With a vote on Ohio Issue 2 looming on the horizon, it is down to the home stretch.
We Are Ohio, a public union special interest group, released a commercial advising viewers that Ohio Issue 2 would restrict teachers rights to bargain for smaller class sizes.
The commercial cites grammatical changes in Ohio Revised Code Chapter 4117.08(C) and 4117.081(A) and (B).
The change to 4117.08(C) in Issue 2/Senate Bill 5 strikes the terminology, “Determine the adequacy of the work force” and replaces it with, “Determine the number of persons required to be employed or laid off”
The wording of 4117.081(B), addressing class size, is just an extension of “management rights” as established under existing ORC 4117.08(C).
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker appeared on Fox and Friends Tuesday morning, advising that Wisconsin union “reforms have not only caused a better business environment for jobs in our state, they’ve saved hundreds of millions of dollars for our schools, our local governments. In fact we’ve had many of our schools saved so much money, they’ve gone out and hired more teachers, lowered the classroom size.”
The facts provided by Governor Walker stand in stark contrast to the claims made in this commercial.
Wisconsin school districts, such as the School District of Rhinelander began hiring in May due to an “influx of teacher retirements” caused by the budget repair bill. This allowed the district to hire motivated teachers to replace those locked into their positions by tenure.
“We have received a significant amount of exceptional applicants interviewing for positions available in our district,” SDR Superintendent Roger Erdahl wrote in a memo to school board members, as reported by the Northwoods Rivers News.
Another claim of the union special interests is that Issue 2/SB 5 eliminates collective bargaining for public employees, which is untrue. SB 5 allows for bargaining on “…wages, hours, terms, and other conditions of employment…”
SB 5 also allows those who do not wish to be in a union to keep their money, instead of being forced to pay a tribute to the union they do not wish to be part of, in the form of “fair share” fees.
A compelled “fee” taken directly from an employees payroll earnings is essentially a tax.