Brendan Williams
Guest column by Brendan Williams, former Washington State legislator
When 61% of Ohio voters rejected Issue 2 and repealed an anti-labor bill signed into law March 31 by Republican Governor John Kasich on Election Day, considerable attention was paid to the fact that the repealed bill sought to impose draconian curbs upon the ability of public workers to collectively bargain. Indeed, it flatly prohibited bargaining in certain cases, including in publicly-funded charter schools.
Less noticed, perhaps, was that among those new provisions overturned was Section 4117.08, which stated, “The provision of health care benefits for which the employer is required to pay more than eighty-five per cent of the cost is not an appropriate subject for collective bargaining.”
In other words, Ohio voters rejected the idea that it should be impossible for public workers to pay less than 15% of their health care costs. Following this repudiation, the state and public workers sat down to bargain again. In a deal announced November 16 by the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, AFSME Local 11, the state agreed to extend the current contract three years from its expiration date of February 29, 2012.
Thus a state with one of the nation’s most anti-union governors has agreed, through 2015, to hold the state workers share of health care premium costs at the level – 15% – to which they rose here in Washington in last year’s legislative session.
That’s a lesson for both Republicans, and supposed Democrats, in the Washington Legislature who keep calling on state workers to pay an even higher share of cost. It should give them pause when the special session begins November 28.
Filed under: EOI, health care, tax and budget, collective bargaining, health care costs, John Kasich, Project on Government Oversight, public workers, Scott Walker, Seattle Times, Washington, wisconsin
