It replaced the unworkable Ferguson Act, passed after World War II, named for a Republican state senator from Guernsey County, not the Democratic dynasty. The Ferguson Act outlawed strikes by public employees. They struck anyway.
Term-limits or no, some of the same Republicans who voted “no” on the 1983 collective bargaining bill will be at the Ohio House’s helm in 2011: Speaker-designate William G. Batchelder of Medina; his designated deputy, Rep. Louis W. Blessing of Cincinnati; and the House Republican who’ll ride herd on the state budget, Rep. Ron Amstutz of Wooster.
If the GOP-run House, GOP-run state Senate and John Kasich do try to reshape the 1983 law — no one is talking seriously about repealing it — some Ohio Democrats may secretly, very secretly, cheer them on: Mayors, school superintendents and such.
Their gripe is that while Amended Substitute Senate Bill 133, formal name of the 1983 law, does some things very well — hold down the number of public-employee strikes — labor peace isn’t cheap.
The 1983 law maps out the procedural route cities and school boards must follow to arrive at labor settlements. But when cities and school boards reach that destination, how to pay the tab is City Hall’s headache, or the school board’s headache — that is, Mary or John Taxpayer’s headache — not the General Assembly’s (except for the roughly 59,000 state-agency employees).
And parts of the law, and related rulings, can spawn migraines. For example, in a brazen 1989 political flip-flop, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that — despite the home-rule powers the Ohio Constitution promises cities — the 1983 law imposes binding arbitration on a city if contract talks with safety forces deadlock.
That’s a head-splitter, because the law also requires “whatever actions are necessary to implement” an arbitrator’s decision: That is, cities are expected to pay up — and shut up.
The 1989 ruling was the exact opposite of a 1988 one, also 4-3. What changed? Not the law; the judges. Conservative Democratic Justice Ralph S. Locher, once Cleveland’s mayor, retired. Elected his successor in November 1988 was union-friendlier Democrat Alice Robie Resnick.
Result: The May 1989 switcheroo came in what’s called the Rocky River case. In Ohio courtrooms, “legal precedent” seems to be code for “election results.”
Binding arbitration for safety forces was a trade-off by Democrats. The 1983 law forbids police and firefighter strikes. So safety forces, deprived of that basic union weapon, get arbitration. It’s a reasonable theory. The question is whether, in practice, it’s fair, since it ties the hands of local officials, and it’s their job, not arbitrators’, to balance the books.
The debate Statehouse Republicans seem poised to launch in 2011 is this: How can the state require local officials to manage local budgets if they’re denied say-so over a big chunk of personnel costs?
True, for eons, that scam was a pillar of the Ohio Way: Play frugal in Columbus by shifting costs onto local taxpayers. But the rubes have caught on. Now they may boycott the game — unless someone changes its rules.
Thomas Suddes is an adjunct assistant professor at Ohio University. Send e-mail to tsuddes@gmail.com.