Cleveland Plain Dealer...
A right-to-work law in Indiana could be a learning experience for Ohio
By Kevin O’Brien  
January 6, 2012 

A week before Issue 2 got clobbered at the polls, Ohio Tea Party activists and the libertarian 1851 Center for Constitutional Law announced that they were laying the groundwork for a constitutional amendment to make Ohio a right-to-work state. 

The announcement wasn’t trumpeted amid euphoric expectation that Ohioans would pass Issue 2, thereby affirming a perfectly sensible law to curb the power of public employee unions. Rather, it came amid a growing certainty that Issue 2 would be defeated. 

The people who want a right-to-work law for union-hobbled Ohio have the right idea. From the standpoints of individual freedom, economic sense and a hope for future statewide prosperity, allowing people to choose whether they want to belong to unions at their workplaces is unassailably logical. 

But there’s such a thing as doing the right thing at the wrong time, and this would be the wrong time. 

Mounting a serious challenge to a Big Labor campaign apparatus that is both well organized and triumphantly energized after its campaign to defeat Issue 2 would require more money than a Tea Party activist could even imagine. 

Mounting that challenge now would also require regaining all of the educational ground that was lost over the last year, as Issue 2 advocates allowed public employee unions to turn a fiscal issue into an emotional issue. 

Put simply, the public will need time to realize what a colossal mistake it made in voting down Issue 2. 

Finally, the argument that Big Labor in Ohio is tapped out after spending $40 million in the last election is simply wishful thinking. A ton of the money spent to beat Issue 2 came from outside of Ohio, and there’s plenty more where that came from. As long as people are forced to join unions, the supply of money Big Labor can throw at its political emergencies is, for all intents and purposes, inexhaustible. 

Fortunately, for Ohioans who understand that right-to-work is a great idea, there’s a solution. 

Indiana. 

Wednesday in Indianapolis, the Indiana legislature began debate on a bill that would make theirs the 23rd right-to-work state. The bill is expected to pass, eventually, after a wave of attempted intimidation like that seen in Wisconsin and Ohio as those states’ legislatures worked to get public employees back under public control. 

Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels is stacking a great deal of his considerable political capital on the issue -- something he has not done before, though a right-to-work bill has been introduced in Indiana in each of the last seven years. 

Without a doubt, the public employee unions will lead the charge against the legislation. They’re the unions that are growing -- because government is the nation’s only unionized growth “industry.” That’s where labor money and clout reside today. 

It will be a different fight than Ohio’s was, because it will also involve unions at private employers. But it’s still a good fight. 

The problem with public employee unions has always been that they actively promote their members’ interests against the interests of the taxpaying public. 

Unions in the private sector don’t do that. They exist to balance their private interests against the employer’s private interests, and that’s fine. 

What’s wrong is that in 28 states, including Indiana and Ohio, a worker can be compelled to join a union and pay dues if his or her place of employment is unionized. 

The benefits of that arrangement to the union -- and to the political causes the union leadership chooses to support -- are obvious. The benefits to the employee often are considerably less so, especially when the job gets offshored, or the company goes out of business because it can no longer justify the cost of labor. 

A right-to-work law would give Ohio the chance to preserve some of the businesses that it has and eventually would make the state more attractive to commerce in general. 

But a right-to-work law isn’t going to pass. Not here. Not now. 

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine had a problem with the wording of the proposed amendment, so the initiative is stalled -- and it should stay stalled. Rather than push an idea doomed by its timing, Ohioans who want to bring workplace freedom to the rust belt should step back and let Indiana carry this ball. 

The governor there has been in office far longer and is far more popular, Big Labor doesn’t have a ready-made opposition machine in place and the electorate is likely to be more receptive because it’s more conservative. 

Ohioans need a demonstration project that shows how beneficial it can be to let go of old ways that put the brakes on prosperity. It could happen -- right next door. 

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