ernest_t_bass;678105 wrote:Senate Bill 5, introduced by Senator Shannon Jones (R-Springboro), proposes to end collective bargaining for state and higher education employees and drastically curtail bargaining rights for K-12 educators. Ohio’s educators and working families are aggressively opposing this bill.
What’s at stake?: Collective bargaining allows educators a voice in improving working and learning conditions and opportunities for Ohio's students. This bill would take Ohio backwards and harm students, working families and local economies throughout the state. In today's difficult economic times, we all need to be focused on the essentials. Nothing is more essential than giving our students and children a quality education that prepares them for good jobs.
Senate Bill 5 does the following:
• Eliminates collective bargaining for state employees and employees of state higher education institutions. Existing CBAs expire according to terms.
• Does not allow K-12 school employees to collectively bargain on salaries or healthcare.
• Eliminates public employee salary schedules and step increases and replaces them with an undefined “merit” pay system.
• Permits school boards to govern healthcare benefit plans for employees and requires public employees to pay at least 20% of their healthcare costs
• Eliminates continuing contracts for teachers after the bill’s effective date • Eliminates teacher leave policies in statute and requires local school boards to
determine leave time
• Eliminates experience as a sole criterion for Reductions In Force (RIFs) • Allows public employers to hire permanent replacement workers during a strike • Prohibits school districts from picking up any portion of the employee’s contribution
to the pension system
• Allows a public employer in “fiscal emergency” to serve notice to terminate, modify
or negotiate a CBA
• Abolishes the School Employee Healthcare Board
What can you do to help support students, working families and local communities?:
The elected officials that represent you need to hear that you oppose Senate Bill 5 and the effort to eliminate collective bargaining. We need to highlight that collective bargaining benefits students.
To TAKE ACTION go to
http://aces.ohea.org and sign a commitment to protect public education and communicate with your legislators. Also, please recruit your colleagues to help fight this extremely harmful legislation.
Important Messages on Senate Bill 5:
Talking Points:
• Children need their teachers to focus on them and their classrooms. Allowing the union to represent teachers frees teachers to do what they do best: teach.
• Taking away the union’s role in support of teachers will mean teacher salaries would be dictated by state politicians and education bureaucrats.
• Senate Bill 5 will hurt our local schools and kids because taking the unions out of the picture will make it easier for politicians to lay off teachers and cut funding for schools across Ohio.
• Collective bargaining allows educators a voice in improving opportunities for Ohio’s students, better classroom resources and improved teaching and learning conditions.
• Teachers know best what’s needed to improve student learning, and collective bargaining gives allows them to focus on teaching rather than time-consuming employment issues.
• Educators, like all public employees, are an integral part of the fabric of Ohio’s communities. Senate Bill 5 weakens Ohio. Rather than creating jobs, this legislation will hurt local communities, reversing Ohio’s positive economic outlook.
• Ohio’s collective bargaining law has created a framework for problem-solving that has made strikes rare. Local teachers associations negotiate effectively to avoid disruption for student learning.
• In a tough economy, with Ohio facing a major budget deficit, we must focus on the essentials. Nothing is more essential than giving our children a quality education that prepares them for good jobs.
Studies and facts about collective bargaining:
• The public does not support attacks on working families: A January 2011 Quinnipiac poll showed that Ohio voters oppose limits on collective bargaining by public employees by 51% to 34%, a 17 % margin.
• Ohio’s public employees make less than the private sector: A Rutgers University study for the Economic Policy Institute released in February 2011 finds that similarly educated public employees make less than their private sector peers. Looking at total compensation (wages and nonwage benefits), Ohio public employees annually earn 6% less than comparable private sector employees and 3.5% less on an hourly basis than comparable private sector employees.
• Collective bargaining did not cause Ohio’s budget deficit: Policy Matters Ohio recently released a study showing that states without public employee collective bargaining are facing the same large budget deficits as state with collective bargaining.
• Collective bargaining supports high quality education: The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, 2008) suggests that students in states with CB perform better than those in states without CB: reading and math (4th & 8th grades;
average freshman graduation rate). Collective bargaining is a staple in the nations that are said to outperform the U.S.; namely, Western Europe & Canada.
