There’s a lot of talk about the state of Wisconsin recently, especially in the realm of politics. By now, everybody’s heard of the teachers’ petitions going on in Madison where they are fighting for their collective bargaining rights. National coverage seems to be at an all time high for the 1.4 million person state, but locally in Ohio, there’s a different focus.The State of Ohio has a very similar bill awaiting a Senate vote. Ohio State Senate Bill 5, more commonly referred to as SB5, was proposed by Republican Senator Shannon Jones of Springboro, with the support of new Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich.
The bill would severely cut the collective bargaining rights of all state employee unions; these employees are the police, firefighters, and teachers. In its original form the bill would have eliminated collective bargaining all together. Collective bargaining is the basis of what unions are built upon.
It’s the right for a group of employees to approach their employer and negotiate working conditions, according to Cornell University’s Law School. While these groups of employees do not have to be a union, in today’s world they often are unionized. Under the proposed law, current agreements could not be terminated but also could not be renewed or modified. Another part of the bill would also prevent all state and local government employees from striking (police and firefighter unions are already banned from striking).
Okay. Have you read enough big words and legalese? Good, because I’m tired of typing them. Not to take away from the importance of this bill or to lump it in with hundreds and hundreds of others, but have you ever read through a bill? I didn’t think so. I tried. Originally I was going to write this all about the bill and explain all about it. However, after trying to get a thorough grasp on the issue, I got really frustrated. My e-mail was flooded with different articles and links leading to different opinions and “doomsday” scenarios from both sides. Eventually I said enough, and went to the bill itself… Well, that was a lot of help!
It is 500 pages long-500 pages of big words and legal writing that confused me even more than I was before. Did I read all of them? Oh gosh no! I don’t have the patience to research almost every other word. I can’t imagine what kind of crap is hidden inside that and other bills. There’s so much there, that even the paralegals hired to do the reading and interpretation of these probably skim through most of it. This leads me to a big point.
These bills should be written in a way that the average man can understand them. We vote these people into power, so we have the right to know what they’re doing with our tax money. Now I’m not a total governmental transparency seeking, extremist, kind of person, because I’m a strong supporter of national security, even if it means not alerting the public to a few things here and there, but I do believe we should be able to know how our money is being spent. And how can we know that, if we can’t even understand the words being used to tell us?
Democrat, Republican, Independent, whatever-you’re all guilty of presenting bills with more stuff in it than the Smithsonian Museum. All I’m saying is cut back in the legal jargon, cut back in the size of these bills, and most of all cut back in the B.S. loopholes you put in there! Say what you want and present it that way.
As for Senate Bill 5, I always have let my decisions on the subject of education and public safety be dictated on what I would like my children to have. They’d better be prepared for the real world by their education, and they’d better be safe when I’m not around anymore.