Could Ohio Become a Right-to-Work State?
Fresh off a resounding ballot-issue victory at the polls, many of those who worked to pass Issue 3, the “Ohio Healthcare Freedom Amendment,” on November 8, thereby hardwiring a statewide rejection of ObamaCare’s mandates into Ohio’s Constitution, have begun the process of getting a right-to-work initiative on the ballot in 2012 or 2013.
A spokesman for the usually aggressive John Kasich indicates that the Buckeye State’s governor, fresh from the stinging defeat of Issue 2, his signature public-sector cost control and collective-bargaining reform law, doesn’t find this development particularly helpful: “Right now is the time to pause and take stock. … Now’s not the time to be taking up or considering these types of issues.”
As explained at the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, a self-described “legal center dedicated to protecting the constitutional rights of Ohioans from government abuse,” Ohio’s right-to-work initiative would provide that:
- “No law, rule, agreement, or arrangement shall require any person or employer to become or remain a member of a labor organization.”
- “No law, rule, agreement, or arrangement shall require, directly or indirectly, as a condition of employment, any person or employer, to pay or transfer any dues, fees, assessments, other charges of any kind, or anything else of value, to a labor organization, or third party in lieu of the labor organization.”
It also “would not prevent any person from voluntarily belonging to or providing support to a labor organization,” and would not affect preexisting agreements and contracts.
Currently, the U.S. has 22 right-to-work states. All of them are in the South, West, and Central Midwest. During the past 15 years, these states have collectively outperformed the rest of the nation to an almost embarrassing degree.
The aforementioned 1851 Center has a strong rundown of key statistics and facts, including these:
- “From 1995 to 2005, incomes of residents in right-to-work states grew by 142 percent more than the incomes of Ohioans,” and “private-sector job growth was 500% greater.”
- After passing right-to-work legislation in 1986 and 2001, respectively, Idaho and Oklahoma both experienced explosive growth in their economies and overall employment.
- An after-tax dollar earned in a right-to-work state has more real purchasing power than it does in other states, “because union labor tends to raise (the) costs of goods and services.”
I took a look at economic growth in the individual states during the past decade as measured by gross domestic product (GDP). What I found also shows that right-to-work states clearly outperformed the others:
You can’t get there from here.
The unions, rightly for them, see this sort of initiative as a death warrant.
“The last thing the country needs is to lose Ohio to Team Obama because a hyper-energized, spendthrift, out-of-state labor movement was able to maximize its sympathizers’ turnout in this most critical and unpredictable of swing states.”
Yup. Obamacare even lost here in Toledo, though Issue 2 went down badly. I do not want more reasons to get Dear Liar’s voters out in droves.
What on earth are you and Mr. Blumer thinking? Dear Liar’s voters will be out in droves in 2012 no matter what. It’s 2012. Get it?
I’m not so sure they’ll be out in droves. Just looking around Toledo there is a huge lack of enthusiasm for the President, in contrast to 2008. The base did get fired up to repeal SB 5, but remember, statewide Obamacare lost by a bigger margin than SB 5 did. No GOP candidate has won the WH without winning Ohio.
What are you kidding they’ll be rising from the dead!
Are youkidding. They’ll be rising from the dead (oops the dead will be voting)
Just as wise men insist that the 16th (income tax?) Amendment be repealed before a VAT is authorized, so voters should insist that enforcible promises be obtained that closed shops be prohibited by the Federal Govt everywhere in the US before they agree to postpone the OH measure vote until past 2012. The proposition would stand a better chance in a general election, with all voters participating, than in an off-year election, where the union turn-out machine would have an advantage. Another example of why electing a RINO is worthless. As long as unions can use forced dues to fund Dem politicians, the political process is fatally flawed. Margaret Thatcher crushed the unions in GB when she got power. Reagan didn’t. Ditto the Bushes. We have to destroy our enemies whenever we have the chance. Unions are criminal enterprises (conspiracies to commit extortion, at Common Law). They are only legal because FDR-era Federal laws specifically exempted unions from criminal law. Abolish those laws and unions go away.
“I’m inclined to believe that we won’t see the initiative get on the ballot until the year after we learn whether Barack Obama was reelected.”
“I hope I’m right.”
It doesn’t matter if it makes it on the ballot or not in 2012, just the process of trying to get the “right to work” amendment on the ballot will energize the unions and the Democrat base. Issue 2 brought out normally apathetic voters who had never been politically active and were so discouraged they wouldn’t have bothered to vote. In Cuyahoga county we had teachers, police and firemen leave the tea parties to volunteer to campaign against Issue 2. We haven’t got them back yet. The unions and the Democrats framed the debate and we lost big.
This proposed amendment gets the prize for the worst timing ever! Thanks to Chris Littleton of the OLC (Ohio Liberty Council) not only is Josh Mandel’s run for the Senate in jeopardy, but most of the gains we had in the last election and this could give Obama the boost he needs to take Ohio and send the entire country down the drain.
We would all love Ohio to be a “right to work” state, but there are intelligent ways to reach that goal.
Steve, perhaps you are right as to the energizing effect this initiative may have. It is my opinion that Issue 2 failed primarily because the nationwide union forces could focus their funding and their attention on this issue in political isolation. They succeeded in defeating it because they spent $30 mil overwhelming the pro Issue 2 forces. Next fall, the unions will be spending their money to secure Obama’s re-election anyway although they will have $30 mil less to spend doing so.
It is also my opinion that a right-to-work law is more compelling politically than SB5 was and much more difficult to spin into a negative message for the pro-union forces. I can tell you that there are plenty of union members who would prefer not to be forced into funding the SEIU’s of this world.
Given Obama’s track record supporting union activities as egregiously as he has during the past 3 years, do you really think that the pro-union forces will be any less engaged in his re-election effort if this initiative were not on the ballot?
“Do you really think that the pro-union forces will be any less engaged in his re-election effort if this initiative were not on the ballot?”
Absolutely, if the rank and file feels they won this issue many of them would go back to their apathy and not even vote. It’s a bread and butter issue for them. This keeps the issue alive.
Your mistake is you think the unions spent all their money and won’t be able to compete. The unions framed the debate and won it. It is still fresh in the minds of the rank and file. The Democrats drew blood and know they have a winning issue, and it won’t take a lot of reselling. Joe Biden and the Democrats are already calling it the “right to work for less amendment” and “the destruction of the middle class amendment.” Obama has a billion dollar war chest, Soros will fund his groups and Ohio will be the focal point of the next election.
The liberal publications are already pushing for Ohio to be the main battleground because of issue 2. Unless the Democrats are totally inept, this is where they will center their activities.
So the question, the ultimate question should be; Is Ohio willing to risk it all for this? My answer is NO. It would be best if the “right to work” amendment would just go away for awhile…
“Absolutely, if the rank and file feels they won this issue many of them would go back to their apathy and not even vote. It’s a bread and butter issue for them. This keeps the issue alive.”
Part of my point is that the bread and butter element of this issue is on the side of right-to-work. It is a bread and butter issue only to the union officials, not to the rank and file. To the pro-Dem, union supporting rank and file, it is not a bread and butter issue and this is where I think your analysis is flawed. Their union membership is not threatened by right to work legislation. The only thing that is threatened is the boss’s ability to continue to extort union dues from employees who prefer to keep their own money and not fund political campaigns they disagree with.
Perhaps we will have to agree to disagree but I am of the mind that Obama, despite his war chest is going to lose Ohio lacking a positive message and lacking any positive story of accomplishment to run on, and that passing a right to work law would be the politically shortest route to turning Ohio around economically. This should have been the strategy from Kasich’s first day in office and I emailed him that message at the time.
SB5 was a bread and butter issue but right-to-work is not and therein is all the difference.
SB5 was a bread and butter issue but right-to-work is not and therein is all the difference.
I believe your analysis is flawed in that the unions have already framed the issue and no matter if it’s a lie or not, they are wining the debate. You want to gamble all your marbles on the perception that Obama doesn’t have a positive message, this may be true, but a massive union turnout with the way they’ve already framed the debate puts everything at risk. “It’s all in.” That’s not a bet we should be taking at this time.
mr. oneman, You reasoning is flawed because you think that fact, logic, and reason are the compelling reasons to the rank and file. Were you in Ohio when every radio ad, every TV ad was the lie that the rank and file keep ‘nurses in the ER’ and ‘fire fighters in the proper numbers available to save your house and your grand daughter’. It doesn’t have to be true. It only has to have the shadow of truth pass over it once upon a time so they can construct an emotional arguement.
If you think that the rank and file aren’t going to be threatened by a Constitutional Amendment making Ohio a Right to Work state, then you obviously didn’t understand how hysterical they were when all they were being asked to do was restructure some benefits. SB5/Issue 2 was NOT an elimination of their collective bargaining rights. SB5/Issue 2 was NOT an attack on their rights at all. Yet the union bosses were able to convince highly educated and well trained people to ignore the truth of the law and the facts and buy an argument that they will have some say over staffing levels when the money runs out. Sane people and union people are not always in the same basket. When the layoffs come they will see the truth? Hardy har har, the joke is on them, and on us, and lastly on everyone who believes they ran out of money (when they will gladly give up great chunks of their paychecks for as long as it takes), and used up all their will in 2011.
To believe they will play fair, to believe they won’t frame this as an attack on all unions and as a way of eliminating and killing off all unions is not just to be near sighted, it is to be blind, because they are already doing it. Biden is doing it. Sherrod Brown is doing it. And honey, when Obama comes to town, he is going to have every unemployed person in Ohio doing it for him.
The rank and file are not just going to see this as a fight they need to fight but they will see this as a fight they MUST fight, and the only way to do it will be to win for Obama, and win for Sherrod Brown, and win for every D congressman they can find, even in ‘safe’ GOP seats.
And that is the risk Chris Littleton is willing to make, without even asking the rest of us if that is these are the dice we are willing to roll.
If there really are lots of employees who would rather not be supporting SEIU or other unions’ activities, there is a much simpler and more effective way to cripple the unions than provoking an existential battle with organized labor Nationwide. It is black letter law that an employee who objects cannot be compelled to support the “social, fraternal, and political” activities of a union as a condition of employment. Objectors must be provided a means by which they can pay only for collective bargaining activities. Most unions have a sham objector fee slightly less than full member dues but at the cost to the employee of not being able to vote in contract ratifications, a price many think too high. In any event, few unions have a record keeping system that enables them to separate costs chargeable only to collective bargaining from their social, fraternal, and political activities, thus their dues schemes are unconstitutional. The only thing that has to happen is that some objecting employee has to sue, or some state, county, or city attorney for a government with union shop employees has to sue to make the unions prove their dues schemes meet contitutional muster. If you have them by the dues, their hearts and minds follow.
Definately one of the more intelligent ways of tackling the union problem.
I’m one of only a handful of people in the Country that has done labor relations for a Republican government of a fully unionized state; you learn a few things.
Art,
A suit similar to which you describe has just been accepted for oral argument by the US Supreme Court (see Knox v. Service Employees International Union Local 1000) for which the 9th Circuit COA found in favor of the union. While I applaud those members willing to take their cases to court, this approach is very haphazard and scattershot in it’s impact. Chicago Teacher’s Union v Hudson was decided in 1986 and here we are 25 years later and the unions thumb their noses at this ruling and get away with it. Court rulings typically impact those who are participants in the case and not much further afield than that. An initiative or an amendment is needed to effect lasting and universal change.
Like many in my field, I’m a recovering lefty/union guy. I’m really into the incremental tactics of the left. I don’t believe in provoking existential battles if I can achieve my goal incrementally. And I know this is like the Battleship Dilemma; if they’re so valuable you’re afraid to use them, what good are they? That said, I’ve never met the Republican politician with the stomach for an existential battle.
This RTW campaign is the sort of naive stuff that self-styled true conservative plunge into without a clue as to what they’re getting into. The Democrats are probably wishing they’d thought of it and paid some fake TP group to do it; what more could they ask to get better turnout in a swing state?
Left to my own devices, I’d have found a way to catch some major contracts expired and then stop enforcing the union security clauses on impasse. That crystalizes a union’s perceptions and they become remarkably clear-thinking about their relationship with you. And that isn’t speculation, I’ve done it.
Like most 9th Soviet decisions, that is going to be reversed. Go look at the Evergreen Foundation’s cases against the Washington Ed Association; the WASC and the 9th Soviet turned the 1st Am. on its head to keep the union dues flowing to Democrats as long as possible.
The union wants to use that prior year thing so they can quickly confiscate money to play politics and then play the paltry refund game later. I think we on the right side of the ditch ought to be seriously attacking the refund scheme and arbitrated fee payer rates. I know most of the West Coast Arbitrators, and they’re not going to do anything that a union doesn’t like unless they know the Employer will take them to court over it. I took to having my staff tell them outright in closing arguments that the only way the union would get the remedy requested was when my State ran out of courts to which we could appeal. They understood that.
Obviously voters in Ohio have no idea who pays the salaries of unionized state and municipal employees. I have a much simpler way of addressing the issue of unions-especially public and municipal unions: Tell the voters either its higher property, income and state taxes or we cut all state and municipal jobs with the exception of fire and police.
What is so monumentally difficult to understand about unions/collective barganing? And if the people want to give unions unfettered power then raise all state taxes so high it kills the local and state economy. None of the diddling around the edges.
This is really an over-reach when it has already been proven that the citizens like the pit they’re inhabiting. It would be much easier to pass an amendment that simply said “no employer will be required to provide free services to a union representing it’s employees”, meaning of course, that they have to collect their own dues. People would understand that and the administrative burden of their actions would totally fall on them. If the union wanted the employer to collect their dues I’m sure the employer would be happy to come to some agreement to allow the unionized employees to be reimbursed for their time in calculating the union dues.
You’ve obviously never done labor relations for a public employer, not that many people have. The VERY LAST thing you want is union reps slithering around your property and your workforce all the time trying to sign up members and collect dues. It becomes a constant organizing campaign and it is YOU they are organizing against. Once you’ve been organized, you make the union security clause and the dues check-off the last thing on the table. When and if you get a contract you can live with, the union gets its union security and check-off so they’ll go away and leave you and your workforce alone until time to re-negotiate the contract.
You make both the union security clause and the check-off coterminus with the agreement so when the contract expires the union loses both its compulsory dues and the collection thereof. They become amazingly agreeable when they’re trying to get their dues stream restored.
The mistake both Swartzenegger and Kasich made was they allowed the unions to keep their dues stream intact during the campaign. You will NEVER beat them unless you have the means to instill real fear in them and the only thing they really fear is loss of dues income. There is hardly a union in the Country that has a record keeping system that will protect the interest of fee objectors. All it takes is a lawsuit by objecting employees or by the employer and you can stop the union’s dues collection until such time as it can stand up a dues structure that protects the Constitutional rights of objectors. Every Republican AG and Governor in the Country should be at the unions’ throats over their dues schemes but they’re too afraid. In understand the fear and I’ve been on the receiving end of unions’ tender mercies, but a concerted effort against their mostly unconstitutional dues schemes would prevail, though there would be political casualties.
In other words, 7 of the top 10 most economically vital states are right-to-work states. My guess is the 10 states with the lowest GDP are all union states.
Ohio and Michigan are 50 and 51 respectively. Does that mean even Puerto Rico is outperforming them, or is it some other in Obama’s list of 57 states?
Obama et al postponed the Ohio oil permits, which had the potential to add union jobs in a critical swing-state pre-2012. What was he thinking: Ohio doesn’t matter? The unions will back him no matter what? Desperate Ohioans will appreciate jobs even more if he holds off another 6 months? He’ll do anything to punish Kaisich no matter whom he has to squash to do it?
DC is the 51st entity, and as you’ll note it’s number 6 above. One could argue for excluding it because it’s almost all driven by growth in Uncle Sam and not private-sector commerce, in which case it would be nine out of the top 11 real states in GDP growth are right-to-work.
I believe Issue 2 failed because the Democratic Party and the unions (the public ones, especially, since they have more power now than private sector unions since GM largely went away) framed the debate as a “loss of rights”, and outspent supporters by millions. It’s not going to be easy to get these people to change their minds, but as firehouses close, and cops and teachers are laid off because there is no money, they might start to see reason. The Republican Party and right-to-work supporters need to start crafting their message now, not tomorrow, and they need to make it a powerful, reasonable, unbiquitous one, the same way the Dems always do.
If Ohio continues the way it has, the state will keep losing young, productive population to right-to-work states, and before long, Ohio won’t matter electorally anymore.
Any government facing less than a 20-25% budget shortfall that is laying off or threating to lay off police, firemen, or teachers is doing it for poltical effect not financial necessity. You could cut a quarter out of any government’s budget with little or no effect on direct services to the public.
And, no, I’m not saying that you could cut a quarter out with no effect. Anytime you make an incremental cut, or a decrement in budget-speak, the bureaucracy starts to cut its infrastructure functions: accounting, budget controls, HR/LR management, auditing, etc. The public won’t quickly feel the cuts though the net effect of accross the board decrements is an increase in fraud, waste, and abuse due to lack of internal controls.
Agreed RebeccaH. However, given the fundamentally awful campaign that the GOP ran, knowing how the issue would be portrayed as anti-police and fire fighters(they were warned before the first vote in the Ohio Senate, after all), and how inept the varous GOP county chairman were, and how poorly they used resources available to them, and how even Chris Littleton and the OLC had to run screaming from the heavy handed ‘staffers’, then we are fools to believe team Obama isn’t just going to come in and clean our clocks again.
There won’t be a link in 2012 between President Obama trying to save the working man and the layoffs, like there could have been in 2011. This is old news. Now it is all speculation and business as usual. To think that next year there will be a GOP campaign saying AHA, we told you so! when the pain comes is silly. They couldn’t even do it when it counted. So we will have the impression, the emotional impression that the GOP wants to shut down factories and layoff workers while Obama will swoop in and save them, just like he did with GM.
Do we want more of that? Because that will be the promise he can make to Ohio. And from listening to the REPUBLICANS who hold teaching, police, fire, and public service jobs, and then living next door to the electricans and the plumbers, I can tell you that we ain’t seen nothing yet. When it was only the public service employees at risk, the hysteria was palpable, but when you add in the steel workers, and every union job in Ohio, you are talking about bringing down violence and outrage not seen for a long long time.
So here’s a novice question- really, I don’t know the answer, and I’m pretty sure that you do. I live in Texas, and I walk up to the school to pick up my kids. Waiting around, there is usually a group of parents. One father said that he misssed his wife. She is a union official for a teacher’s union. And she had been posted to Ohio, to campaign. That’s not kosher, is it? She had also been away for months when her union loaned her out to campaign for Obama. That’s illegal, isn’t it? It sounds wrong to me. That’s like getting a $30,000/ year gift from a union to a campaign- a pro worker. My dad works for socsec and he can’t campaign, since it would be lining his own pocket, if his ballot issues won.
Am I missing something, or just clueless in the ways of this world? I gotta say-Republican campaigns don’t seem to have these sorts of questions and issues come up. Clueless? or Missing Something?
( all, AC, this means you- help me out, here. It’s your field of expertise)
You probably don’t really want to know about this stuff if you have any remaining faith in government. It wouldn’t surprise me if this woman is a teacher in your district who is either on some sort of leave, maybe paid, maybe not, from her teaching duties to hold her union office. In the true unionized states it is not uncommon for union officers to remain on the payroll of the public employer during their term of office; wouldn’t want anything to interfere with their retirement date. Other unions and employers have schemes in which the unionized employees’ paid leave is confiscated by the union as a form of dues and put in a union leave bank that union officers and operatives can draw on to stay in pay status with the public employer while doing union business. That business can be anything from contract administration/grievance handling to contract negotiation to going to Ohio to engage in “member education” on behalf of some candidate or initiative. The unions alway cast this stuff as either member education or GOTV, which is at least a technically legal use of dues money. For the ones that are on the employer’s payroll, it is probably an illegal in-kind contribution or a governmental act in support of a candidate or proposition, but nobody ever looks under their skirts. School boards are wholly owned subsidiaries of the NEA and AFT and there really is no management in a school district. They all run like a “workers collective,” if you’re in the “party,” you’re fine, if not, you’re out.
Any agressive Republican AG could put a huge percentage of the union officers and activists in his/her state in jail without breaking a sweat, but they all know that doing so would unleash Hell and they aren’t willing to do it. Some of them are even so stupid as to think that if they’re just nice to the unions, the unions will like them. The typical Republican elected or appointed official is so into his/her “nice” image and so afraid of controversy and confrontation that they just kow tow to unions and their goon tactics. I had the good fortune to do labor relations for a state that at least in Republican times maintains an adversarial relationship with them and even when we had Democrat governors, the Legislature would help keep the thing in check. But, there aren’t many of us.
What is wrong with politicians, why do they always show how little they really know? There is a way to stop paying your union dues and still stay in the union, first do not sign over your representation to the union. It is a card our members had to sign every year or two. If you do not want dues deducted from your check tell the union. You do not want your dues money to any political party. Then the union is required to show you how every penny of your dues money is used.
While I’m all for Ohio becoming a RTW state, along with any other state that so chooses, there’s only one issue in 2012.
I worked in a union shop recently where new non-full time (a technical term) hires who were not allowed into the union, had to pay union dues and initiation fees.
These new hires were forced to work longer hours than the union guys and the union wanted these technically “part time” men to be as small a percentage of the work force as possible. They had no union rights.
Okay Mr. Blumer, Sabolich, Chance and others who have experience in the real world of political battle, I can see your arguments about the necessity of letting the uninspired occasional and 2008 first time voters sleep through the 2012 election. I am not a political strategist other than of the armchair variety and I’ll accept the singularity of purpose in defeating Obama, and the execrable Sherrod Brown. I want nothing more than to see that happen.
I’m also an Ohioan and it discourages me no end to see our state listed 49th in GDP growth over the last decade. With Ohio and Michigan occupying the two bottom positions, it is clear to me that our problems derive from the deleterious influence of union politics and ill gotten dues money. I recently posted on FB, a link to a story about the SEIU collecting union dues from Michigan recipients of Medicaid payments who care for their own disabled children. The governor Granholm had permitted the identification of these recipients as “employees” thereby rendering their benefits payments subject to union dues. The SEIU was collecting $6 mil per year on their backs.
Unions are nothing more than criminal enterprises authorized to engage in legalized extortion and it is time to stop these kinds of activities from falling within “legal protection”. How then do we effectively remove the club with which they beat us so soundly and slowly destroy these states in the process?
There are two ways: You can run a campaign like Newt’s Contract With America in which the whole campaign from city council to Governor is predicated on making your state “union free” or at least reining them in. If you win the election, you can beat them because you’re just doing what you said you’d do and what the people elected you to do, or, you can beat them the same way they came to power; incrementally. I believe that if you haven’t run and won on a platform of beating them, you can’t beat them except by finesse, strategy, and in small increments. I’m not your enemy, I’ve just spent a lot of my life at the scene of the collision between Republicans and unions.
This is a moot point because Ohio while still important will not be a factor and while I enjoy some of the comments Obama does not have the edge nor the enthusiasm he had in 2008!
He may well even lose that state regardless of the union vote, so don’t worry yourselves so much about it I for one believe that whoever the Republican nominee is will win by a landslide.
Everyone mark my words on 11/21/11 @ 7:45p.m. CST and I state that Obama will have to pack it and possibly go back to Chicago or wherever in shame and then be later found guilty of all sorts of crime and corruption and remain in Federal Custody (Fort Leavenworth) along with most of his czars and Eric Holder!
Choose whom ye shall serve, Ohio. The SEIU or free-market capitalism. Either way, the Democrats are going down in 2012 because they have utterly failed the nation. Obama is an unmitigated disaster. The old-school union establishment has officially aligned itself with the Obama-emulating socialist Occupiers. Some might see that as a bold move, I see it as an act of desperation. Ohio may continue to delude itself on the union question, especially with regard to budget-killing public-employee unions, but it will not vote for Obama. And even if it does, should the rest of the nation be held hostage to Ohioan (miguided) self-interest? If 2012 boils down to Ohio, as many recent close races have, then America is screwed anyway. If America’s future as a free people rests with appeasing Ohio union-die-hards, we are all SOL, and we best be getting on with down-scaling our anticipated standard of living.
Go for it!
I think you will lose this time just because of the enormous resources that the Progressives have already poured into Ohio will make it the Stalingrad of the 2012 elections.
The Union resources they have to pour into Ohio will not be available for committing mischief in the rest of the country. If you do win that the end of the Progressives as we have known them for the last hundred and twenty years and America will be back on top industrially inside of twenty years.
Ordinarily, I would agree. But given what Team Obama did in 2008, and the fact that they totally got away with it, I think one has to assume that their resources are basically unlimited.