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Ohio groups on opposite ends of right-to-work law

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By Tom Gnau, Staff Writer 8:11 PM Monday, February 20, 2012

In the wake of Indiana’s recent passage of a right-to-work law, opposing sides in Ohio are preparing to battle over the same issue.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels earlier this month signed the first right-to-work law to be enacted in the so-called Rust Belt, a stronghold for union-represented work forces. The law makes it illegal to force employees to join a union or pay union dues and is similar to laws in 22 other states. Indiana was the first state in a decade to enact such a law.

Some believe the law will give Indiana a competitive advantage in luring businesses to that state. Others believe that it won’t.

The organization Ohioans for Workplace Freedom says it will gather signatures to place before voters a proposed constitutional amendment to “guarantee the freedom of Ohioans to choose whether to participate in a labor organization as a condition of employment,” according to the group’s website.

The people behind the drive — which they hope to place before voters this November or November 2013 — are some of the same people who wrote the Ohio health care amendment, Issue 3, that voters overwhelmingly approved last November. Maurice Thompson, an attorney and executive director of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, crafted the language of both Issue 3 and a proposed amendment that would make Ohio a right-to-work state.

“Our polling has always shown that Ohioans want the freedom to choose that other states have always had,” Thompson said Monday.

Other recent polling by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute showed that more than half of Ohio voters favor passing a right-to-work law.

Ohioans for Workplace Freedom wants to collect the signatures of about 600,000 registered voters in Ohio, said Chris Littleton, a West Chester Twp. resident and former president of the conservative Ohio Liberty Council. The organization needs to collect a minimum 386,000 valid signatures, Littleton said.

Last week, the Ohio secretary of state’s office approved the organization as a single-issue political action committee, Littleton said.

The group’s proposal and Indiana’s new law sparked strong reaction among proponents and opponents.

Tim Burga, chief of staff of Ohio AFL-CIO, calls the issue “right to work for less.” He contends that right-to-work laws drive wages and benefits lower and do nothing to create new jobs.

He cited a recent New York Times article that reported that six of the 10 states with the highest unemployment rates have right-to-work laws.

“We had this debate all last year about workers’ rights and collective bargaining, and voters spoke very clearly,” Burga said, referring to Senate Bill 5, which would have weakened the ability of Ohio public-sector unions to collectively bargain and which voters overwhelmingly rejected.

Thompson and Littleton reject comparisons with Senate Bill 5, saying SB5 and right-to-work laws have nothing to do with each other.

“The relationship between the two is pretty minimal,” Thompson said.

“I’m not trying to take anything from anybody else,” Littleton said.

Dennis McLaughlin, a Middletown-based shareholder of business consultant Clark Schaefer and Hackett, works with manufacturers, many of them small, family-owned and non-unionized. Right-to-work provisions don’t often come up in conversation with owners of those businesses, McLaughlin said. Taxes, regulations and other issues seem to be more critical to them, he said.

“My personal perception is, this (right to work) is a political issue,” McLaughlin said.

David Walsh, a Miami University business professor, thinks at best, right-to-work might result in a shift of jobs between states, not the creation of new jobs.

“This is not an economic development story at all” Walsh said. “This is a political story.”

A spokeswoman for Ohio Gov. John Kasich declined to discuss right-to-work legislation in Ohio, but said Kasich is “open to additional strategies” to create jobs.

“Recreating a jobs-friendly environment is essential to getting Ohio back on track,” Connie Wehrkamp, deputy press secretary for Kasich, said in an email. “We’ve successfully cut taxes, torn down regulatory barriers to job creation and replaced our antiquated economic development agency with a new, more effective private sector corporation. These strategies and others are showing good results, and our focus right now is to keep pursuing them. But we’re open to additional strategies as needed.”

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