Ohio public workers crush Senate Bill 5

Photo from clevelandleader.com

The Ohio people have spoken. They hate Senate Bill 5--so they killed it.

Senate Bill 5 is an anti-union labor law that would effect up to 350,000 workers including teachers, police officers, firefighters and nurses. The bill lost by 61 percent to 39 percent.

Republican Gov. John Kasich proposed the polarizing bill to limit collective bargaining, ban public worker strikes, eliminate binding arbitration, eliminate "fair share fees" that require payments for non union workers, place caps on three personal sick days,  12 paid holidays and would cap teacher's salaries to $32,000, eliminate automatic pay raises and enforce merit pay (pay based on standardize test scores, which not all teachers do i.e. art, music and physical education teachers), prohibits seniority for main reason in lay offs, and requires public workers to pay 15 percent of their health care costs and contribute 10 percent of their salary towards their pension.

Senate Bill 5 has been Gov. Kasich's main focus, causing his approval rating to plummet down to 33 percent in the recent Public Policy Polling poll. Because it was such a significant bill, Ohio saw a record in voting numbers for an off year election.

But it wasn't just Republicans voting "yes" on the bill (a "yes" would be supporting the limitations on unions) and Democrats voting "no." In the PPP poll released Nov. 6, which indicated that 59 percent of likely voters would vote "no" for the bill, 43 considered themselves conservatives, 27 percent considered themselves liberals and 31 considered themselves moderate. The poll had a margin of error of +/- 3 percent.

Ohio teachers, police officers and firefights can rejoice. They won the battle and went straight for Kasich's most prized possession, his Senate Bill 5.

RIP Senate Bill 5.