Recent news from New Jersey shows that the power of labor unions, even in one of the bluest of blue states, is not preordained to win every battle. As with Wisconsin and right here in Ohio, common sense has won out, at least temporarily, over apocalyptic rhetoric.
From the New York Times,
“New Jersey lawmakers on Thursday approved a broad rollback of benefits for 750,000 government workers and retirees, the deepest cut in state and local costs in memory, in a major victory for Gov. Chris Christie and a once-unthinkable setback for the state’s powerful public employee unions.
The Assembly passed the bill 46 to 32, as Republicans and a few Democrats defied raucous protests by thousands of people whose chants, vowing electoral revenge, shook the State House.”
This sounds eerily like the news that came from both Wisconsin, and downtown Columbus, earlier this year. However, what is striking about this is where it happened- New Jersey!
Yes, New Jersey; a state well known for being one of the most unionized states in the entire nation. While the state did elect a conservative governor, not something easy to do there, who could have imagined that the legislature would go along with plans to trim union worker benefits?
Indeed, it seems something is in the air in Jersey, something like freedom.
Of course, there will be a battle over the legislation and its possible the effort will eventually fail or be overturned.
That is much like the situation confronting Ohioans in the wake of Senate Bill 5. Should SB 5 be repealed later this fall, Ohio might as well get the Department of Transportation to hang “Closed for Business” on all those signs you pass when you cross into Ohio from our neighboring states.
Again, from the Times,
“But Assemblyman Angel Fuentes, a Camden Democrat, said, ‘These reforms are unquestionably bitter pills for us to swallow, but they are reasonable and they are necessary.’ He added: ‘We now have towns across this state that are struggling to afford health benefits for their employees. This has resulted in cities laying off workers.’”
Those are honest words and they are words that mirror what many of our own elected officials here in Ohio said about SB 5.
Remember them. They are important and they should cut through the noise about to be unleashed by the defenders of the status quo. Also, remember, if New Jersey can do this, Ohio certainly can and must.
In the meantime, arm yourself with key information about the myths regarding SB 5.
As a New Jersey native, I can tell you that the burden that the public sector employees have placed on the state is absolutely unsustainable.
This trend was clear years ago to anyone with eyes to see. But now the situation has grown so dire due to the willful blindness of the past that a critical mass of elected Democrats can no longer deny reality and have voted for the reforms of Gov. Christie..
One has to wonder if/when any Democrats in Ohio will break with union solidarity and come out and support the common good as in SB-5, for example.
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Burden of public sector unions? Please remember, these contracts were negotiated by 2 parties. The two parties can continue to negotiate via collective bargaining in these tough times. Unions & management will work through this…..SB 5 goes way too far.
Read this before asking ‘Why Not Ohio?’
http://downloads.pewcenteronthestates.org/The_Trillion_Dollar_Gap_final.pdf
Let us recall that it was the greed of financial institutions, not workers (unionized or not), nor government (democratic or republican) that caused the financial crisis, leading to job loss in Ohio and therefore, loss in tax revenues. The problem is a loss in revenue, not an increase in costs of government. It is understandable that the state needs to control costs, but by attacking the public employees, as if they are pampered and given more than they deserve, is not an appropriate way to go about it, and that is the message portrayed on The Buckeye Institute website.
It is true that government workers are not responsible for the financial crisis. The government system is, however, a significant problem and is one that could have been dealt with much earlier but wasn’t.
It should be pointed out that during the boom time of the 1990s, Ohio spending grew dramatically despite not have a commensurate growth in population. One could easily question why that was simply left to occur. It would appear that during relative good times spending increases because it could and many of the structural problems, especially in terms of compensation and collective bargaining, were largely covered up by positive revenues. In other words, there were problems but the state could afford to ignore them. As the revenues declined, these problems became not only more apparent, but much costlier and required a choice to be made between enhancing revenues by raising taxes during a catastrophic economic environment or by cutting costs down to a more manageable level.