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The
Columbus Dispatch Editorial
False claim:
Public-sector workers are not standing up for Ohio’s middle class
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
“Dear Supporter, Now is the time. If ever there was a time to show up,
stand up and let our voices be heard, it is now. The fate of Ohio’s
middle class is on the line at the Ohio Statehouse.”
So begins a mass e-mailing from former Gov. Ted Strickland, calling on
members of public-sector unions to attend yesterday’s Statehouse rally
opposing Senate Bill 5, which would eliminate collective bargaining for
state government workers and restrict the scope of bargaining for
schoolteachers, police, firefighters and other local-government
employees.
The idea that the bill is an attack on Ohio’s middle class is one being
repeated not only by Strickland but by other Democratic leaders and
officials of the state’s public-sector unions.
The assertion is a flat contradiction of reality.
Not only are the public-sector workers affected by Senate Bill 5 not
representative of the majority of Ohio’s middle class, but the
comfortable wages, automatic raises, benefits, pensions, job
protections, sick-day payouts and negotiating power enjoyed by many of
these public-sector workers comes at the expense of the vast majority
of Ohio’s middle-class taxpayers. Most of these taxpayers have nothing
remotely like these benefits nor the economic security that the public
sector takes for granted and regards as a right.
That public-sector workers are not representative of Ohio’s middle
class is evident in the numbers. According to the Ohio Legislative
Service Commission, Senate Bill 5 will affect 42,000 state workers,
19,500 higher-education employees and about 298,000 employees of local
governments such as counties, municipalities, townships and school
districts.
That totals 359,500 employees, a mere 6.5 percent of Ohio’s workforce
of 5.5 million. In fact, the number of public-sector employees is far
outnumbered by more than 500,000 Ohioans who want to work but can’t
find jobs.
Ohioans lucky enough to have jobs pay the taxes that support
public-sector wages and benefits. Not only that, but the city councils
and school boards that work for these taxpayers are hobbled by state
laws and collective-bargaining agreements that act to constantly
ratchet up the cost of government, while reducing the ability of
elected officials to make shifts in budgets, personnel and policy that
could best serve taxpayers.
For example, Senate Bill 5 would allow school-district officials to
assign teachers where they are needed most and, in times of budget
stress, to lay off teachers based on the needs of students, not the
seniority of teachers. By removing health care for teachers as an area
of collective bargaining, districts would be free to pursue health-care
options that save taxpayers money without having these measures held up
by teacher-union resistance and quid-pro-quo demands.
The basic intent of Senate Bill 5 is to restore to the taxpayers and
their elected representatives the right to manage the public’s business.
And this is a power that some prominent officeholders already have and
wield without apology. In November, President Barack Obama called for a
two-year freeze on the wages of federal employees, saying that this was
part of an effort to reduce federal overspending. He does not have to
negotiate with a federal-employee union before imposing the freeze,
because most federal employees do not have the right to collectively
bargain their salaries, which are set by Congress.
And if Congress and the president have this power, why shouldn’t
governors, school-board members and city-council members? After all,
they face a constraint the president doesn’t: the legal requirement
that they balance their budgets.
Taxpayers should not be obligated to pony up the ever-increasing
salary-and-benefit demands of public-sector workers, even as these
taxpayers themselves are taking pay cuts and paying more for health
insurance.
There is no question that Senate Bill 5 is about the middle class. But
it is not an attack, it is an attempt to restore to Ohio’s middle class
the control of the government it pays for and elects.
The few thousand public-sector workers who turned out to protest Senate
Bill 5 yesterday were not looking out for Ohio’s middle class. They
were looking out for their own privileged status, one that is out of
reach for most Ohio taxpayers.
Read it at The Columbus Dispatch
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