JoeClarke.Net

Kasich's Olive Branch
Governor John Kasich reached out to Ohio public employee unions to renegotiate collective bargaining policy in which Ohio Senate Bill 5, passed by the Ohio legislature, would give the Governor more leverage than the public unions in deciding how much the state can afford to pay state workers in terms of benefits like pensions and health care.

The unions will have none of it, and are going for an "all or nothing" approach to defeat Senate Bill 5. My comment to the local lib newspaper, which is heavily in favor of higher taxation and the pacifying of all union demands:

Governor John Kasich offered an olive branch to the public employee union, and it was promptly chewed up and spit back at him. The union leaders, in effect, said it was too little, too late. I am not one that makes such claims that unions are unnecessary and are relics from a bygone era.

It is clear that Ohio, one of the largest union, or "no right to work," states, has been handicapped in its ability to promote new and profitable businesses in the state, because of the demand on tax payers to pay government employees all that they would wish. And, there is a difference between types of unions. Private business unions must fight in negotiations for benefits, and hope that the company profit be sufficient enough to pay the demands of labor. Public employee unions have no stake in the success of their government operations, but are guaranteed their wages and benefits from the state, which pays them from taxes which are paid by the public so as to avoid jail - at the point of a gun.

Non union Ohio citizens, as well as private business unions, should realize that when a dollar is taken out out of the private sector, and placed in the public sector, it is money diverted from use by the private sector, and therefore,it is money diverted from private union employee pay and benefits, as well.

We need public employee unions, but we just cannot afford to pay them all that they want. If union members, both private and public, boast of having solidarity, then why won't any union members take cuts in pay so that their fellow members can keep their jobs?