Cleveland Plain Dealer...
Teachers, unions risk being shoved aside: Brent Larkin
By Brent Larkin
Saturday, August 20, 2011 

It will be remembered as the great summer sellout. 

It was the week labor leaders and overly partisan Democrats did a disservice to 360,000 public-sector employees whose collective bargaining rights all but disappeared with the passage in Ohio of Senate Bill 5. 

And it was the week Gov. John Kasich handed his foes a win on Senate Bill 5 -- and they turned him down because it wasn’t big enough. 

No one is claiming Kasich’s offer Thursday to water down Senate Bill 5 and avoid an election Nov. 8 seeking its repeal was made out of the goodness of his heart. He can read poll numbers. 

Kasich also surely knows owning a resume that includes a crushing defeat at the hands of organized labor is hardly an asset for a Republican officeholder who still aspires to be president -- or even a governor seeking a second term in 2014. 

John Ryan, the former Cleveland AFL-CIO head who is senior adviser to the recall campaign, is sometimes inflexible. He is always rabidly pro-union. But, above all, he is honest. 

Ryan or one of his allies should sit down with Kasich and hear him out. If they think the governor is offering fool’s gold, tell us why. That would be a far more credible reaction than a knee-jerk refusal to negotiate. 

What’s both sad and infuriating about all this is, in the end, the biggest losers in this controversy will be Ohio’s teachers. 

Few professions can be as noble as teaching. Good teachers are usually underappreciated and always underpaid. 

Work done by special-needs teachers and those in underperforming schools at times borders on heroic -- clearly worthy of six-figure incomes they will never earn. 

Unfortunately, unions that purport to represent those teachers often behave far less nobly. Countless studies and publications (including a growing number of left-leaning ones) have in recent years documented how teachers unions protect bad teachers, thwart efforts at reform and care more about seniority than ability -- usually at the expense of children. 

This obstructionism comes at a time when American schoolchildren are falling further behind their international peers -- especially in the difference-making areas of math and science. 

Ohio’s teachers unions are assessing their members about $5 million to fund the repeal campaign. But what some union leaders aren’t telling them is that -- even if SB 5 is repealed -- dramatic changes in state laws that pertain to teachers and their unions are inevitable.

It may take a few months. 

It may take a year or so. But the financial realities facing Ohio’s school districts will make those changes imperative. 

Of the public-sector workers affected by SB 5, nearly 200,000 are school employees. Senate Bill 5 requires most public-sector union members to pay a higher percentage of their health care and pension contributions. It introduces an element of merit to teacher pay. And, perhaps most important, it eliminates seniority as the sole determining factor in teacher layoffs. 

The two-year budget passed by the legislature in June slashed funding for primary and secondary education by $780 million. Funding cuts for hundreds of Ohio school districts exceeded 10 percent. 

Worse yet, the signs are unmistakable that funding problems for many districts are about to worsen. 

On the Aug. 2 ballot in Ohio, 20 school issues asked voters for more money. Only two of the levies that were not renewals were approved. 

Given the lousy economy and a growing anti-tax sentiment, it’s unlikely that the passage rate will improve much on Nov. 8, when many more districts will ask voters for more money. Don’t be surprised if voters in some districts soon begin refusing to renew existing levies. 

Falling property values compound the problem, requiring districts to ask for higher millage rates. History tells us the higher the millage rate, the more likely a school levy is to be defeated. 

Into this maelstrom of voter unrest come those who oppose SB 5, asking voters for an outcome that preserves the status quo. Officials with the repeal campaign constantly explain their refusal to negotiate as a gesture of respect for the Ohioans who signed petitions seeking an election. 

But their explanation is, at best, disingenuous. If they cared so much about the petition signers, then why did Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga, Kasich ally and former House Speaker Jo Ann Davidson, and others representing both labor and Kasich meet secretly in an attempt to cut a deal that would remove the repeal (State Issue 2) from the ballot? Some of those meetings took place in June -- after hundreds of thousands Ohioans had already signed the petitions. 

Phony explanations like that make one wonder if, for some, the repeal vote is actually more about the 2012 election for president, U.S. Senate and the Ohio House than it is about protecting workers’ rights. 

But despite labor’s inexplicable reaction to the Kasich offer, Democrats and labor are still in a good -- but far from certain -- position to have their way Nov. 8. 

If they do, Kasich’s standing and popularity will take a hit. But if they don’t, if proponents of SB 5 craft a message that resonates with voters and wipes out labor’s lead in the polls, then the public-sector unions will be essentially finished. 

For Ohio’s teachers unions, the reward of an election victory would be short-lived. The risk is a defeat that puts them out of business. 

That’s why, if labor leaders really care about their members, they’ll ask the governor to explain exactly what he’s offering. 

Read it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer