls corresponded with a 5.4% shift to the
Republican Party not predicted by the exit polls in the 2010 election. Exit
polls showed Kasich losing the election.
Overall the architectural map of the Ohio election system appears to give
private voting companies contracted to the Secretary of State's
office---currently headed by John Husted, a Republican---the ability to
electronically select state office winners in a matter of a few minutes on
election night. Husted has already introduced legislation to restrict voting
rights through demands for photo ID and other measures aimed at students, the
elderly, poor and other Democrat-leaning citizens. Without universal voter
registration and hand-counted paper ballots, the Ohio Democratic party has
little chance of winning statewide office for the foreseeable future, or of
turning back legislative union busting.
Key to the national corporate strategy now playing itself out in Ohio is the
destruction of the Democratic Party's traditional base. It is also about
trashing teachers, firefighters, police and other citizens who choose to work
for the general good rather than individual profit. As Nina Turner, a Senate
Democrat told the New York Times, "This bill seeks to vilify our public
employees and turn what used to be the virtue of public service into a crime."
It's widely believed Kasich will next assault Ohio's pubic school system, whose
funding mechanisms have been repeatedly ruled unconstitutional by state courts.
Kasich is a cheerleader for private charter schools. The GOP is expected to
push a voucher program that would use taxpayer money to subsidize private
schools for the rich.
David Brennan, owner of White Hat Management, a chain of private charter
schools, has consistently been the leading donor to the Ohio Republican
candidates. Former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray filed a legal
complaint against Brennan alleging that "White Hat's management agreements with
the schools are invalid because the public charter schools handed over nearly
all funding - 96 percent - to White Hat and were given essentially no
accountability or transparency as to how the funds were spent."
Kasich and the GOP have already moved to gut environmental regulations and turn
the state's park system over to corporate extractors. He is also expected to
attack legislation mandating advances in renewable energy while pushing for a
new nuclear plant to be built in southern Ohio by corporations poised to cash
in on massive federal subsidies being proposed by President Obama (Nuke
giveaway).
While the mood of demonstrators yesterday at the statehouse was angry and
defiant, there are no illusions about the stakes in this battle. Governor
Kasich and his wholly owned Republican legislature are born of unlimited
Citizens United corporate cash and rigged electronic voting machines.
It's thus no surprise that the first serious blood drawn in this latest
corporate campaigns to finally wipe labor unions off the American map has come
in the Buckeye State.
The question now: can the unions effectively fight back, in Ohio and
nationwide?
Photograph by Bob Studzinski
--
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books on election
protection at <http://www.freepress.org,>http://www.freepress.org, where Bob's
Fitrakis Files books appear. Harvey Wasserman's History of the United States is
at <http://www.harveywasserman.com.>http://www.harveywasserman.com. Originally
published by <http://www.freepress.org.>http://www.freepress.org.
Author's Website: <http://www.bobforohio.com>www.bobforohio.com
Author's Bio: <http://www.freepress.org>www.freepress.org www.bobforohio.com
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