Originally Posted By skinnerbox Exclusive: GOP Senator Yanked Off Committee Speaks Out, Was Informed 30 Minutes Before Anti-Union Vote <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/04/seitz-interview/" target="_blank">http://thinkprogress.org/2011/...terview/</a> <> On Wednesday, just moments before a key committee in the Ohio State Senate was to vote on a GOP bill that would effectively dismantle public employees’ right to collectively bargain, the Senate’s Republican leader replaced a GOP committee member who opposed the bill with someone who supported it to ensure the measure passed. It was a brazen and nearly unprecedented move, and even more so considering that State Sen. Bill Seitz (R) told ThinkProgress that he is good friends with, and has been roommates for ten years with State Senate President Tom Niehaus, who yanked Seitz off the committee. Indeed, they were sworn in to the state House on the same day and eventually followed each other to the Senate, sharing an apartment in the capital throughout. In a telephone interview with ThinkProgress yesterday afternoon, Seitz recounted how he was informed of the move by his good friend Niehaus just a half hour before the vote. Seitz, a conservative Republican who proudly noted that he works for a “management-side” law firm founded by the namesake of the very pro-management Taft-Hartley Act, said he supports “85 percent” of Senate Bill 5, but ultimately opposed it because it “goes to far.” Asked about his abrupt removal from the committee, Seitz said it was “not unheard of, but not commonplace.” He couldn’t recall a time when something similar had occurred in the Senate. Moreover, he noted that his abrupt removal sends a bad signal to Ohio workers concerned about their own future: SEITZ: [I told Niehaus] I’m not sure it looks real good, particularly in the context of a management rights bill, to have you exercise management rights over your own roommate, friend, and fellow party member. Because if that’s what can happen to a sitting state senator, what’s going to happen to you if you’re a nervous firefighter, teacher, or policeman — what’s going to happen to you if this bill passes? Asked whether Niehaus’s move may have violated Senate rules because the president failed to officially declare the committee change before it went into effect, Seitz said that while he has “not independently researched it,” he was “of the opinion” that an official declaration was required. Seitz said he raised the concern with Niehaus, who “said that he had been advised by his legal counsel…that he had the legal authority to do it whenever he wanted to.” “I didn’t feel like arguing about it,” Seitz added. Seitz said he firmly supports the right of state employees to collectively bargain, but that there needs to be reforms — he just thinks S.B. 5 overreaches. “I don’t think you need to so totally eviscerate collective bargaining to achieve those results,” Seitz said. “And I say that informed by an employer’s perspective of labor law,” he added. Most objectionable for Seitz is the bill’s replacement of a binding arbitration process with one that greatly favors management over employees. “It’s tantamount to someone being both a judge and advocate in their own case. It’s tantamount to heads I win, tails you loose,” Seitz said. <> This is clearly designed to abolish unions, period. With the elimination of collective bargaining and binding arbitration that's fair to employees, corporations will dominate the political landscape. Millions in corporate campaign donations to the GOP will go unmatched. There won't be enough organized labor left to donate to the DNC to give the Dems a fighting chance in countering GOP political attacks and lies which will flood the airwaves before election day. This has NOTHING to do with fixing state budgets. It has EVERYTHING to do with busting unions that support the Democrats.
Originally Posted By Tony C The only thing we can hope is the independent voters wake up and see the damage the GOP plans on doing to this country.
Originally Posted By Mr Y >>Tony C The only thugs I see are the Republicans and their corporate masters.<< Tony Tony Tony, we are the people the public unions are fighting against. The tax payers pay the public Unions not corporations. You must be a public school teacher.
Originally Posted By Mr Y >> Tony C No just someone who believes in the rights of ALL workers.<< Tony Tony, Federal employees do not have the right to collective bargaining, and I don't see Obama asking that they get it, do you? Franklin Roosevelt said that public union can not exist because they would be paying off a party for power, and that would corrupt our institutions, as we all see it has. Like I said bet you work for a public union.
Originally Posted By Mr Y >> Tony C No just someone who believes in the rights of ALL workers.<< Tony Tony, Federal employees do not have the right to collective bargaining, and I don't see Obama asking that they get it, do you? Franklin Roosevelt said that public union can not exist because they would be paying off a party for power, and that would corrupt our institutions, as we all see it has. Like I said bet you work for a public union.
Originally Posted By Tony C I work for a private company that has a union which I'm a proud member of. We have collective barganing. All unions should have it, you have to be fair to the workers. An attack on one is an attack on us all.
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Originally Posted By Disneypayer I have to agree with Mr Y here. Us tax payers should not be held hostage by people we pay to do our services.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper Public employee unions are a big part of the problem when it comes to local, state and national debt. Their pension and legacy costs are crippling government agencies. I'm not sure the answer should be to effectively destry unions...but there is no doubt something must be done. For some crazy reason people still expect government services to be there for them.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<Public employee unions are a big part of the problem when it comes to local, state and national debt. Their pension and legacy costs are crippling government agencies.>> Before you vilify public unions for "crippling" state governments, you need to fact check this theory of yours, and prove precisely why you believe this is true. And you had better include plenty of examples where state governments had raided pension funds to be used elsewhere, and never paid back the "loan." Or where pension funds tanked into the abyss by poor investment management, fraud, and failed oversight by the state. Or where states actually "forgot" to put the employee contributions into the funds and apparently "lost" them. State Republicans are using the pension funds as a scapegoat to dismantle their public unions. Had these funds been managed properly, as some states have done consistently and aren't facing a fiscal crisis regarding payout to retirees, there wouldn't be all this finger pointing. But heaven forbid these slimeball politicians actually be held accountable for blaming public union pensions for their lack of ethical behavior regarding the state's piggy bank.
Originally Posted By fkurucz I read an interesting parable the other day: A Corporatist, a private sector worker and a public sector worker are served a plate with 12 cookies. The Corporatist snags 10 of the cookies, leaving 1 each for the other two people. He then grabs the private sector worker's cookie, snaps it in half, taking away half of it. He then tells the private sector worker: "You're getting ripped off by that public sector worker"
Originally Posted By queenbee I heard that on the Rachel Maddow Show. They attributed it to a facbook posting of a former politician. I can't remember which one. This is the way I heard it. A Corporatist, a union rep, and a tea partier are served a plate of 12 cookies. The corporatist takes 11 of the cookies and turns to the tea partier while pointing to the union rep and says, "He's trying to steal your cookie."
Originally Posted By Mr X That's funny. I just posted it elsewhere, but I changed the names to reflect reality. Namely, "teabagger", and "CAPITALIST" (what's all this "corporatist" crap??).
Originally Posted By Mr X What a weird reversal..."liberal" becomes a swear word or some other sort of curse (wow, who was responsible for THAT!!??), so they invent "progressive". And on the flip side, calling a spade a spade for good OR bad (in other words, a CAPITALIST), is somehow untouchable...so a new word, "corporatist" is invented. Bah.
Originally Posted By fkurucz "what's all this "corporatist" crap??)." Its to distinguish between real Capitalists and Corporatists. Corporatism is the system where big biz gets all the breaks and bail outs while Main Street (small and medium biz) is allowed to burn to the ground. Its the system where the super rich lecture everyone about "personal responsibility" while they are exempt from. Some would argue that Corporatism is a corrupt form of capitalism. akin to what Communism is to Socialism. (THers might argue that its Capitalism in its purest form. " heard that on the Rachel Maddow Show. They attributed it to a facbook posting of a former politician. I can't remember which one." Ah! So that's where it came from! I don't watch her show, but one quote of hers that I like is: "I'm undoubtedly a liberal, which means that I'm in almost total agreement with the Eisenhower-era Republican party platform."
Originally Posted By fkurucz >>(THers might argue that its Capitalism in its purest form. Others might argue "And on the flip side, calling a spade a spade for good OR bad (in other words, a CAPITALIST), is somehow untouchable...so a new word, "corporatist" is invented." I think that its useful to distinguish the corrupt system we have now from the more equitable system we used to have. Not that J6P has a clue, as he swept the crooks back into office, on the promise of "Smaller gov't" (which means fewer govt programs for J6P and more tax breaks for the rich).
