....
Yes, I confess, I am unavoidably biased, but people need lawyers to tell them what the legislature actually is doing by looking at the law itself instead of politically biased posturing....
So, there
is was
Issue 2, which was a referendum on Ohio Senate Bill 5. This was voted down. There has been a ton of controversy over this and no one has looked at the actual sources. Here they are:
Electoral Ballot History of Issue 2 Senate Bill 5 (Official Text thereof)Please, feel free to read all 304 pages of senate bill 5 directly from the Ohio State Legislature provided above. Take a look at the first two pages. "AN ACT, To amend sections [a whole crap ton of laws about public employees all listed] ... to enact new section [lists new sections] and to repeal sections [lists sections] of the Revised Code to make various changes to laws concerning public employees,
including collective bargaining, salary schedules and compensation, layoff procedures, and leave." <-- This is the beginning text of the bill itself except for your sanity, I didn't list every portion of the law it changed by section.... (You can click on the text above and see them all if you like).
It is a poorly written (unorganized) bill that attempted to reach widely into salary, benefits, union negotiating, paying of Union Dues, charitable deductions, etc. This was simply NOT a simple bill as evidenced by it being over 300 pages in length. My god, take a look at all the sections of the ORC (Ohio Revised Code, I.E. the law) it revised.... It most definitely, by it's own language, was never just about having Public Employees just pay "a reasonable share towards their insurance." This was a political campaign cover and if you read the actual bill, it becomes evident from the text itself of what was passed, exactly what this is.
THEY ARE HIDDING THE PRIMARY COLLECTIVE BARGAINING DEFINITION SECTION over 200 pages into the bill. Definition sections are traditionally in the front of a law unless you're hiding them:
Pages 215 Subsection (G) [This is what I mean by poorly written, The US Code makes it easy to see what part of what subsection in relationship to the entire bill is in question]
Defines collective bargaining
Pages 215-216 poorly combines sections (H) as stricken and (I) as partially striken to define what a strike is
The bill attempts to ban collective bargaining and specifically lists prohibited acts:See entire underlined section starting P. 238 - 241, particularly the last paragraph
The prohibition language is specifically present here: See P 242-243: (B) It is an unfair labor practice for an employee organization, its
agents, or representatives, or public employees to:
(1) Restrain or coerce employees or public employers in the exercise of
the rights guaranteed in Chapter 4117. of the Revised Code, including the
public employer's selection of the public employer's representative for the
purpose of collective negotiations or the adjustment of grievances. This
division does not impair the right of an employee organization to prescribe
its own rules with respect to the acquisition or retention of membership
therein, or an employer in the selection of his representative for the purpose
of collective brgaining or the adjustment of grievances.
(2) Cause or attempt to cause an employer to violate division (A) of this
section;
(3) Refuse to bargain collectively with a public employer if the
employee organization is recognized as the exclusive representative or
certified as the exclusive representative of public employees in a bargaining
unit;
(4) Call, institute, maintain, or conduct a boycott against any public
employer, or picket any place of business of a public employer, on account
of any jurisdictional work dispute;
(5) Induce or encourage any individual employed by any person to
engage in a strike in violation of Chapter 4117. of the Revised Code or
refusal to handle goods or perform services; or threaten, coerce, or restrain
any person where an object thereof is to force or require any public
employee to cease dealing or doing business with any other person, or force
or require a public employer to recognize for representation purposes an
employee organization not certified by the state employment relations
board, or induce or encourage any individual to engage in a secondary
boycott whether under the existing agreement or as part of another employee
organization's concerted activity, whether in the public or private sector;
(6) Fail to fairly represent all public employees in a bargaining unit;
ations dispute to picket the residence or any place of private employment
of any public official or representative of the public employer;
(8 ) Engage in any picketing, striking, or other concerted refusal to work
without;
(9) Engage in any picketing without giving written notice to the public
employer and to the state employment relations board not less than ten days
prior to the action picket. The notice shall state the date and time that the
action picket will commence and, once the notice is given, the parties may
extend it by the written agreement of both.
(10) Insist that a permissive subject of collective bargaining be
bargained to impasse.
(C) The expressing of any views, argument, or opinion, or the
dissemination thereof, whether in written, printed, graphic, or visual form,
shall not constitute or be evidence of an unfair labor practice under this
chapter, if that expression contains no threat of reprisal or force or promise
of benefit.
(D) The determination by the board or any court that a public officer or
employee has committed any of the acts prohibited by divisions (A) and (B)
of this section shall not be made the basis of any charge for the removal
from office or recall of the public officer or the suspension from or
termination of employment of or disciplinary acts against an employee, nor
shall the officer or employee be found subject to any suit for damages based
on such a determination; however nothing in this division prevents any party
to a collective bargaining agreement from seeking enforcement or damages
for a violation thereof against the other party to the agreement.
This would making striking by public employees illegal in the state of Ohio or so ineffective as to be completely worthless.
If they did attempt to strike they could be fired. Sections 1 (1, 2, 2(B)) Pages 3-4: basically vests power to determine what type of insurance public employees have in administrators, which sets it up to mean "not the union."
Section 1 (C) Pages 4-5: at first looks like it does the same thing for Boards of Education while saying in underlined text, "
Nothing in this division shall be construed to allow a board of education tobargain collectively regarding the provision of health care benefits as that term is defined in section 124.81 of the Revised Code." (the underlining is the legislature's not mine).
The real power for determining what health care teacher's get is vested in a new board created via section (C)(2)(b)Page 5, "The school employees health care board is hereby created."
Subsections (1-3) determine who can be on the board.
Subsection (C) say that the board members shall have 4 year terms.
Subsection (C)(2) says that the teachers will pay the members of this board out of their health care funds.
Subsection (F) page 6, says that the board is basically in charge of all teacher's health care funds, "The board shall use all funds in the school employees health care fund solely to carry out the provisions of this section and related administrative costs:"
Subsection (G)(1-8) basically says the board can determine how things are run via the fund and what benefits the teachers will get.
Subsections (H-P) Pages 6-12, gives the board sweeping powers and creates a
bureaucracy bureaucrazy.
It then spends pages determining exactly what and how that bureaucracy can do....
The board, beholden to the governor with any member of it removable by him at will may:
set salaries
hire and fire
divide employees into skilled and unskilled labor classes
.....
[Yeah, I only have a 40K character limit to work within and you know I"ll go over it if I do all of this page by page section by section, plus my God, that's a lot of work.]
This bill was horribly written/organized, very overreaching, basically killed public unions and their ability to strike and would've served as a test case to see if the declining private sector unions could have been beaten back in the same manner in later laws. I'm sorry, when's the last time any of us have been shot at in our jobs like a police officer or state highway patrolman? They shouldn't have to carry the load of the state misappropriating funding. As for the bill itself, horrid organization. It shouldn't be hard for a trained lawyer to refer to any section of it; it is. This is not the norm of legislation....
Whether you liked the bill or not, it absolutely was sweeping, banned striking, and was anti union. Against, police, highway patrol, firefighters, teachers, many EMS, DMV, prosecutors, and the office staff that make it all happen.
it went beyond abortion to affect miscarriage, in vitro fertilization and some forms of birth control.
45% of voters in Mississippi supported it even with that? That scares me.
That's assuming they're all really that informed on it. Many people tend to be ignorant even on referendum issues. If properly educated on the law's effects, the percentage would almost certainly go down.
Case in point: North Carolina's impending "Defense of Marriage" amendment. Currently polling at 59% support, even though that same sample of people were 60% in favor of some legal recognition for same-sex couples, such as civil union. However, the amendment would outlaw ANY kind of legal union other than hetero marriage. So there's at least 19% out there that either don't have a clue what they're supporting, or have some serious cognitive dissonance going on.
Absolutely, again, we're seeing people not understanding what they are voting for and needing someone to tell them what the law actually says, because it is purposefully written badly/confusingly for no damn reason. That's assuming they really do have 60% supporting some legal recognition of same sex couples and it isn't just lip service. Ohio passed something similar as an amendment to the constitution in 2004 right after the Lawrence v. Texas (2003) case made it so
being gay sodomy being gay wasn't a crime.
Ohio has banned any sort of gay marriage or union. This had a 62% support from voters.... Though various polls seem to indicate that people favor gay rights in a majority now, they don't seem to vote that way. [grumble grumble]
This is what happens when you employ spin doctors, who know nothing about law, to tell people what they are voting for instead of lawyers, who do know about law.... After all, does voting "Yes," on issue #, mean you like it and want to keep it, or don't like it and want to repeal it...? Who knows.... There is no reason we can't have a rule of thumb about this.
[Rants for another half hour before going back to my court motions....]
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Topic: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread (Read 872857 times)