We Are Ohio's Shocking Double Standard

Senate Bill 5 transfers a little power from union bosses back to taxpayers. For this, union front We Are Ohio has spent millions smearing the bill as an “attack on workers.” If you trust We Are Ohio – whose primary in-state donor is the Ohio Education Association (OEA) – union reform simply isn’t needed. Why help local governments get benefit costs under control when we could just raise taxes?

Idiotic as this may be, the rarely-spoken tax hike demands and angry Solidarity Theater make sense given that OEA and the other unions behind We Are Ohio get rich taking dues from workers. But what if the reforms being fought tooth and nail by the OEA were tame compared to policies OEA has tried to adopt for its own employees?

Here are some more photos of the 2010 Professional Staff Union (PSU) strike against the Ohio Education Association, pulled from PSU’s Facebook page:

OEA Employees on Strike

Signs from OEA’s striking employees

Following is a PSU Blog excerpt from last September. If this is what OEA employees think of the state’s largest union, how on earth does We Are Ohio expect taxpayers to believe a word they say [Update, 09-16-2011: Here's a PDF copy of the post, since union staff blocked access to the website]?

One example is OEA’s insistence on removing transfer protections for PSU members. Imagine that one year your district assigns you to teach 8^th grade science. The next year, they move you to 1^st grade. The year after that, they reassign you once again to 5^th grade reading. Sound like a recipe for educational success?  Of course not.

But while even that may be possible to imagine, consider that PSU members work all over the state.  So, to continue using our example, one year you would teach in Parma.  The next year, you would teach in Defiance. And the year after that, you would teach in Athens!  Meanwhile, your working spouse and kids would be either expected to follow you or live without you.  In a statewide organization such as OEA, transfer-at-will simply does not work, to say nothing of being totally contrary to being a good union.

If PSU concedes to what Wicks and his cronies demand, locals will face constant chaos!  Your local could have a new LRC every year.  Imagine how that would impact the services you receive from PSU members!  To further complicate matters, nothing in OEA’s proposal would prevent Wicks from moving our PSU headquarters members out into the field to LRC positions or vice versa.

Certainly your LRC is more effective having developed relationships with you and your members. And of course their ability to facilitate understanding and apply pressure to your school administration and school boards increases with time spent working with your local? Transfer-at-will would make that a near impossibility.

This is just one example of the OTHER issues PSU is standing up and fighting on behalf of Union Values for, and if you think about it, it directly impacts YOU.  The same thing holds true for the OEA Officer/administrator proposals on seniority, union representation, and job security.   At the very least, think of the ‘field day’ school boards and their greedy attorneys will have if OEA is allowed to treat its staff unions this way.

The OEA and We Are Ohio are two completely reliable groups, if you don’t mind that they’re usually wrong and occasionally honest.

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted from that hero.