Labor & Employment Law

?Sad Day for Ohio? as Anti-Worker Bill Passes 17-16

By James Parks

“Today is a sad day for Ohio?s middle class”, said Ohio AFL-CIO  President Tim Burga, after the state Senate passed by a 17-C16 margin Senate Bill 5, which would remove the freedom of public employees to bargain for a better life.

The bill now goes to the state House.

 ”Ohio senators have shown they would rather push a partisan agenda to punish the middle class than work on solutions to our jobs crisis,” Burga said.

From the start, this bill has been a one-sided affair.  Workers and community members were not consulted at any time during the process.  Political games were played with the hearing process which silenced the voice of hundreds of opponents of the bill.  Middle-class Ohioans were locked out, literally, from having their voices heard.

Ohio Senators were elected to create jobs but those who have supported this wrongheaded bill have shown that they are more concerned with political payback than revitalizing our struggling economy.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on March 02, 2011 (boomark / email).