The terrific Ohio blog Plunderbund reports, via the Dayton Daily News,
...Gov. John Kasich indicated that if the legislature doesn’t quickly pass the kind of collective bargaining rollbacks he wants, he’ll include them in his budget.(Just so you know, plenty of our Teamster brothers and sisters are Ohio public employees, including 800 workers at the Turnpike, airport workers in Cuyahoga County, nurses in Lorain, highway workers in Medina County and water resources workers in Portage County, to name just a few who belong to Local 436 in Valley View.)
Kasich's threat to steamroll government workers is exactly what Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said he'd do on Friday. One wonders what Kasich will do next -- call out the National Guard if anyone objects?
Maybe he'll go ahead with his plans to privatize the Ohio Turnpike to pay for coporate welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy. As our Ohio brother Fred Crow points out,
...it's one of the most profitable turnpikes in the country. Our people just ratified a new 3 year deal that maintained benefits along with a 3 year pay freeze. The pike set a record in 2010 with 250 million dollars in revenue...Don't let them get away with it. The Tea Party is busing people into Columbus from God-knows-where for a rally on Wednesday to show their support for Kasich's plans. Out-of-state Tea Partiers already tried to hijack AFSCME's phone system to tell Ohio lawmakers they support the anti-union bill. They were led by a California investment advisor who told them how to do it on his blog. (AFSCME put a stop to it.)
If you live near Columbus, try to make Wednesday's rally. If you live in Ohio, click here to find your state senator so you can call, write or email your opposition to SB 5.
