Ohio Union Bill Signed Into Law By John Kasich

(AP) CLEVELAND - Gov. John Kasich on Thursday signed into law a limit on the collective bargaining rights of 350,000 public workers, defying Democrats and other opponents of the measure who have promised to push for repeal.

His signature came a day after the measure was approved by the state House and Senate, which are led by his fellow Republicans.

The measure prompted weeks of pro-labor protests by thousands of people amid a national debate over union rights, keyed by a similar bill passed in Wisconsin and signed by the governor there.

The 350,000 public workers covered under the law can still negotiate wages and certain work conditions - but not health care, sick time or pension benefits. The measure also does away with automatic pay raises and bases future wage increases on merit.

It applies to teachers, nurses and many other government workers, including police and firefighters, who were exempt in the Wisconsin measure.

Kasich, a first-term governor, has said his $55.5 billion state budget counts on unspecified savings from lifting union protections to fill an $8 billion hole. He and his GOP colleagues argue the bill will help city officials and superintendents better control their costs at a time when they too are feeling budget woes.

Democrats opposed the measure but offered no amendments to it. Instead, they delivered boxes containing more than 65,000 opponent signatures to the House labor committee's chairman.

Many Democrats, along with other opponents, have vowed to lead a ballot-repeal effort if the measure passes. Backers of a ballot challenge have 90 days after Kasich signs the bill to gather 231,148 valid signatures from at least half Ohio's 88 counties to get it on the ballot.

The bill signing comes two days after a House labor committee added GOP-backed revisions that make it more difficult for unions to collect certain fees.

The committee changed the bill to ban automatic deductions from employee paychecks that would go the unions' political arm. They also altered the measure to prevent nonunion employees affected by contracts from paying so-called "fair share" fees to union organizations.

Unions argue that their contracts cover those nonunion workers and that letting them not pay unfairly spreads the costs to dues-paying members.

Comments

[Fina Biscotti]

12:22 AM on 04/04/2011

From the article:

"The committee changed the bill to ban automatic deductions from employee paychecks that would go the unions' political arm. They also altered the measure to prevent nonunion employees affected by contracts from paying so-called "fair share" fees to union organizations.

Unions argue that their contracts cover those nonunion workers and that letting them not pay unfairly spreads the costs to dues-paying members."

****************

Unloading bullshyt fees from the union contracts - that Democrat Governors added in as "sweetheart" deals.

My, my - while Republican Governors are making state budget cuts - across the USA - they are also taking care of their state government workers - by allowing people who are forced into unions to get and keep a job - to have control of their own money/paycheck.

[spkninglsh]

12:57 AM on 04/04/2011

And in the mean time, corporations have been pouring money into the campaign coffers of these bagger governors and you have ZERO problem with that. Amend corporate status and kill the tax breaks and subsidies, and then we can talk about balancing the budget on the backs of the workers.

[Fina Biscotti]

02:43 AM on 04/04/2011

other people - who are non-union - are paying taxes to finance union contracts for union members.

[maximus5757]

07:33 PM on 04/03/2011

That will pretty well will put Government workers on the same plain as private industry workers. Now no special favors from politicians that their union bosses help to elect with union dues and then negotiated union favorable contracts. Taxpayers win another one thanks to a Conservative.

[Tom Jacobs]

06:53 PM on 04/03/2011

Kasich has been a panderer of Big Business long before he was an "employee of Fox News" Hopefully the upcoming referendum will up end him.

[Steelsil]

05:11 PM on 04/03/2011

From the current Vanity Fair:

The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone.

[maximus5757]

07:29 PM on 04/03/2011

Sounds like a lot of democrats need to graduate from high school if they want a better life. Of course your homeroom teacher has been saying this for at least 80 years, people should listen to their homeroom teacher.

[Fina Biscotti]

12:31 AM on 04/04/2011

hey - the $787 BILLION Stimulus package - of the democrat party's PARTISAN Legislation -

should have created JOBS - and stimulated the US economy? Wouldn't you think?

Didn't the Democrat Party - also pass legislation = SON of STIMULUS = JOBS BILL?

What happened to that?


It does not take a rocket scientist - to know what is happening with our US taxpayer money - with the Democrat Party "looting" the US Treasury -
to force their RADICAL ideology upon America of "redistribution of the wealth" -

LYING and Blaming the problems created by their FAILURE to create Jobs - on everything else - BUT their OVERT CORRUPTION - to abuse our US taxpayer money - creating jobs in foreign countries!

Obama's GE moving its manufacturing operations to COMMUNIST China - financed by US taxpayer money - is just one example - and GE's scandalous $12 BILLION in profits - untaxed.

[barrada nicto]

05:53 AM on 04/03/2011

Article 23.

* (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
* (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
* (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
* (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

[Bush-Rolled]

06:16 PM on 04/02/2011

Shouldn't the headline read "Ohio Anti-Union Bill Signed . . ."?

[lordmi]

03:34 PM on 04/02/2011

Now, Ohio, tell me - that's what you were voting for in November?

[Sharon Wheeler]

11:52 AM on 04/03/2011

let's also agree to pay governor kasich by merit only, let him see what broke really is, after all, didn't he give himself a fat raise along with his staff? i say nope, merit pay only, vote on his salary every november! crazy these governors claim the broke card, yet pays out coporates, and pays for bob evans to move their coporate 16miles, at 400,000 a mile! but we are broke, right kasich??? i think your nose has grown 2 feet in 3 months!!! did you all see that the koch brothers were bragging they created 20 jobs, what a laugh!!! boycott these coporates that have benefited by supporting kasichs scam on ohio!!!! BOYCOTT!!!!

[Fina Biscotti]

12:33 AM on 04/04/2011

pour yourself another drink - you might keel over - and be happy. Cheers to coporates!

[DrippingColors]

02:39 PM on 04/02/2011

A dozen cookies are set out in front of CEO, a tea partier and a union member. The CEO takes eleven cookies than turns to the tea partier and says, "That union guy wants yours".

[spkninglsh]

02:26 PM on 04/02/2011

Kochsich has the lowest approval rating for a governor in Ohio since 1983. He is the only Ohio governor since 1962 to not hire a minority. Votes against public sector workers even though his father was a mail carrier. Another state with a buyer's remorse bagger governor.

[spkninglsh]

02:33 PM on 04/02/2011

Not to mention giving his staff huge pay raises and adding new government positions for his buddies.

[Chuckles71]

08:00 PM on 04/02/2011

Sound like our president.

[Fina Biscotti]

12:37 AM on 04/04/2011

NOTHING beats Obama's hiring$ - in his deranged ideology of BIGGER GOVERNMENT - to have bureaucrats intruding into everyone's private lives.

Did you know that Obama's CZAR PALOOZA has been defunded?!

That is why the pathetic Democrats are in a stall tactic - to shut down government - and intend to blame it on the Republicans.

[wdw808]

03:20 PM on 04/02/2011

an election for governor is a longtime way

laughing

[spkninglsh]

08:20 PM on 04/02/2011

Who needs an election?
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Recall-Ohio-Governor-John-Kasich/201484683199343

[ttowse]

09:38 AM on 04/02/2011

OHIO deserves whatever it gets for voting the Shrub into office.

[wdw808]

10:47 AM on 04/02/2011

bush is not in office here

laughing.....please get your derogatory term straight

[ArchbishopBenevolent]

08:57 AM on 04/02/2011

With all due respect to Godwin's law, the Republican party priorities of appeasement of industrialists in the Chamber of Commerce and their actions against trade unions (via the actions Governors Scott Walker, Jan Brewer and John Kasich) resemble those taken in Germany in the 1930. The similarities between the current environment and those in Germany prior to World War 2 are uncanny.

Again unemployment in the 1930s there was very high and that country turned to radical parties. We have to learn from the lessons of history.

[wdw808]

10:49 AM on 04/02/2011

these parties are not radical parties, yet

[spkninglsh]

09:06 PM on 04/02/2011

Individual elected members of these parties are radical, and have no problem trying to circumvent the rule of law in order to get their way.

[barrada nicto]

05:41 AM on 04/03/2011

Very good (and scary) point.

[TylerDurdenSays]

08:20 AM on 04/02/2011

These anti-labor, anti-middle class laws have nothing to do with budgets and spending, nor "smaller government", and everything to do with that fact that the GOP is in bed with big business.

[Chuckles71]

08:01 PM on 04/02/2011

No more than the democrats in bed with the Unions.

[spkninglsh]

08:50 PM on 04/02/2011

Corporations are NOT individuals.

http://movetoamend.org/

[barrada nicto]

05:42 AM on 04/03/2011

Unions are collections of citizens supporting citizens.

[Fina Biscotti]

12:41 AM on 04/04/2011

@Tyler -

and Obama is in bed with Wall Street.

thought it could not get much sleazier than that - until providing bail-out money - to his wall street buddies - and allowing HUGE salaries and bonuses.

[Tessie]

01:17 AM on 04/04/2011

Yep, Goldman Sachs was Obama's largest corporate contributor at almost a million dollars. Obama is also the largest recipient of contributions from British Petroleum. Barack Obama has received more campaign donations that any other politician in the past three years from Fannie Mae and Wall Street.

And, he is as much in bed with big oil as any in the GOP.

Obama accepted more than $213,000 from individuals who work for companies in the oil and gas industry and their spouses.

Top oil industry executives bunded money for Obama, and were listed on his Web site as raising between $50,000 and $100,000 . They gathered contributions from individuals and turned them over to Obama's campaign. George Kaiser, the chairman of Oklahoma-based Kaiser-Francis Oil Co., ranks 68th on the Forbes list of world billionaires. He's listed on Obama's Web site as raising between $50,000 and $100,000 for him. Robert Cavnar is president and CEO of Milagro Exploration LLC, an oil exploration and production company. He's named as a bundler in the same category as Kaiser.

[bytheC]

01:55 AM on 04/02/2011

http://ohiodems.org/sb5_repeal/

[wdw808]

10:51 AM on 04/02/2011

too funny

[spkninglsh]

08:36 PM on 04/02/2011

Not so funny.

http://onemansblog.com/2008/10/20/racism-rears-its-ugly-head-in-ohio-aimed-at-obama/

[Badger33]

12:13 AM on 04/02/2011

Ohio, fight this thug. You can do it.

[wdw808]

10:52 AM on 04/02/2011

no reason to fight what we want

[DrippingColors]

02:37 PM on 04/02/2011

The "we" you refer to is a minority.
"In the Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, respondents were given two versions of the question. A bill that would limit "collective bargaining" was opposed 48-41 percent, while a bill to limit "collective bargaining rights" was rejected by 54-35 percent."
http://www.sanduskyregister.com/columbus/news/2011/mar/23/ohio-voters-oppose-anti-union-bill
Do you oppose the will of the people?

[Chuckles71]

08:01 PM on 04/02/2011

You said thug and I thought Union. Fight on Kasich!

[spkninglsh]

09:07 PM on 04/02/2011

Right On! Long Live Lehman Brothers!

[Badger33]

12:34 AM on 04/03/2011

You should be hunting truffles.

[jimboy71]

11:25 PM on 04/01/2011

The first thing to do is get all the people voting in lock step. The second is to destroy labour. The third is to blame it on everyone else, and in particular, the thinkers, the doers, the artists, and the poor.

Then you really get to move in and make the trains run on time.