Letter: Collective Bargaining Works for All Involved

Every school district in Ohio is required to develop a five-year financial forecast twice each year.

These forecasts include projected expenditures on employee salaries and benefits. Ohio Education Association's Andy Jewell recently determined that labor costs for this past fiscal year (fiscal year 2011) came in $978,774,249 below what school districts expected to spend when they put together their five-year forecasts in fiscal year 2009.

Part of the difference can be attributed to the staff reductions that have occurred over the past two years, but remember: over 90 percent of non-management school employees are represented by unions — unions which utilize collective bargaining as the process for determining the pay and benefits of nearly 200,000 teachers, bus drivers, aides, custodians, secretaries and cafeteria workers. 

Given what we know, here are a couple of questions for the supporters of Issue 2:

1. If the passage of SB 5 was necessary in order to rein in unsustainable labor costs resulting from expensive union contracts, then why did Ohio’s public school districts last year pay $766,535,594 less (after accounting for staff reductions) on employee salaries and benefits than was expected just two years earlier?
2. If unionized public employees are pushing school districts, other local governments and the state to the brink of financial collapse, then why are these same union employees saving their employers so much money? 

Here’s the logical answer: collective bargaining works for employees, employers and taxpayers. Three-quarters of a billion dollars is a lot of money. Vote “No” on Issue 2 on Nov. 8.

Wendy DiAlesandro