Senate Bill 5 Stand Up For Ohio Rally Draws Hundreds in Akron

More than 400 people stood in a steady rain and near-freezing temperatures for two hours Tuesday to voice their opposition to Senate Bill 5, the proposed legislation that would slash collective bargaining for union workers and prohibit them from going on strike.

Ralliers included teachers from Copley-Fairlawn and Stark County, firefighters from Cuyahoga Falls and Alliance, Akron police, steelworkers, autoworkers and others.

They huddled at the Laborers International Hall on Wolf Ledges under multicolored umbrellas or stood covered in bright blue plastic rain slickers passed out by a visiting New York union.

Standing along Wolf Ledges as passing traffic honked at the protesters,  Kira Kaylor, a sixth-grader at Lakeview Intermediate School of Stow-Munroe Falls City Schools, said she was worried about how the bill would affect her future. “I want to go to a good college because I really want to be a librarian.”

Kira's mom, Kathy Kaylor, an Akron Public Schools employee, added, “If mom  loses her job, that’s not going to happen.”

Crowd members waived signs that read “Kasich is Not King” and chanted, “Kill the bill” and “United we bargain, divided we beg.”

Speaker after speaker -- 21 in all -- said the slogans were the first volley in a war for survival of the middle class.

The rally was one of 13 protests Tuesday across Ohio organized by Stand Up for Good Jobs and Strong Communities, a coalition of faith, community, student, labor and civil rights groups. Another rally took place in .

The aim was to send a loud message to state lawmakers, who appear poised to pass the controversial bill limiting employee bargaining rights.

“Labor was busted three times before the 1930s,” said speaker Charlie Lemon, a former boilermaker who is now president of the United Retirees of America. "It was Wall Street – déjà vu. Here we are again.”

Lemon told the crowd that unions have had it much harder. “You think you’ve got it tough? Stand up! Fight! Take your country back!”

The bill still needs the vote of the Republican-controlled House and the signature of Republican Gov. John Kasich. Virtually every speaker saw the bill also as a thinly veiled attack on the Democratic Party and on the presidential election of 2012.

“The bill is full of contradictions," said Stow resident Mike Rusnak, vice president of Akron Education Association, as he stood among the crowd in the rain. "On one hand the standard line is they’re preserving collective bargaining in the bill, but on the other hand if you look at the details of the bill, they have prohibited boards from negotiating virtually everything that matters to teachers. Their transfer rights are prohibited. I mean, what does it matter to the state budget if a young teacher wants to transfer from a middle school to high school – without having to worry about asking its principal or some retaliation? That’s got nothing to do with the state budget. This is about control.

“These are things that are going to set the profession back decades and it’s going to destroy public education,” Rusnak said. 

“Senate Bill 5 is about trying to reduce the political power of unions. That’s what it’s all about," said Greg Coleridge, director of the American Friends Service in Cuyahoga Falls. He said the bill, along with last year’s Supreme Court decision to allow corporations to finance political commercials, has shifted the balance of power in favor of big business.

“Kasich’s banker buddies are at the front of the line wanting their payoff," he said.  "Senate Bill 5 is about the corporatization of public assets, our jails, our schools."

Copley-Fairlawn special education teacher Beth Kasper was among the speakers who predicted a referendum of the bill.

"This legislation hurts our communities,” Kasper said. “We understand the state needs to balance its budget. We can do it without pitting taxpayers against each other."

Recent polls suggest public workers have support among Ohio residents for a referendum. According to Public Policy Polling numbers released Tuesday, 54 percent of voters in the state say they'd vote to repeal SB 5 if it becomes law. Thirty-one percent said they'd vote against repeal.

Rusnak, the Akron Education Association executive from Stow, said the fight is likely to extend to the courtroom. “If this law passes, I think we’ll have multiple lawsuits even just on the matter of pay. I think that will happen.”