WASHINGTON, DC – In the wake of yesterday’s elections, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) President, Gregory Junemann, issued the following statement regarding the repeal of Ohio Senate Bill 5 (SB 5):
“Last night Ohio voters overwhelmingly sent a strong message to Governor John Kasich as well as to like-minded, opportunistic lawmakers across the nation that unjustly pinning the blame for budget woes on dedicated public servants will not be tolerated. In defeating SB 5, Ohio voters made it clear that they will not stand idly by and allow lawmakers like Kasich to strip workers of their rights in the name of fiscal sanity. Governor Kasich, as well as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, did not campaign on the platform of eliminating collective bargaining from public sector workers. Yet, upon entering office, their number one objective was not jobs; it was not education; it was not even deficit reduction. Instead, it was to achieve their ideological goal of eliminating the collective bargaining rights of workers.
“IFPTE applauds the voters of Ohio, and all of Ohio’s public sector workers, for issuing yesterday’s shellacking to Governor Kasich’s extreme, anti-worker agenda. We trust that this overwhelming defeat will force others to think twice before attempting to disguise their ideological goals under the veil of so-called ‘deficit reduction’.”
Adding a shot in the arm to the repeal of SB 5 was a report issued last month by the University of California, Berkeley that found no link between state budget deficits and public sector unions. Instead the report, entitled The Wrong Target: Public Sector Unions and State Budget Deficits, found that state budget deficits are a result of reduced revenues caused by the recession.
Ohio voters repealed SB 5 by a vote of 61% to 39%.
