The Defensive Fight to Preserve Collective Bargaining Rights: Ohio's SB5 Campaign and Its Progeny

• Author: Joyce Goldstein
• Pages: 228-228

228

THE DEFENSIVE FIGHT TO PRESERVE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

RIGHTS:

OHIO’S SB5 CAMPAIGN AND ITS PROGENY

Joyce Goldstein

I‘m from Ohio. Ohio is a state in the middle of the country. It‘s viewed as middle in a lot of ways

beyond just geographic. It has become known as one of those important ―swing states‖ where

all the country turns to watch the outcome of presidential elections because the state is so

evenly divided between political parties, with lots of people in what is described as the political

center.

Despite its position in the middle, in the 2010 elections, as with so many other places in the

United States, there was a strong electoral shift to the right. We had had a Democratic

governor (Governor Strickland) who had only been in office for one term. He was a really nice

man – a former prison psychologist, a Christian minister, and a very well-liked and respected

member of the U.S. Congress.

As governor, he didn‘t accomplish much – but he got blamed for a deteriorating economy --and

was voted out of office by a narrow margin. For a number of reasons that are too arcane to

explain, for many years, the Ohio legislature has been and continues to be controlled by the

Republican Party, with a strong presence of what has become known as the ―caveman

caucus‖ for its wish to return Ohio to a pre-historic time.

After the new Republican governor was elected, he immediately turned his attention to one of

the most powerful and organized groups in Ohio that had actively campaigned for his opponent

– public employee unions. The idea was to cripple public employee unions and to use Ohio‘s

depressed economy as the excuse to justify it. Specifically, the new governor (Kasich) said

that he wanted to give public employers throughout the state the ―flexibility‖ to deal with 2