Let me understand this. In Ohio, the Republicans took control of all state level elected positions, plus both houses of the Ohio congress, and the Ohio Supreme Court. Governor Kasich faced a multi-billion dollar shortfall in the state budget which must be balanced as required in the Ohio constitution. As part of his effort to balance the budget, and to bring sanity to all levels of government in Ohio, Kasich supported a piece of legislation which came to be identified as Senate Bill 5, or SB5.
This bill returns the law to where it was 20 years ago, prohibiting public employees from striking. It requires that all public employees pay a part of both their health care costs and pension contributions. It also eliminates binding arbitration from third party arbitrators who have had the propensity to order wage increases based on everything BUT the current fiscal situation of the government entity at issue. In other words, they can’t order a pay increase based on a supposed future tax hike.
It was a contentious battle in the Ohio legislature, but it passed and was signed into law. Next, the public employee unions took their over the top behavior and filed for an initiative to repeal SB 5 in the November election. The SEIU showed up in Ohio and hit the inner city neighborhoods for signatures, not telling these folks that their taxes would go up if SB5 is repealed, and that the only ones who benefit from the repeal are the unionized employees.
They also hit the university campuses telling the students that SB5 “destroys the middle class.” But it doesn’t tell them that it could cause their state university tuition to go up because it would give back to their faculty members the right to strike and cause another tuition hike.
The effort to repeal SB5 was particular virulent in Youngstown, Ohio…home of Youngstown State University and one of the strongest Democratic enclaves in Ohio, if not the United States. The Chairman of the Democratic Party just about destroyed the local Chamber of Commerce because it supported SB5 making a jack-ass out of himself in the process. Youngstown State is also a hot bed of public employee union activity with a hair trigger propensity to strike.
The final piece of the picture occurred last spring when the Youngstown State University Board of Trustees raised tuition another 3.5%, as they have done almost every year, the maximum allowed by state law.
Here’s the fun part. The YSU faculty is currently negotiating its new contract, the last it can negotiate under pre-SB5 rules. And these idiots have voted to give the university a 10 day strike notice. The arbitrator looked at that 3.5% tuition hike and decided that just about all of it should go to the faculty. Of course, it only makes sense because the administration of the university has been giving themselves hefty raises “to keep up with comparable positions in other parts of the country.” Ya…like New York or San Francisco where the cost of living is 10 times higher than here. Of course, the tuition hike was actually instituted to replace reduced funding from the state to the university, or so they say, which has nothing to do with salary increases.
Do I understand this correctly? The faculty at Youngstown State University is going to go out on strike to get salary recommendations from an arbitrator who wants to award an unpopular 3.5% tuition hike to one set of wage increases benefiting faculty members who are already grossly over paid…AND they want to strike right before a vote to repeal the piece of legislation that was designed to prevent this very scenario from happening in the first place…AND in a part of the state where the repeal effort needs the most support…AND effecting a group who might otherwise vote to repeal it but for their tuition hike and their teachers going on strike as the students have to get a third job to pay for all of this? Sweet!
As my Aunt Josephine said…some people are so smart they're stupid.
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