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The Columbus Dispatch Editorial
False claim: Public-sector workers are not standing up for Ohio’s middle class
Wednesday, February 23, 2011

“Dear Supporter, Now is the time. If ever there was a time to show up, stand up and let our voices be heard, it is now. The fate of Ohio’s middle class is on the line at the Ohio Statehouse.”

So begins a mass e-mailing from former Gov. Ted Strickland, calling on members of public-sector unions to attend yesterday’s Statehouse rally opposing Senate Bill 5, which would eliminate collective bargaining for state government workers and restrict the scope of bargaining for schoolteachers, police, firefighters and other local-government employees.

The idea that the bill is an attack on Ohio’s middle class is one being repeated not only by Strickland but by other Democratic leaders and officials of the state’s public-sector unions.

The assertion is a flat contradiction of reality.

Not only are the public-sector workers affected by Senate Bill 5 not representative of the majority of Ohio’s middle class, but the comfortable wages, automatic raises, benefits, pensions, job protections, sick-day payouts and negotiating power enjoyed by many of these public-sector workers comes at the expense of the vast majority of Ohio’s middle-class taxpayers. Most of these taxpayers have nothing remotely like these benefits nor the economic security that the public sector takes for granted and regards as a right.

That public-sector workers are not representative of Ohio’s middle class is evident in the numbers. According to the Ohio Legislative Service Commission, Senate Bill 5 will affect 42,000 state workers, 19,500 higher-education employees and about 298,000 employees of local governments such as counties, municipalities, townships and school districts.

That totals 359,500 employees, a mere 6.5 percent of Ohio’s workforce of 5.5 million. In fact, the number of public-sector employees is far outnumbered by more than 500,000 Ohioans who want to work but can’t find jobs.

Ohioans lucky enough to have jobs pay the taxes that support public-sector wages and benefits. Not only that, but the city councils and school boards that work for these taxpayers are hobbled by state laws and collective-bargaining agreements that act to constantly ratchet up the cost of government, while reducing the ability of elected officials to make shifts in budgets, personnel and policy that could best serve taxpayers.

For example, Senate Bill 5 would allow school-district officials to assign teachers where they are needed most and, in times of budget stress, to lay off teachers based on the needs of students, not the seniority of teachers. By removing health care for teachers as an area of collective bargaining, districts would be free to pursue health-care options that save taxpayers money without having these measures held up by teacher-union resistance and quid-pro-quo demands.

The basic intent of Senate Bill 5 is to restore to the taxpayers and their elected representatives the right to manage the public’s business.

And this is a power that some prominent officeholders already have and wield without apology. In November, President Barack Obama called for a two-year freeze on the wages of federal employees, saying that this was part of an effort to reduce federal overspending. He does not have to negotiate with a federal-employee union before imposing the freeze, because most federal employees do not have the right to collectively bargain their salaries, which are set by Congress.

And if Congress and the president have this power, why shouldn’t governors, school-board members and city-council members? After all, they face a constraint the president doesn’t: the legal requirement that they balance their budgets.

Taxpayers should not be obligated to pony up the ever-increasing salary-and-benefit demands of public-sector workers, even as these taxpayers themselves are taking pay cuts and paying more for health insurance.

There is no question that Senate Bill 5 is about the middle class. But it is not an attack, it is an attempt to restore to Ohio’s middle class the control of the government it pays for and elects.

The few thousand public-sector workers who turned out to protest Senate Bill 5 yesterday were not looking out for Ohio’s middle class. They were looking out for their own privileged status, one that is out of reach for most Ohio taxpayers.

Read it at The Columbus Dispatch



 
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