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Unions And The Ballot Under Attack In Ohio

March 31, 2011

by Bob Fitrakis
Photos by Bob Studzinski

Jim Gilbert, President of the Fraternal Order of Police, Capital City Lodge 9, claims that the Republican Party’s passing of Senate Bill 5 “has woken a sleeping giant.” By a vote of 53-44, the Republican-dominated Ohio Assembly passed Senate Bill 5 on Wednesday, March 30 –- to drastically limit collective bargaining for 360,000 public union workers. The new law requires that no salary increases can be based on seniority, only on performance.

The Senate approved the final version by one vote – 17 to 16. Republican representative Louis Blessing told workers “Be glad you have a job.”

Governor John Kasich signed the bill into law Thursday March 31. His press release stated “There is a reason that the union bosses opposed these changes; because it strips power from the union leaders and returns it to the taxpayers and workers.”

A better case can be made that Kasich has long plotted with wealthy corporate backers to destroy the base of the modern Democratic Party – the unions.

The legislation rammed through in Ohio amidst demonstrations unheard of since the Great Depression caused the normally staid Republican-owned Columbus Dispatch to write “Both the House and Senate worked through an almost unheard-of amount of applause, boos, and shouts of ‘Shame on You!’ from pro-union crowds that packed the chambers and made sure lawmakers understood the magnitude of their vote.”


The legislation was prefabricated by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which has a long affiliation with John Kasich. More then three decades ago, this corporate front masquerading as advocates of “limited government” and “free markets” began plotting to destroy the programs common in all modern industrial democracies.

ALEC’s own history points to a meeting in September 1973 that included then-Illinois State Representative Henry Hyde, conservative activist Paul Weyrich, and Lou Barnett, an operative for then-Governor Ronald Reagan’s presidential ambitions, these three created the Council. Reactionary and racist Senator Jesse Helms is also listed as one of the key founders of ALEC. ALEC’s website states that “Among those who were involved with ALEC in the formative years were…John Kasich of Ohio.”

ALEC exists to provide “model legislation” with one theme: How to transfer wealth to corporations while shrinking the size of government.

Kasich’s press release announced that “The General Assembly passed Senate Bill 5 and local governments will now have more tools to control their budgets and provide better services to you at a lower cost.”

ALEC is funded and works directly through a so-called Private Enterprise Board. Its members represent many of the largest multi-national corporations including Koch Industries, Coca-cola, Wal-Mart, AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Exxon-Mobil, and State Farm insurance among others.

The focus on the Council legislative agenda and its “model legislations” read like manuals on how to destroy worker’s rights under the guise of “saving taxpayers money.”
Coincidentally, ALEC’s spring Task Force Summit, where it will plot its next round of union-busting through legislative action will be held in Cincinnati April 28-29 at the Netherland Plaza Hotel.

The point man for passage of SB5 in the House of Representatives is the House Speaker, Ohio’s William Batchelder who has been identified as a member of the secretive Council for National Policy (CNP). The New York Times described the CNP as a “little-known group of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country.” Weyrich is also a CNP member.

The Nation magazine wrote that the organization “networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy.”

The CNP website reads “Limited government, traditional values, strong national defense.” ALEC also leads with “Limited government” and follows with “free markets, and federalism.”

In order to ensure that their union-busting and their public power grab through legislative fiat sticks, the Ohio Republican House earlier pushed through House Bill 159 that will disenfranchise nearly 900,000 voters. House Bill 159 requires all voters to produce an Ohio driver’s license with photo or state photo ID to vote. This is the most restrictive standard in the nation.

This legislation will overwhelming affect Democratic voters such as African Americans, the elderly, college students, the homeless and working poor – who are most likely to be without cars and driver’s licenses. Critics of the legislation, including the ACLU point out that this constitutes an unconstitutional poll tax and have gone so far to accuse the Republicans of stealing the next statewide Ohio election.

Even this drastic action by Ohio Republicans might not save them from the wrath of Ohio public unions and their private sector union allies in the next election. Police officers and firefighters have emerged as the most militant unions in defense of collective bargaining in Ohio and their leaders are pledging to work day and night to get the required 231,000 valid signatures of registered voters in order to freeze the bill pending a November referendum.

Unionists are also asking members and supporters to cancel their subscription to newspapers like the Columbus Dispatch that editorialized on behalf of Senate Bill 5. Boycotts are also being contemplated against the industries listed on the private enterprise board of ALEC.

—
Bob Fitrakis is a Professor of Political Science at Columbus State Community College and member CSEA, the Columbus State Education Association. Originally published by The Free Press, https://freepress.org.

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Ohio GOP Sends A Stealth Death Notice To Public College Teachers Unions

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
April 2, 2011
An obscure clause that was slipped into Ohio’s infamous anti-union Senate Bill 5 may spell the end of collective bargaining for the state’s public college teachers.

SB-5 was passed in the face of bitter controversy and mass public demonstrations at the state capitol in Columbus. It was signed into law Thursday, March 31, by Ohio’s new extreme right-wing Governor John Kasich.

But little attention has been paid to the following clause on page 272, which reads:

“With respect to members of a faculty of a state institution of higher education, any faculty who, individually or through a faculty senate or like organization, participate in the governance of the institution, are involved in personnel decisions, selection or review of administrators, planning and use of physical resources, budget preparation, and determination of educational policies related to admissions, curriculum, subject matter, and methods of instruction and research are management level employees.”


Photograph by Bob Studzinski

The obvious intent of this language is to bar public college faculty members from belonging to a union or participating in collective bargaining. By definition, “management level employees” are not allowed to unionize or strike.

But all faculty members participate in drawing up curricula. They also, as a matter of course, help choose fellow teachers and administrators, help govern their schools and the like.

So the practical intent of this language is to bar Ohio’s public college teachers from unionizing at all by renaming their role.

As Darrell Minor puts it: “We are now management as soon as this law takes effect and we have no right to collect bargaining.” Minor is a mathematics professor at Columbus State Community College. He heads the Columbus State Educational Association, the faculty union, at a school whose enrollment now numbers around 31,000.

The faculty’s new status as “management” may also call into question the legal standing of tenure.

SB-5 is slated to become official law within 90 days. Legal challenges are already in the works. The nullification process by referendum has also begun.

But along the way, the state’s college teachers may find themselves without tenure or a union.

Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books on election protection via Freepress.org, where the FITRAKIS FILES are stored. HARVEY WASSERMAN’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is at HarveyWasserman.com. Bob is a Professor of Political Science at Columbus State Community College, where Harvey is an adjunct instructor of history.

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Fight Back April 2, 2011, Libya, Ohio Senate Bill 5, Voter Suppression

Bob Fitrakis and Connie Gadell-Newton discuss a Senate Bill that requires voters to show a government-issued photo ID at the polls, Libya, Ohio Senate Bill 5, Voter Suppression

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Celebrating Women Workers’ Rights, Drexel Discounts

MADE IN DAGENHAM
Celebrating women workers’ rights

Starts Friday, March 25 (Limited Engagement!) Drexel Theatre 2254 E. Main St.

* Mention the FREE PRESS at Drexel Box-Office and receive $2.00 OFF GENERAL ADMISSION & $1.00 OFF SENIOR OR MATINEE ADMISSION

In 1968, Dagenham, England was the site of the largest Ford Motor factory in Europe. 168 women worked sewing seatcovers, earning a fraction of the income of their male counterparts. In the lively and entertaining MADE IN DAGENHAM (pronounced Dag-in-um) soft spoken Rita O’Grady (Sally Hawkins, Golden Globe winner for Happy Go Lucky) is elected to attend what is expected to be an uneventful meeting between the union and Ford execs. She and her colleagues become outraged by the lack of respect shown to female employees when they are reclassified as “unskilled workers”, even though they are using highly technical sewing machines. With humor, common sense and courage, they take on their corporate paymasters, an increasingly belligerent local community, and finally the government itself.

Roger Ebert called the film, “outstanding” and wrote that “the unexpected thing about Made in Dagenham is how entertaining it is. That’s largely due to the choice of Sally Hawkins for the lead … she shows an effortless lightness of being.” Thelma Adams of US Magazine asserts, “the marvelous Sally Hawkins shows spunk as the leader who boils over when bosses insist women don’t deserve equal pay for equal work. It’s a female ‘Full Monty’.” Made in Dagenham is a retro romp with heat, smarts and soul about a brave grassroots movement that continues to be extraordinarily relevant today. Starts Friday for a limited engagement, 113 minutes, rated R. Co-starring Miranda Richardson, Bob Hoskins, Rosamund Pike and Rupert Graves.

“SALLY HAWKINS IS IRRESSISIBLE IN THIS FUNNY, TOUCHING AND VITAL SALUTE TO WOMEN IN THE WORK FORCE!” – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

To see the official trailer and website visit –

http://www.sonyclassics.com/madeindagenham/#/home/

FOR SHOWTIMES – visit www.drexel.net or call (614) 231-9512. DREXEL THEATRE, 2254 E. Main St.

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Fight Back March: Women’s Reproductive Rights 16 2011 WCRSFM

Bob and Connie discuss the attacks on women’s reproductive rights by the Ohio Senate with Gary Dougherty of Planned Parenthood and Sarah Jones, feminist blogger.

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WCRSFM Fight Back With Dr. Bob and Connie Gadell-Newton, Kasich: The Vacuous Puppet Of Koch And Murdoch, Ohio SB 5

Crypto-Facism, mediocrity and the mindset of Ohio Governor Kasich

Every huge media business requires contracts to operate but to deny unions this privilege is hypocritical and furthering oppression of the poor and middle class.

1st Free Press Express Publication

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Fight Back March 4, Steve Dodge Live, SB 5

Dr. Bob, Connie discuss some and host Steve Dodge, local musician/comedian, The Devil.
http://www.wcrsfm.org/audio/download/1328/fight_back_steve3.mp3

Thank You www.WCRSfm.org!
Power to Low Power FM! Right On!

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Corporate Union Busters Draw First Blood In Ohio

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
March 3, 2011

The national corporate campaign to destroy America’s public sector unions has drawn first blood in Ohio.

But a counter-attack centered on one or more statewide initiatives or constitutional amendments has become highly likely.

While thousands of protestors chanted, spoke and sang inside and outside the statehouse for the past two weeks (SB 5 Rally), the Ohio Senate voted 17-16 on Senate Bill 5, a bill that will slash collective bargaining for state workers by banning strikes and giving local officials the right to settle disputes. The bill, among other things, also eliminates all paid sick days from teachers.

The vote came amid shouts of “shame on you” and widespread booing from the diverse crowd of teachers, police, firefighters, construction workers, state employees and more.

The bill decimates a legal framework in place since 1983. The vote was surprisingly close as six Republicans joined ten Democrats in opposition. The seventeen yes voters were all Republicans.

In order to vote the bill out of committee, Republican Senate President Tom Niehaus had to remove two key Republican senators who opposed the bill from crucial committees. Both Senators Scott Oelslager of Canton and Bill Seitz of Cincinnati were yanked from their posts. The removal of Seitz broke a committee stalemate and allowed the bill to come to the floor with a 7-5 vote.

Ultra-conservative Senator Timothy Grendell of rural Chesterland, Ohio demounced the bill as “unconstitutional” pointing out that it prohibits union members from talking with elected public officials during negotiations and labels such activity as an unfair labor practice. Seitz echoed this theme: “It’s an unfair labor practice if they exercise their First Amendment right to call up their Councilman.”

The bill now goes to the Ohio House, where it is fast-tracked and anticipated to pass by mid-March. In the House, the passage is being orchestrated by House Speaker Bill Batchelder. The

Free Press has reported in the past of Batchelder’s ties to the secretive Council for National Policy.


Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates describes CNP members as not only traditional conservatives, but also nativists, xenophobes, white racial supremacists, homophobes, sexists, militarists, authoritarians, reactionaries and “in some cases outright neo-fascists.”

The Democrats do not hold enough seats in either house to deny the GOP a quorum, as is being done in Wisconsin and Indiana.

Ohio’s multi-millonaire Governor John Kasich, who got rich selling junk assets as a managing partner for Lehman Brothers to public pensions in Ohio, will sign the bill as soon as he gets it. Kasich was selected last November with a large last-minute contribution from Rupert Murdoch. Kasich is also a former Fox news commentator, who emerged in Ohio politics as one of Richard Nixon’s freshly-scrubbed youth and was initially supported by followers of Reverend Moon.

Kasich has blamed budget problems on state workers. But a rich person’s repeal of Ohio’s estate tax has cost the state a long-standing multi-million-dollar revenue stream. Like Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Kasich also has rejected a big federal grant ($400 million) to upgrade the state’s passenger rail system, which would have created at least a thousand direct jobs and thousands more indirectly, along with a jump in state tax revenue.

Kasich meanwhile has given his chief of staff a substantial pay hike over that his predecessor. He has hired at least four commissioners to sit on a “job creation” panel with annual salaries of roughly $150,000 each. The commission has been structured to operate without formal accountability to the legislature or taxpayers of the state. Kasich has already succeeded in privatizing the state’s department of development.

Kasich tried to ban the media and the public from his inauguration. He has warned opponents that they had better “get on the bus or get run over by the bus.”

Unlike Wisconsin, Ohio has no recall law. The only apparent route to overturning this union-busting legislation may be with a statewide initiative or a constitutional amendment. As the statehouse filled with union protestors, talk spread of how and when that might be done.

Polls are showing overwhelming support for public workers, in part due to the blatant attack on Ohio’s police and firefighters who are now barred from negotiating on safety issues. The bill bans binding arbitration used in the past to settle negotiations, and instead allows management to pick the settlement it wants.

Ohioans may also consider a constitutional amendment to guarantee hand-counted paper ballots. Electronic voting is dominated here by the successor to the Ohio-based Diebold corporation and the ES&S corporation, and other Republican-controlled voting machine companies. The privatization of Ohio’s voting and voter registration rolls corresponded with a 5.4% shift to the Republican Party not predicted by the exit polls in the 2010 election. Exit polls showed Kasich losing the election.

Overall the architectural map of the Ohio election system appears to give private voting companies contracted to the Secretary of State’s office—currently headed by John Husted, a Republican—the ability to electronically select state office winners in a matter of a few minutes on election night. Husted has already introduced legislation to restrict voting rights through demands for photo ID and other measures aimed at students, the elderly, poor and other Democrat-leaning citizens. Without universal voter registration and hand-counted paper ballots, the Ohio Democratic party has little chance of winning statewide office for the foreseeable future, or of turning back legislative union busting.

Key to the national corporate strategy now playing itself out in Ohio is the destruction of the Democratic Party’s traditional base. It is also about trashing teachers, firefighters, police and other citizens who choose to work for the general good rather than individual profit. As Nina Turner, a Senate Democrat told the New York Times, “This bill seeks to vilify our public employees and turn what used to be the virtue of public service into a crime.”

It’s widely believed Kasich will next assault Ohio’s pubic school system, whose funding mechanisms have been repeatedly ruled unconstitutional by state courts. Kasich is a cheerleader for private charter schools. The GOP is expected to push a voucher program that would use taxpayer money to subsidize private schools for the rich.

David Brennan, owner of White Hat Management, a chain of private charter schools, has consisting been the leading donor to the Ohio Republican candidates. Former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray filed a legal complaint against Brennan alleging that “White Hat’s management agreements with the schools are invalid because the public charter schools handed over nearly all funding – 96 percent – to White Hat and were given essentially no accountability or transparency as to how the funds were spent.”

Kasich and the GOP have already moved to gut environmental regulations and turn the state’s park system over to corporate extractors. He is also expected to attack legislation mandating advances in renewable energy while pushing for a new nuclear plant to be built in southern Ohio by corporations poised to cash in on massive federal subsidies being proposed by President Obama (Nuke giveaway).

While the mood of demonstrators yesterday at the statehouse was angry and defiant, there are no illusions about the stakes in this battle. Governor Kasich and his wholly owned Republican legislature are born of unlimited Citizens United corporate cash and rigged electronic voting machines.

It’s thus no surprise that the first serious blood drawn in this latest corporate campaigns to finally wipe labor unions off the American map has come in the Buckeye State.

The question now: can the unions effectively fight back, in Ohio and nationwide?

—
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books on election protection at https://freepress.org/store.php, where Bob’s Fitrakis Files books appear. Harvey Wasserman’s History of the United States is at https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/harvey-wasserman’s-history-of-the-united-states/. Originally published by http://www.freepress.org

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Fighting The 5 Fascisms In Wisconsin & Ohio

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
February 21, 2011

The escalating confrontations in Wisconsin and Ohio are ultimately about preventing the United States from becoming a full-on fascist state.

The stakes could not be higher—or more clear.

As defined by its inventor, Benito Mussolini, fascism is “corporate control of the state.” There are ways to beat around the Bush—Paul Krugman has recently written about “oligarchy”—but it’s time to end all illusions and call what we now confront by its true name.

The fights in Wisconsin, Ohio, and in numerous other states are about saving the last shreds of American democracy. They burn down to five basic realities:

1) The bulwark of modern democracy is the trade union. This has been true since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. All social programs can trace their roots to union activism, as can the protection of our civil liberties.

The first Germans Hitler put in concentration camps were neither Jews nor gypsies—they were trade unionists.

The attacks on state workers in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere have nothing to do with balancing budgets. That could easily be done without destroying collective bargaining.

For the hard-right, this is about busting unions, the last organized force standing in the way of total corporate control of the United States by the rich and richer.

2) The material essence of fascism is the extreme separation of rich and poor, a massive transfer of wealth from those on the bottom to those on the top.

The unbalanced budgets in Ohio and Wisconsin are rooted in huge tax cuts given to the rich at the expense of the middle and lower classes. Widespread poverty among those who might otherwise rebel is essential to fascist control of a government.

A largely ignored aspect of this fight is the hundreds of billions of dollars currently locked up in union, government and Social Security pension funds. With unions destroyed, this huge cache of dollars will fall quickly into corporate hands. The additional “benefit” for the financial elite will be tens of millions of impoverished elders desperate for low-wage jobs in virtual slave labor situations.

3) The crisis crippling states everywhere is directly related to the massive destruction of social resources by war. Since the end of the New Deal and World War II, the American elite have engineered the biggest dump of material wealth by military means in human history.

The trillions of dollars of pure martial waste poured into the Cold War and those in Southeast Asia, central America, the Middle East, Southwest Asia and elsewhere could easily have clothed, housed, fed, educated, and provided otherwise decent lives for all human beings the world over.

Instead, poverty, desperation and stratification have been guaranteed.

The entire economic crisis now gripping the United States can be directly traced to the military budget, which exceeds the sum of what’s being spent by all other nations combined. In a brilliant recent column, Robert Greenwald points out that the entire alleged shortfall in Wisconsin could be covered by bringing just 180 troops home from Afghanistan.

But the purpose of that deployment is to undermine national security, not to protect it. A frightened, impoverished, insecure nation is one dependent on its fascist elite.

Democracy demands and protects true material security among the people as a whole. That’s what’s really at stake in the battle to cut the military budget. The fights in Ohio and Wisconsin are surface manifestations of that bigger battle.

4) Mussolini also made it clear that corporate control of the media is essential to fascist rule. Whoever would seize power first took the radio stations, then the television stations. Now the internet is under attack. The free flow of information is fascism’s ultimate enemy.

So the relentless Foxist portrayal of the battles in Wisconsin and Ohio as pitting “responsible, austerity-minded” governors versus “lazy, irresponsible state workers” is utterly predictable.

So is the appearance of the media-created Tea Party “movement” on the side of the corporations. It’s standard corporate procedure to invent a faux “grassroots” to fight unions and working people. So finding phony corporate “populists” like Sarah Palin and New Jersey’s Chris Christie in the right-wing media limelight is utterly predictable.

5) It is no accident that the “job loving” union-hating governors of Wisconsin and Ohio (along with Florida) have rejected billions in federal funds for re-building passenger rail service that would create thousands of jobs.

A corporate state relies on central of energy. Rail service threatens the power of the oil and auto lobbies. Renewable energy would replace centralized fossil/nuclear sources with decentralized solar panels, bio-fuels, windmills, increased efficiency and the like. The push for federal nuclear loan guarantees is central to the corporate state.

The anti-union governor of Ohio is strongly focused on killing not only train service but all incentives for renewable energy. His energy plan is for extreme right-wing nuke-based monopolies like FirstEnergy to run the show. Atomic power is the ultimate weapon against community control.

For decades the term “fascist” has been dismissed from use in this country, and perhaps rightly so. Corporations have been dominant in the US since the 1880s, but we have managed to maintain a modicum of democracy.

It’s hard to see that happening if the remnants of the organized labor movement are crushed in Wisconsin and Ohio. Both states have long, important traditions of union activism.

In the wake of Citizens United, with the courts, media, Congress and presidency firmly in corporate control, we see no easy road to victory for working people.

“Vote the bastards out” has become a pipedream in the age of electronic voting machines. Especially in Ohio, a reliable electoral vote count is a thing of the past.

We also have a president who was elected with strong labor support and who is now genuflecting toward the unions. But US history is filled with Democrats who have betrayed their working-class backers, and this one may prove no exception.

So in the long run, we have only ourselves to rely on. The way to survival is not clear.

Ultimately, as Martin Luther King said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

But from time to time, it does break. If these uprisings in Wisconsin and Ohio fail, there will—literally—be hell to pay.

Somehow, we must find a way to make sure they don’t.

—
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books on election protection, which are at www.freepress.org, where Bob’s FITRAKIS FILES also appear. HARVEY WASSERMAN’S HISTORY OF THE US is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH. Originally published by https://freepress.org.

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Ohio SB 5, Governor Kasich To Call Ohio National Guard, FightBack Radio

http://www.wcrsfm.org/audio/user/157

Dr. Bob Fitrakis and Connie Gadell-Newton discuss unions, Kasich, union history, the conservative Ohio heartbeat bill, firefighters supporting womans rights at protest in Columbus, and the threat to organizing.

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