The Ohio Legislature voted to pass an even more hideous version of SB 5 last night. It strips collective bargaining rights from 350,000 government workers, including Teamster turnpike workers, nurses and corrections officers. It also grants broad powers to terminate collective bargaining agreements to the governor, state auditor and board of regents.
Brother Fred Crow from Local 436 tells us:
Final tally, SB5 passes the house 53-44 with 2 abstensions, and the senate 17-16. That's 69 people in the house and senate that I will make every effort to make feel the sting of being jobless.The good-ish news from Ohio is that
We now have 90 days to collect enough signatures to stop this travesty from happening.
Associated Press reports:
Even before the contentious Senate Bill 5 — in some ways tougher than Wisconsin's — had cleared the Legislature late Wednesday, unions and Democrats in this once-proud labor stronghold vowed to put it on November's ballot as a referendum.
"O-H-I-O! S.B. 5 has got to go!" protesters chanted ahead of a final Senate vote of 17-16 that sent the bill to Gov. John Kasich for his signature, expected this week. The vote followed a day filled with Statehouse demonstrations by about 750 people, who raucously chanted and shouted throughout the process. After a House vote of 53-44, opponents spewed expletives at House members.
The vitriol wasn't limited to the Statehouse.
Leo Geiger, 34, a Republican who works as a sewer inspector for the city of Dayton, said he's "deathly afraid that this is going to affect me, my family and the entire state of Ohio in and incredibly negative way."
He believes the bill is political payback for unions' support of Democrats in November's election.
"I find this to be loathsome," he said from Dayton on Wednesday night. He didn't attend protests because he couldn't take the time off. "I find this to be disrespectful to Ohioans and disrespectful to the process of democracy."
