Ohio’s Senate Bill 5 passed today, 17-16. — Ed.
Rigged Game
So, after a full and fair debate on SB#5 before a Committee the majority of whom are Republicans, the Bill was going down to defeat. Two Republican Senators, Hughes and Seitz had reasoned the Bill was unfair to public employees and was overreaching. The answer to honest debate is political rigging. Suddenly Bill Seitz was yanked from the Committee and replaced with a pledged “yes” vote.
Live to Fight Another Day
In the final analysis we escaped the “kill shot.” In the “war against the middle class,” the intent was to eliminate the voice of unions. We have been seriously hurt, but they failed to get the “kill shot” intended. The voice of public employees survives. We live to fight another day. History will record the Governor and his friends made a strategic error in awakening a sleeping giant.
The Work Ahead
Now begins the work of unselfishly building upon what we have experienced in our shared effort to defeat this mugging of public employees. Now we must give substance to the coalition that actually won the debate and won over the citizens of Ohio. We must form an alliance of all Ohio worker voices with the single agenda of restoring collective bargaining and throwing “the bums” out of office.
The text above is a collection of excerpts from the Facebook page for the Ohio State Troopers Association. The Web poster “Voted ‘Yes’ on SB5” was first published in the ProgressOhio blog on 2 March 2011. Both are reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.
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