A Great Fight

A day after our impotent president refused to fight Republican blackmail by agreeing to $38 billion in devastating budget cuts to avoid a government shutdown, several thousand brave Ohioans refused to give in to Republican union busting.

Saturday's rally outside the statehouse  in Columbus was the unofficial kickoff of a petiton drive for a November referendum to overturn Ohio's new union busting law that forbids strikes and collective bargaining over healthcare and pension benefits and workplace rules by public unions. The law, signed last month by Republican Gov. John Kasich who pushed it through the legislature, also allows local governments and schoolboards to decide on disputed contract negotiations rather than an neutral arbitrator virtually ensuring that union final offers will be rejected.

The public workers and their supporters refuse to be scapegoated for Ohio's approximately $8 billion shortfall which was mainly caused by tax cuts to the rich and corporations and Wall Street legalized theft that triggered the Great Recession.Unlike Obama, aka The Great Capitulator, public workers are willing to fight to prevent the middle class from being eviscerated and our nation turned into the have-nots and the have-a-lots.

They understand that when Congress approves tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans in December increasing the deficit by some $700 billion over 10 years, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/us/politics/11tax.html calls for "shared sacrifice" or Obama's Friday comment that, "we all must live within our means" are a joke. And the joke is on us.

"These policies that they are putting down our throat are the policies that led directly to the Great Depression," the Rev. Rod Kennedy, senior pastor at The First Baptist Church in Dayton, told the crowd. "They're not just trying to destroy collective bargaining, they're trying to turn you into indentured servants all over again."

Kennedy understands America is being transformed from The New Deal to The New Steal. That the new law, commonly referred to as Senate Bill 5, is just the latest in 30 years of reverse Robin Hood economics and taxation.

Speaking as if from the pulpit, Kennedy called the law part of a "century old grudge" by Republicans against unions. Recalling the bloody battles unions fought for child labor laws, a 40-hour work week and decent pay and working conditions, Kennedy called for a new fight.

"This is a great fight to be part of," he said. "This is our moment. Our chance to prove who we are and why we believe in the common good."

Kennedy was one of several inspiring speakers. Like the Columbus police officer paralyzed from the waist down after a 1998 shooting who noted that the new law forbids officers from negotiating over safety equipment like bullet proof vests or staffing.

The prison guard who supervises 120 prisoners in a pod at the maximum security prison in Mansfield with just one other guard. and worries about more cuts. Kasich is planning to privatize some of Ohio's prisons, a recipe for more violence and an incentive to keep prisons full rather than opting for far less expensive alternatives to incaceration.

There was a teacher who spoke of how eliminating teacher's seniority for a merit pay system will turn an atmosphere of "collaboration and cooperation" into one of "retalition and litigation." An Ohio Jobs and Family Service worker spoke of being foreclosed on and living paycheck to paycheck after an illness.  "Life is not fair, but there is right and there is wrong and (Senate) Bill 5 is wrong," she said.

The woman mentioned that her union has endured two years of wage freezes and has give up 10 furlough days per years. Don't count on the past concessions unions have made getting much media coverage.

Sunday's misleading Op-ed in the non-union Sandusky Register by Managing Editor Matt Westerhold was typical of the editorials in most Ohio newspapers, most of which are non-union. (Full disclosure:: I was a reporter in 2005-06 for Register.)

Westerhold said a requirement that unions pay 15 percent of health benefits would be "locked in." Does he really think that percentage is in perpetuity? With unions unable to bargain over healthcare, what's to stop the state from increasing the percentage in future years?

Westerhold also employs a race to the bottom, split and divide mentality reasoning that since private unions were forced to make huge concessions years ago, so should public unions. Instead of calling for decent pay and benefits for all workers, whether they are unionized or not, Westerhold's logic is that since private union workers and non-union workers don't have decent pay and benefits, neither should public union workers.

Westerhold never mentions that the reason cities and states are cash strapped is because of financial deregulation voted for by people like Kasich when he was a congressman and public pension fund mismanagement by companies like Lehman Brothers, which Kasich worked for.

Westerhold mentions the high cost of healthcare, but never mentions this is due to our for-profit medical care system and that a single-payer system, essentially Medicare for all, would save some $400 billion per year by eliminating insurance companies from the health care equation. http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-resources

Instead, Westerhold writes that, "the days municipal unions demanded and received concessions almost at will are undoubtedly over." I've been a reporter for 20 years and I don't remember those days.

Whenever I wrote about public union contracts, unions were lucky to get 2 or 3 percent wage increases - barely enough to keep pace with inflation - and sometimes agreed to wage freezes and health benefit concessions.

Opponents of union busting have never recieved much media support, so negative editorials are nothing new. And in fairness, corrupt union leaders and the decisions of some union leaders to fight the firings of incompetent workers has damaged the reputation of the rank and file.

The truth is there is always deadwood, whether in a newsroom or a union shop. But the majority of union members are hardworking people who aren't getting rich, just like reporters. Government workers are our friends, family and neighbors and they deserve our support. Think about that when  the petitions circulate.