'Workplace Freedom' advocates can start petition drive
A group seeking to bring a November statewide vote to make Ohio a “right to work” state got the green light to circulate its petition today.
The final OK came from the Ohio Ballot Board, which ruled the proposed constitutional amendment is a single issue.
A total of 385,253 valid signatures of registered Ohio voters are needed to put the measure on the ballot. The vote would come a year after Ohioans resoundingly defeated Senate Bill 5, which would have slashed collective bargaining rights for state and local government workers.
Those circulating the petition also must get enough signatures – equivalent to 5 percent of the total vote in the 2010 gubernatorial election – from at least 44 of the state’s 88 counties.
The key part of the one-page proposal says: “No law, rule, agreement, or arrangement, shall require, directly or indirectly, any person or employer to become or remain a member of a labor organization.”
Essentially, that means the proposal would prohibit closed shops -- workplaces that require union membership to get a job. Mandatory union dues also would be barred if the amendment becomes part of the Ohio Constitution. Read more....
Ohioans like ‘right-to-work’ idea, poll says February 14, 2012
Ohio should become the nation’s 24th “right-to-work state,” voters in a new poll declare.
By a 14-point margin – 50 percent to 36 percent – participants in the Quinnipiac Poll say the Buckeye State should join Indiana in making it more difficult to mandate union membership. The poll comes less than four months after Ohio voters crushed Senate Bill 5 by 23 points in a referendum on slashing public employee union rights.
“Given the assumption that the SB 5 referendum was a demonstration of union strength in Ohio, the 54 – 40 percent support for making Ohio a ‘right-to-work’ state does make one take notice,”said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, in a statement.
“In the SB 5 referendum independent voters, who are generally the key to Ohio elections, voted with the pro-union folks to repeal the law many viewed as an effort to handicap unions. The data indicates that many of those same independents who stood up for unions this past November on SB 5 are standing up to unions by backing ‘right-to-work’ legislation.” Read more....
