Kasich firm on union bargaining changes

If lawmakers don’t come up with collective bargaining bill he likes, he’ll put his in budget.

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By Laura A. Bischoff, Columbus Bureau Updated 10:52 AM Friday, February 11, 2011

COLUMBUS — If lawmakers don’t pass a collective bargaining bill that he likes, Gov. John Kasich on Thursday said he is prepared to wrap his own reforms into his budget bill next month.

Kasich said his own bill would outlaw strikes by public employees and penalize those who walk off the job by firing them or docking their pay.

The governor also noted that he wants fact-finding reports produced during contract negotiations open to the public so taxpayers know the details.

“We have got to restore balance (between labor and management,)” Kasich said.

Asked what recourse public union workers would have under his proposal, Kasich said, “They have a job. They should continue to negotiate and try to come up with something.”

On Wednesday, the first hearing was held on a bill to prohibit collective bargaining for the state government’s 40,000 workers, weaken binding arbitration for police officers and firefighters, ban public employee strikes, limit local unions’ right to bargain for health insurance, eliminate automatic step increases, and remove teachers’ right to pick their classes or schools.

The bill was introduced by state Sen. Shannon Jones, R-Clearcreek Twp.

Kasich declined to comment on Jones’ bill on Thursday.

Kasich said he will watch Jones’ bill go through the process, “and if it doesn’t come out the way that I like it — and that’s fine, you have to let the legislature do their job — I’ll have it in the budget.”

Kasich also told the Ohio Newspaper Association that he wants to eliminate the law requiring union-scale wages, the so-called prevailing wage, to be paid in public construction projects.

Jeffrey Keefe, associate professor of labor and employment relations at Rutgers University, recently completed a study of public-worker compensation in Ohio and found that hourly wages of state and local workers are 3.3 percent lower than those of comparable private-sector employees.

“State and local government employees in Ohio are not overcompensated,” Keefe said. “If anything, they’re undercompensated, but basically what I see is that they’re equitably compensated.”

The second hearing on the Senate bill is Tuesday.

Joe Hallett and Jim Siegel of The Columbus Dispatch contributed to this report.