Clearing up the rumors: What's really in Senate Bill 5

What's really in Senate Bill 5? Clearing up the rumors, misinformation surrounding collective bargaining overhaul

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/03/whats_really_in_senate_5_clear.html

Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 20, 2011
By Joe Guillen

Widespread interest in Senate Bill 5 has brought lots of voices to the debate over the controversial collective bargaining legislation. Here, protesters chant at the Statehouse during Gov. John Kasich's State of the State speech. In the ongoing and sometimes hostile debate over collective bargaining in Ohio, opposing sides finally have found some common ground.

Click image to enlarge.

There are too many rumors, misinterpretations and outright lies about Senate Bill 5, the sides agree.

Republican Gov. John Kasich, who supports the bill overhauling the collective bargaining law, recently said bad information about SB 5 is influencing the opposition.

"I think some of the people who are very upset about this bill don't know what's in the bill," Kasich said on Feb. 27 while in Washington for a National Governors Association conference.

Darold Johnson, director of legislation and political action for the Ohio Federal of Teachers, said some rumors surrounding the bill stem from the sweeping power the bill would give to management.

One rumor floating in teachers' circles is that SB 5 would force them to pay out of pocket for substitute teachers, although the bill contains no such requirement.

"Anything's possible," Johnson said. "You hear so many different rumors on so many different days."

SB 5 would reduce collective bargaining rights of all public workers in the state. Kasich and supporters argue the changes are needed to help public employers control labor costs. Organized labor groups and other opponents say the bill is a union-busting attack on the middle class.

Sen. Shannon Jones, a Republican from Springboro, said she suspects some misinformation is spread intentionally.

State Sen. Shannon Jones, sponsor of Senate Bill 5. "I understand the insecurity around this," Jones said. "When we use fear to keep people from having the conversation, it's counterproductive."

An Ohio House of Representatives committee is reviewing the bill. The Senate passed SB 5 last month in a narrow, 17-16 vote that included six Republicans siding with all 10 Senate Democrats in voting against the bill.

The measure has sparked numerous protests with thousands of union workers and other opponents descending on the Statehouse, mirroring similar demonstrations in Wisconsin and injecting Ohio into the national debate over Republican governors' attempts to curb public workers' collective bargaining rights.

The widespread interest and potential for drastic changes have brought many different voices to the debate. Collective bargaining reform has evolved into a water-cooler topic, ripe for gossip and misinterpretation.

With that in mind, The Plain Dealer combed through the 294-page bill to sift out fact from fiction. Here are some significant changes the bill would make, along with some myths about the proposed law.

Plain Dealer reporter Sabrina Eaton contributed to this story.

What's in SB 5

• Collective bargaining rights reduced for all Ohio public workers

SB 5 preserves wording from Ohio's existing collective bargaining law that gives public workers the right to collectively bargain wages, hours and terms and conditions of employment. However, the bill contains numerous exceptions -- some broad in scope -- that severely limit, or outright prohibit, the terms and conditions subject to collective bargaining. For example, SB 5 lists 15 topics that management can refuse to negotiate. These issues include employees' qualifications and work assignments. The bill also lists topics that cannot be negotiated under any circumstances, including health care benefits costs (locked in at a minimum 15-percent employee contribution) and the number of workers required to be on duty or employed in any department of a public employer.

• Safety forces could lose right to negotiate for protective equipment

This has been a contentious issue between some Republicans and opponents of the bill. At the heart of the disagreement are two topics of negotiation that employers can refuse to discuss under the bill: "the type of equipment used" and "the making of technological alterations by revising either process or equipment or both." Police and fire unions have said this could allow management to provide lower quality safety equipment, such as bulletproof vests. Republicans who support the bill, including Senate President Tom Niehaus, deny that employers can take safety equipment off the bargaining table under SB 5. Niehaus suggested the issue is subject to legal interpretation, and said any problem would be remedied before the bill becomes law. He said Senate Republicans never intended to compromise safety equipment for police officers and firefighters.

• Workers who strike could be jailed

SB 5 bans all public workers from striking and establishes penalties for violating the ban. Under current law, only certain workers, such as police and firefighters, cannot strike. Under SB 5, employers could obtain a court order to halt any strike. Workers who violate the court order and continue to strike could be subject to a $1,000 fine and/or punishments in state law for contempt of court. A first offense for contempt is punishable by up to 30 days in jail and up to a $250 fine.

• Teachers could not negotiate class sizes

Among the topics teachers cannot collectively bargain in SB 5 is "a maximum number of students who may be assigned to a classroom or teacher."

• Teachers' salaries tied to test scores

SB 5 sets standards of performance that will determine how much teachers are paid. The standards are: the teacher's level of license; whether the teacher is considered a "highly qualified teacher," as defined by law; a "value-added measure" of student performance; teacher evaluations; and any other criteria the school board establishes. The performance-based salary schedules will vary by school district, but standardized test scores are a type of value-added measurement elsewhere in Ohio law.

• Public university professors could lose collective bargaining rights

A provision of the bill aims to address the management-like authority afforded some unionized college professors. The language in the bill mirrors a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court case involving Yeshiva University, a small, private school in New York City. In that case, the court ordered the decertification of the faculty union after determining faculty members were performing significant managerial functions involving tenure, hiring and curriculum. SB 5 would classify professors who participate in such activities as "management level" workers and, therefore, exempt from collective bargaining rights.

What's not in SB 5

• Teachers' salaries cut in half

Currently, a salary scale for teachers is set in state law. The scale dictates the minimum amount teachers can be paid, $17,300, and lays out pay raises based on experience and level of college degree. Many school districts, however, have adopted their own salary scale, through collective bargaining, to replace the state's scale. SB 5 completely removes the scale from state law. In its place, the bill establishes performance-based criteria for teachers' raises. The bill does not establish a new minimum or maximum salary that teachers will be paid. That will be up to individual school districts. Once existing contracts expire, school districts would set their own pay scales, including a minimum salary, through negotiations with teachers' unions. If the two sides cannot agree on a pay scale, the school board would act as the final decision-maker. SB 5 establishes a new method of dispute resolution that requires an employer's legislative body -- commonly a school board or a city council -- to settle disputes.

• Pension benefits cut

The bill does not require public employees to pay any more or less toward their pensions. Under current law, public workers contribute up to 10 percent of their paycheck toward their pensions and their employers must pay 14 percent. These percentages can be adjusted under current law through labor negotiations using "pension pick-ups" -- a practice by which employers agree to pay a portion of the employees' 10 percent contribution. SB 5 outlaws "pension pick-ups" but it does not increase the standard 10 percent pension contribution public employees are expected to make, nor does it reduce management's contribution.

• Domestic partner benefits eliminated

According to a Feb. 21 e-mail from Equality Ohio, urging opposition to SB 5, the bill "contains language that could impact current and future domestic partner benefits for LGBT employees." There is nothing, however, in SB 5 that specifically targets the LGBT community. Confusion arose when an earlier version of the bill was under consideration in the Senate Insurance, Commerce and Labor Committee. That version restated the existing Ohio marriage law, including the state's policy against extending benefits in same-sex relationships.The latest version of SB 5, as it was passed in the Senate, removed any reference to Ohio's marriage law. Equality Ohio remains opposed to the bill because collective bargaining is often the only way members of the LGBT community can receive domestic partner benefits.

• Existing collective bargaining agreements eliminated

SB 5 is not retroactive. If the bill passes, all public employees' collective bargaining agreements in place before the law takes effect would not be changed. However, once SB 5 takes effect, if it passes, provisions in previous contracts would not automatically be subject to future negotiations. SB 5 removes language from the existing collective bargaining law that forces both sides to negotiate terms agreed upon in the prior contract.

• Teachers required to pay for substitutes out of their own pockets

There is nothing in the bill that would set such a policy, despite a rumor that has been circulating among teachers. But union leaders fear school districts could eventually set their own rules because they say SB 5 tips the scales so drastically in management's favor. The provision stoking these worries allows management to refuse to collectively bargain "any and all reasonable rules and regulations."

"They define reasonable," Sean Grayson, general counsel for AFSCME Ohio Council 8, said. That means an employer could say, "I've got this reasonable work rule and we're not going to bargain about it," Grayson said.

• Workers' sick leave allowances eliminated

SB 5 does not eliminate sick leave, but it reduces the amount of sick leave afforded most local government employees from three weeks a year to two weeks. State workers currently get two weeks of sick leave per year.