Labor & Employment Law

Ohio Lawmakers Play Political Games Instead of Focusing on Jobs

By James Parks

With state unemployment at 9.6 percent last month, Ohio legislators should be working overtime to fix the jobs crisis. Instead, the majority leadership in the Ohio Senate is playing partisan politics.

Ohio State Senate Assistant Majority Leader Shannon Jones has introduced a bill to take away public service workers? right to collective bargaining–a right they’ve had for 27 years.

Following the lead of Gov. John Kasich, the Senate leaders are trying to shift the blame for the state?s economic woes onto the state?s public employees and their unions.  The State Senate Insurance, Commerce and Labor Committee will hold a hearing on the bill, SB 5, on Wednesday, and working people are mobilizing to stop it in its tracks.

If you live in Ohio, you can take action now. Click here now to urge your state to focus on addressing our jobs crisis instead of scapegoating workers for our economic problems.

Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga tells members in an e-mail:

Senator Jones, Governor Kasich and their political allies continue to blame workers for problems they did not create. Workers are not the reason tens of thousands of jobs have been outsourced from Ohio to China or Mexico. Workers did not create the economic recession that increased joblessness and pushed working families out of their homes.  Workers are not the cause of Ohio?s $8 billion projected budget deficit.  

Ohio is just one the states in which legislators and governors are using the budget crisis to try and deny workers’ collective bargaining rights. From Florida to Maine and Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, they’re claiming public workers’ pay and benefits are crashing state budgets.   

But a  recent study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that public employees nationally actually are paid less than private-sector workers, even when factoring in employer-provided benefits. This gap was especially large among more educated workers. College-educated workers on average earned $22,966 less in total compensation.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on February 08, 2011 (boomark / email).