7
The Real Fight Begins
Even before the House vote, we at the UC-AAUP had begun making plans for the next step in the struggle. In a message to our membership on March 29, signed by Deborah Herman, Jana Braziel (our vice president), and me, we noted that we were preparing for Round Two. In collaboration with We Are Ohio, the Ohio Conference, and the other AAUP chapters statewide, we would be joining in the drive to get more than 231,000 signatures collected in 90 days so that we could place on the November ballot an issue to repeal Senate Bill 5. The bill would be barred from going into effect by our signature-gathering campaign.
We emphasized that this would be a complex undertaking. It was necessary that We Are Ohio propose language for the referendum, which would need to be approved by the Secretary of State’s office. That language needed to be submitted along with 1,000 signatures. Once the language was approved, we would have 90 days to collect 10 percent of the number of votes cast for governor in the most recent election. In this case, that meant over 231,000 signatures. We told our members that the scale and challenge of this effort was why the labor coalition would be hiring professional staff to make sure the drive was managed effectively.
We also explained that even if Senate Bill 5 went into effect, our contract at UC would continue until it expired on June 30, 2013. Thus, we wrote, even in a worst-case scenario, we had some security until then and could focus our efforts entirely on repealing the legislation. What we did not talk about publicly was our fear that if we failed to repeal Senate Bill 5, given the radical nature of Gov. Kasich’s strategy, that he would take advantage of another feature of the legislation.
If SB 5 went into effect, he would have the right to declare a state of fiscal emergency and abrogate all existing union contracts. Given the behavior of Kasich and his allies so far, we suspected that this was exactly what would happen. Yet, even barring the possibility of this worst-case scenario, we had plenty to worry about in defending the university and our profession. “Between now and 2013,” we wrote to our colleagues, “all AAUP Chapters across Ohio will be putting full effort into securing our collective bargaining rights for the future—for our own sake, but also for the sake of UC students, their parents, and the future of truly public higher education.”
In retrospect I must emphasize, as well, the activity and leadership shown by AAUP state conference executive director Sara Kilpatrick, President Dr. John Cuppoletti, and the entire conference board. The board’s communications committee, led by Professor Dave Witt and Professor Steve Aby of the University of Akron and Professor Marty Kich of Wright State, had really stepped up their work to inform all the chapters of the joint efforts around Ohio to stop SB 5. Their work to coordinate our statewide efforts was invaluable.
Locally, I cannot say enough about the faculty on the UC-AAUP executive council. They were, from a variety of academic disciplines, Jana Braziel, Lynn Davis, Robin Dennison, Ron Jones, Andrea Kornbluh, Greg Loving, Rick Paul, Stephen Pelikan, Helen Meyer, Stephen Mockabee, Jennie Russell, Debbie Tenofsky, and Alan Vespie. It was not easy for faculty members who are mainly accustomed to calm, reasoned argument within the confines of a university environment to realize that they need to engage in a bitter political battle with forces that really wish to see their undoing. Former staffer Dave Rubin provided invaluable advice.
In our first meeting after the Kasich visit, we considered a new policy. Surprised at the use of UC security against faculty, and now knowing just how bad things might get as the struggle went on, we discussed a policy about proper conduct during demonstrations, what the limits of the chapter’s liability would be, and how best to maintain the image of the faculty and the AAUP under such trying circumstances. Tempers had been frayed by the experience and the stress we were under, and it was only the beginning. Good people could simply disagree about some of the strategy, but we shared a common bond in working for the good of the university.
I heard from both students and our state executive director Sara Kilpatrick that a student mobilization workshop was being held in Columbus on April 3 at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall. The students wanted some faculty to attend, and so I joined several other AAUP leaders from other universities at the workshop. The topic was Senate Bill 5 and several voter suppression bills. It was a great experience and another opportunity to be impressed by the smart, capable, and creative students who came to the fore during this crisis.
About 50 student leaders were in attendance from various colleges and universities around the state, including Ohio State, UC, Miami, Akron, Shawnee State, Wright State, and Ohio University. Aliya Rahman of Miami and Elizabeth Anthorp of UC gave an update about the efforts in the Cincinnati area. For faculty, the important aspect of the meeting was to make contact with many of the students who would be key allies in our campaign in the months ahead. It was encouraging to see that many of the students had a more sophisticated understanding of the threats Ohioans were facing than did some of our faculty who, absorbed in their research and teaching, had not paid much attention until now to the growing political threats to higher education.
Communication was going to be central for us from this point forward, and social media played a major role in connecting many disparate groups. Several Facebook sites were developed, including Stand Up for Ohio, Defend Ohio, Students Opposing SB 5, No SB5 for Ohio, UC Defend Ohio, Defend UC, and Students Opposing SB5. Additional Facebook sites focused on other damaging aspects of legislative activity, such as Save Our Turnpikes and Stop Selling/Leasing Ohio Assets (including privatizing prisons to turn them into corporate profit centers). All of these and others contributed to creating a statewide dialogue that united the resistance against many extremist initiatives.
In an effort to keep the momentum moving and kick off the signature-collecting campaign, rallies across the state were planned for April 4. The goal was not to bring protesters in their thousands again to the statehouse but instead to focus on the local communities for grassroots demonstrations that would tie the movement closely to local issues. I was contacted by Bill Dudley, a local organizer for the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) to participate. Dudley had already generated his own contacts with student groups, though I tried to help with those efforts. He asked whether I could speak briefly at a rally in Dayton, and naturally I said yes. Dudley was to be one of those people who stood up during the campaign and worked very hard to ensure our joint success.
I rode to the Dayton rally, which was held at the Teamsters hall, with a busload of students in the pouring rain. As we entered the building, we found about two hundred people and their families waiting for us, and a good number of students from Wright State and Miami University. I was glad to see that Rudy Fichtenbaum, chief negotiator of the Wright State AAUP chapter (and future AAUP national president), was there as well. Various Dayton-area labor and political leaders, as well as several students, spoke about the importance of defeating SB 5, and then Fichtenbaum and I had a chance to speak.
A labor economist by discipline, Dr. Fichtenbaum laid out a careful and detailed argument. He minced no words, listing Senate Bill 5, voter suppression bills, bills to undermine public pensions, and efforts to create “charter universities” as “all part of a well-financed concerted effort by the Republicans and Wall Street to undermine the standard of living for working Americans. Wall Street and their lapdogs in Washington have declared war on America’s working families.” He went through the various damaging aspects of Senate Bill 5 and ridiculed the idea that anything fair had been provided to replace binding arbitration to resolve disputes: “Calling this a dispute resolution procedure is like claiming that a bank robber, with a loaded gun, is negotiating a withdrawal from the bank.”1 Laughter and cheers filled the hall.
Noting that he was a college professor, he said, “let me give you a little test. Will SB 5 and the governor’s budget create more jobs for Ohioans?” “No,” came the roaring reply. Fichtenbaum continued, asking in sequence, “Will SB 5 improve education in our public schools? Will SB 5 and the governor’s budget give us better emergency and fire protection services? Will SB 5 and the governor’s budget help care for the sick, the abused, and the elderly? Will SB 5 and the governor’s budget and his support to privatize our universities . . . give our children a better college education?”
“No,” the crowd roared in answer to each of these questions. “You all get an A,” said Prof. Fichtenbaum, but he added, “Our governor, the governor from Wall Street, who worked for Lehman Brothers, who helped bring us the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the Republican-dominated legislature, get an F.” He went on to poke holes in the flawed Republican arguments, demonstrating, for example, that for comparable jobs with comparable education, public workers earn less than their private sector counterparts.
Fichtenbaum then went on to explain how Senate Bill 5 particularly targeted college professors. Backers of the bill called professors managers because “we make recommendations about who our colleges and universities should hire to teach your children, because we have the temerity to demand that we make recommendation on the selection of administrators,” or recommendations regarding planning, budgets, educational policies, curriculum, as well as on hiring and retention of faculty. “We make recommendations,” Fichtenbaum emphasized, “based on our knowledge and professional expertise, these are not decisions. They are recommendations!” He added, “Anyone who doesn’t know the difference between a recommendation and a decision needs to back to school because they are not qualified to be voting or to be signing legislation.”
“I’ve been a professor of economics at Wright State for 31 years,” Fichtenbaum, gray-haired and bespectacled, said. “Do I look like an administrator?” he asked, to loud laughter. “Do I sound like an administrator?” He concluded,
I am not a history professor, but that last time I looked there was still a document called the Constitution of the United States of America, and if I recall correctly, it doesn’t start out “We the Corporations” or “We the Wall Street Bankers.” It starts “We the People.” Let’s take back our country and our state. Let’s start by repealing SB 5 and fighting for a budget that puts people before profits.
It was my job to follow this tough act. Although we had not planned this, Fichtenbaum had set me up. “Well,” I said, “I am a history professor, and I’m going to talk to you about some history.” The crowd chuckled, and I started by noting that the hundredth anniversary of the Triangle Fire on March 25 had just passed and remarking on the obvious irony in the timing of this attack on unions by the state legislature. I detailed some of the events surrounding the fire, especially the brave work of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) and the irresponsible behavior of the business owners that led to the deaths of 146 workers, most of them young immigrant women.
I particularly credited FDR and the New Deal for creating a legal framework, with the Wagner Act, in which workers could stand on a level playing field with corporations to fight for fair treatment, fair wages, and reasonable benefits. I then quoted the well-known statement by President John F. Kennedy:
Those who would destroy or further limit the rights of organized labor—those who would cripple collective bargaining or prevent organization of the unorganized—do a disservice to the cause of democracy. Employees, represented by free and democratic trade unions of their own choosing, participate actively in determining their wages, hours and working conditions. Their living standards are the highest in the world. Their job rights are protected by collective bargaining agreements. They have fringe benefits that were unheard of less than a generation ago. Our labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They have raised wages, shortened hours and provided supplemental benefits. Through collective bargaining and grievance procedures, they have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor. But their work goes beyond their own jobs, and even beyond our borders. Our unions have fought for aid to education, for better housing, for development of our national resources, and for saving the family-sized farms. They have spoken, not for narrow self-interest, but for the public interest and for the people.2
Naturally, these words brought loud applause from the crowd. I concluded that in this drive to defeat SB 5, our movement represented all kinds of Ohioans, including college professors. “I think I can speak for the AAUP, that we are in this with you to defend our way of life in Ohio, to defend our universities, and we are in this to win.” The Teamsters roared their approval. Afterward, Fichtenbaum and I had the chance to marvel at what had just happened. Two college professors, local political and labor leaders, and students—all speaking in a Teamsters union hall, and to great enthusiasm. That kind of united purpose, we hoped, could not be defeated.
Another huge rally was planned for Columbus on Saturday, April 9. Buses left Cincinnati from the United Auto Workers hall on Reading Road and the AFSCME hall on Tennessee Road at 9:30 in the morning. Announcing the rally, Sara Kilpatrick’s message explained that the point of the rally was to continue the kickoff of the referendum drive: “Because the fight has just begun! We need all hands on deck for the referendum effort. This is the fight of our lives!”
About fifteen thousand people turned out in Columbus on April 9 to show their opposition to Senate Bill 5. From all reports, it was a raucous rally. Prof. Fichtenbaum again addressed the multitude. But I was thousands of miles away in Dublin, Ireland, at a conference. Something I have not mentioned much until now is the obvious fact that, as a faculty member, I have many responsibilities at the university. Most importantly, I had four sections of the year-long world history survey to teach. My first responsibility is always for about a hundred students each term. Not only did that entail preparing lectures for the classroom and meeting with students in my office over their reading and especially their term papers, but I had exams and quizzes to prepare and grade. As a multidisciplinary department at our regional college in Blue Ash, where we work to teach critical thinking, the faculty in our department have taken a writing-intensive approach. That means essay exams, a term paper, and other short writing assignments. Teaching, preparing, grading, and working with students and meeting with them on the weekends for History Club or for study sessions before exams, all involves the meat and potatoes of my career and the things I love about it.
Naturally, like other academics involved in the SB 5 fight, I could not allow my outside activities to interfere with my core responsibilities. Part of those ongoing responsibilities includes my research agenda. As a Cold War historian, I’ve published books, articles, and reviews on the period, and my work is always continuing. Thus, the weekend of the big rally in Columbus, I was off to give a paper at the William J. Clinton Institute for American Studies at University College Dublin. The conference, “History, Memory and American Foreign Policy,” featured many international historians. Prominent historian Jay Winter of Yale University gave the keynote address. I spoke on the Ulster background of Truman’s Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson and the impact that had on his foreign policy design in the early Cold War. Because of my pressing responsibilities, I flew to Ireland and back on the weekend. Interestingly, many of the historians at the conference, from several European countries, knew about the struggle we were waging in Ohio and wanted a firsthand report. I was happy to provide the story over pints of Guinness.
The AAUP’s Ohio Conference had its annual meeting in Columbus on the weekend of April 15–16, which, coincidentally, was ideal timing because we were able to focus on issues connected to Senate Bill 5 and how we could best organize to defend Ohio’s faculty. Probably most importantly, the staff, particularly UC’s Debby Herman, designed a workshop to teach all of us how to properly and legally collect signatures for the referendum campaign. They were meticulous in training us how to do this, with the goal of ensuring that none of our signatures would be turned away as illegitimate. We anticipated that the Republicans, who had done whatever was necessary to pass SB 5, would also do whatever they could to disqualify our signature-gathering. We had to gather booklets of signatures so perfect that they could not be thrown out.
After the state conference, we quickly scheduled a series of workshops across our three campuses to educate more faculty and students about how to collect valid signatures. Dozens of faculty and students took part in the workshops as we geared up for what we knew would be a challenging drive to collect thousands of signatures. In the meantime, we had passed another hurdle in the drive.
On Friday, April 15, the Ohio Attorney General approved the petition ballot language, and the Ohio Secretary of State certified that about 2,500 of the 2,800 signatures submitted (only 1,000 were needed) were valid. We Are Ohio now began printing the first batch of petitions to be distributed to various points around the state. The campaign leaders made it very clear that what we needed was exactly 231,149 valid signatures to get the referendum on the ballot so we could repeal SB 5 at the polls in November 2011. The petition booklets would have about 70 signature lines, yet they would be over 100 pages long, since Ohio law requires that the entire bill be attached to the petition. Further, each petition booklet could only have signatures of registered voters from a single county.
“We must take seriously our responsibility to preserve the integrity of this process,” Sara Kilpatrick of the Ohio Conference emphasized in a message to the leadership. “We don’t want to be the ones handing in lots of petition booklets that are subsequently disqualified, or lose any of them!” Outlining the strategy, she emphasized that, first, each collector had to go through one of the training sessions. She said she was willing to go to any chapter to do a training session and noted also that the UC chapter staff had also been trained and was able and willing to do training sessions as well. Second, each chapter needed to name a lead organizer who would be responsible for the booklets. Each of the booklets would have a tracking number, and the individual signing out the book would be responsible for returning it. The lead organizer in each chapter would be Kilpatrick’s direct contact for delivering and collecting booklets and dealing with any problems. Third, no collector could keep a booklet longer than two weeks. This was in part to make sure they weren’t lost, but also because We Are Ohio needed to keep track of the speed with which we were gathering signatures.
In April, our UC executive council also adopted a new policy. I have to emphasize what a groundbreaking moment this was. As I’ve pointed out before, for decades the chapter had been apolitical and, until the Strickland donation, had never contributed to a political campaign. But now for the first time in our history, forced by the political attack on our existence, we wrote, debated, and adopted a Labor Solidarity Donations and Endorsements Policy. This was a clear sign that we were gearing up for the fight to defend our profession and our university.
The signature-gathering in Cincinnati got off to a strong start on April 23, when a jointly sponsored signing event was held at University Ministry Baptist Church, sponsored locally by the AFL-CIO Labor Council and We Are Ohio. “Join Cincinnati firefighters, nurses, teachers, clergy, students, and other citizens,” the announcement stressed, “and be among the first to sign a petition to place SB 5 on the ballot in November.” Hundreds of people showed up for that first signing, perhaps demonstrating a pent-up desire to strike back at the legislation. The turnout at this event boded well for the future. The actual scale of the organization as it developed was extraordinarily impressive. By early May, We Are Ohio announced that they had more than ten thousand people gathering signatures across the state, and clearly the overwhelming majority of those people were union members like us, who were committed to defeating this attack on Ohio’s way of life.
One factor that became clear during this early period of the campaign was that religious groups in Ohio—at least the Catholic Church and mainstream Protestant churches—were opposed to gutting collective bargaining rights. On March 2, a coalition of nearly one hundred clergy released a statement expressing their opposition to SB 5. On the other hand, a handful of politically right-wing evangelical churches were much less forthcoming, but undoubtedly their membership was made up of many Republicans who were philosophically, even theologically, against unions. But the religious groups that went public were unequivocal in their support of collective bargaining rights.
Recognizing that it was the season of Passover, Tom Choquette, director of the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center issued a statement that read, in part, “The human values of respect for the dignity of persons and the right to economic security, spiritually affirmed through these religious rites, appear to the Cincinnati Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice to be put at risk by recent legislation passed by the Ohio General Assembly and signed by the Governor.” Senate Bill 5, in particular, “causes grave concern.” The impact of such legislation, Choquette wrote, will be to “increase the economic vulnerability of families of public sector workers, especially those on the lower end of wage scale. With their purchasing power reduced and their confidence in their economic future diminished, the participation of these workers economically and socially in the life of their community will likely decline.” In addition, he asked, “What happens to workers’ self-worth and morale when through the curtailing of collective bargaining rights they are told your voice, your point of view, your experience on a whole range of issues will no longer be listened to or considered in the contract negotiation process?” Choquette asked group members to attend a meeting sponsored by the AFL-CIO at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers hall on Fishwick Drive on April 25, “to become involved in this vital campaign to insure economic and social balance.”3
Led by Bishop Dennis Schnurr of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, the Catholic bishops of Ohio had weighed in early on the issue. In a statement on February 28, the bishops wrote that they “encourage leaders in government, labor, and business to pursue changes that promote the common good without the elimination of collective bargaining.” While the debate at that point was continuing, they urged good-faith negotiations. “In our faith tradition,” the bishops wrote, “defending the human dignity of every person, born and unborn, includes promoting economic justice.” The bishops emphasized that people “are at the center of all things and the economy exists for them, not people for the economy. This social doctrine has long recognized that all people have the right to economic initiative, to productive work, to just wages and benefits, to decent working conditions, to organize and join unions or other associations, and to engage in collective bargaining.”4 By contrast, politician and evangelical preacher Mike Huckabee made a stop in the Cincinnati area late in the campaign on October 14 to make a pitch for SB 5. “Make a list” of your friends, Huckabee told his audience in Mason, a Cincinnati suburb. “Call them and ask them, ‘Are you going to vote on Issue 2, and are you going to vote for it?’ If they say no, well, you just make sure that they don’t go vote. Let the air out of their tires on Election Day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date. It is up to you how you creatively get the job done.”
Of course there was a good deal of laughter surrounding such comments, but faith leaders and NAACP leaders wasted no time in criticizing the comments. “Huckabee’s disgusting comments show that Building a Better Ohio and its corporate-funded supporters will do anything, even advocate for illegal tactics, to keep Ohioans from voting against Issue 2,” said NAACP Ohio Conference President Sybil Edwards-McNabb.5
On April 25 the Women’s City Club, a historic organization founded in 1915 in Cincinnati, sponsored perhaps the first public forum on Senate Bill 5 and other controversial legislation passed by the Republican legislature. Representing the pro-SB 5 and Republican side would be local Tea Party founder Mike Wilson and attorney Gary Greenberg. Representing the Democratic and labor side would be Tim Burke, head of the Hamilton County Democratic Party, and Julie Sellers, president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers. I attended the event at Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church’s social hall to represent the AAUP.
After both sides had made initial statements, the floor was opened for questions. Most of the pro-SB 5 commentary had been inaccurate about the preservation of collective bargaining and how this was necessary for governments to reduce expenses. I pointed out what had already been said—that to eliminate binding arbitration and create a system where the administration simply got to impose its will did, in fact, eliminate any meaningful collective bargaining. But the heart of my comment was to point out that the faculty unions, without question, were specifically slated for elimination in SB 5. I identified myself as president of the UC-AAUP and said that elimination of my union was exactly what SB 5 aimed to do and explained why. Since it was the faculty who were the real bulwark protecting excellence at any university, I noted, this was a direct attack on the quality of higher education in Ohio.
Greenberg attempted to make the old flawed comments about the principle of shared governance being the reason that faculty were really managers and thus should not be union members. “You can’t have it both ways,” he said. Before I could weigh in again, Tim Burke, who was clearly on top of the issue, pointed out clearly how ridiculous it was to bar professors from union membership simply for doing their jobs.
Surprisingly, after some vigorous back-and-forth about the legislation, the conversation turned to a series of Republican voter suppression bills, especially House Bill 194. The senior citizens in the audience were especially irate at the obstacles being put in the way of voting. An older woman, who had volunteered to work the polls for years, was especially vehement in her denunciations of the legislation. Noting that she was a Republican, she said she had never seen anyone try to vote who was not eligible. The problem, she said, was that not enough people voted, and that was the issue that should be addressed, not trying to reduce the number of people who vote. The audience loudly murmured their agreement.
On balance, I thought, that when both arguments about Senate Bill 5 were put side-by-side for the people to decide, as they were at this Women’s City Club forum, SB 5 looked like just what it was—an extremist effort to disarm ordinary people and make it much easier to exploit them. It left me feeling hopeful that we could win but all the more certain that opponents of the bill genuinely had to continually and loudly lay out our arguments about the legislation so that people could fairly judge the impact of such a law.
In an effort to do this, through the UC-AAUP we mobilized faculty around a “teach-in” on Senate Bill 5, other damaging legislation, and some national trends. Dr. David Stradling, a professor of history, had been a student of William Cronon’s and gave a talk about Cronon and his work, and about the attacks that he faced for speaking out about the actions of the Wisconsin legislature. For my part, I gave a review of several important books written about the radical turn that has taken hold of the Republican Party, in order to explain the roots of the extremism. Part of the teach-in was a film series about various movements around the world for economic justice. Although we did not have a great turnout for the event, we nonetheless communicated our concerns to dozens of students who perhaps had not thought through the consequences political decisions have on their lives.
Once again I have to credit the students that I worked with for their self-organization and awareness of the importance of these issues to their lives. On April 28, we heard from Kate Beltramo, one of the student organizers who was such a joy to work with. “Hello, Professors,” she wrote. Noting that she was serving with Organizing for America, she informed us that the “UC Democrats, Defend Ohio, Students Opposing SB 5, and other progressive groups on campus have teamed together to get this bill on the ballot. I have been trained by We Are Ohio to circulate the petitions, and I have developed a medium-sized team to circulate petitions.” She continued:
It would be wonderful to work together on this! I have reserved McMicken Commons (and indoor space inside TUC in case of rain!) for the entire month of May, but volunteers have stated that Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays (10 a.m. to 3 p.m.) would be best for tabling. This is still being solidified, so I will email you as soon as I know what days we’re going to table. The days will be consistent throughout the month of May, and we may even add more depending on availability and interest.
She concluded her note: “Thank you for everything you do for both the referendum efforts and for education.” She ended with a cheerful smiley face.
Of course, this was a perfect opportunity for faculty and students to work together, and we jumped at the chance. By this time, thanks to our staff, we had at least two dozen faculty members properly trained to collect signatures. Having received our first shipment of booklets on April 26, we began to fan out through the university and the community to begin gathering the signatures. At my college in suburban Blue Ash, we organized tables three or four days a week, staffed by faculty, to collect signatures.
While we were gathering signatures across the university to allow students and faculty the opportunity to sign the referendum, other unions were working through the various Cincinnati neighborhoods. At the state level, our executive director Sara Kilpatrick was traveling to campuses throughout the state, training people to properly collect signatures. During the last week of April, for example, she traveled from our office in Columbus to Kent State, the University of Akron, Cincinnati State, and the University of Toledo, where she consulted with leadership and trained at least 55 more faculty members to collect signatures.
One of the most interesting experiences during the signature drive was Saturdays at historic Findlay Market in the Over-the-Rhine area of downtown Cincinnati. Very busy with shoppers from all over the metro area, the weekend market is highlighted by music, wine tastings, and people just generally enjoying the city atmosphere. We worked in teams just in case anyone ran into any particular trouble, but in fact, other than a few comments like “I think SB 5 is a good thing,” there were no problems. We collected a lot of signatures, and many people signed enthusiastically.
The counties that we were mainly concentrating on were Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is located, as well as Butler, Clermont, and Warren, which surround the city. Butler, with the towns of Hamilton, Fairfield, and Oxford (home to Miami University) has a more diverse political mix than do heavily Republican Warren and Clermont counties. Nonetheless, as we learned during the campaign, there were plenty of Republicans who disagreed with their party’s attack on public workers. For example, one afternoon at a table where some students on McMicken Commons were collecting signatures at the UC main campus, one young woman came up to talk to the students at the table. She had noticed that the students had put out a “UC Democrats” sign as well as the SB 5 signs. “I’m a Republican,” she told them. “I’m against SB 5. A lot of Republicans are. Having your sign up discourages people from stopping and signing the petition.” The students took down the Democrats sign.
On Monday, May 9, members of the executive council held sessions in the afternoon with Brian Rothenberg from Progress Ohio, a Columbus-based think tank that dealt with media communication, messaging, and events. As a former print journalist, I already knew much of what we discussed regarding the media, but I learned some things about the way the television media worked, including the different deadlines and the need for a visual opportunity. This was all part of our effort to be prepared in the future for any problems or opportunities that might arise.
A very public attack occurred from an unlikely direction in the Sunday Enquirer on May 6. Dale Schaefer, a professor and former dean in UC’s College of Engineering, wrote a scathing critique of the UC Chapter of the AAUP for the newspaper, a column that also, not surprisingly, appeared in the right-wing Washington Times in the nation’s capital. I knew Dr. Schaefer from Faculty Senate meetings where, as a Senate member, he would occasionally stand up and rail against the AAUP about some usually misperceived problem. The hostility in his newspaper column was not surprising, but what was surprising was the repetition of so many well-worn right-wing falsehoods about unions as well as outright misstatements of fact.
I was, of course, unhappy that a faculty member would so deliberately distort the role of the AAUP at UC. Common sense would demonstrate that much of what Schaefer said was not true. After comparing the AAUP to Communists in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, Schaefer said that the “AAUP bargains on its own behalf with the administration. Neither the faculty nor its elected leadership, the Faculty Senate, is part of the process.”6
I admit that my response to such willful inaccuracy was much tempered by consultation with staff and colleagues. Because of the rampant distortions in Schaefer’s piece, I asked the Enquirer for an opportunity to respond, and they published my piece the following Sunday with the headline, “Faculty Integrally Involved in AAUP at UC, and in Contracts.”
“It is untrue,” I wrote, “that neither taxpayers nor the faculty are present at contract negotiations. UC faculty members form the AAUP-UC’s negotiating team and always have, since 1975.” I noted that I was a member of the 2007 team and that the negotiating team is supervised by a 13-member elected executive council made up entirely of UC faculty members. And, of course, everyone on both sides of the negotiating table are taxpayers, too. “And,” I continued, “if anyone thinks the UC team does not represent the employer’s interests strongly, then you have not faced them across a negotiating table.”
It was also untrue to suggest that UC faculty do not approve the contracts. “All faculty members,” I noted, “are routinely kept informed throughout the process by email and newsletter about the course and content of negotiations.” When it seems we have reached what is the best deal possible, then we schedule meetings of faculty at all of UC’s campuses to explain the contract and answer questions. Then, active UC-AAUP members vote on the contract. The current 2010–2013 contract had been approved by 87 percent of the voting members. “Only twice since 1975 has a contract been rejected and resulted in a strike, the last time being 18 years ago,” I wrote.
“Contrary to the impression given by Schaefer,” I continued, “the AAUP is a faculty-controlled and faculty-driven organization, both at the local and national levels.” I emphasized that no one is “forced” to be a member, as Schaefer had stated. I explained that “fair share fees” are just nonmembers’ fair share toward services and benefits they receive and are based on an annual audit by an independent auditing firm. Those nonmember fees cannot be used for any political issues.
Since 1975, I wrote, the AAUP at UC has contributed to exactly one political campaign, that of Gov. Ted Strickland in 2010. “This rare and exceptional action was taken because chapter members predicted back then how disastrous a Kasich administration would be for public education in Ohio, and it certainly seems that is being proven true.” Shared governance is a key AAUP principle, and I pointed out the irony of Schaefer serving on a Faculty Senate that has real influence because that is guaranteed by Article 27 of the UC-AAUP contract. I concluded that the UC chapter’s membership had grown by 24 percent in the past seven years, “in large part, we believe, because of this increased level of advocacy for preserving America’s higher education system. We will continue to fight for these principles because it is what is best for Ohio’s citizens.”7
The column created a stir among the faculty. Not only did I hear personally from several faculty members, but I began to see the column tacked up on doors and bulletin boards. A senior faculty member in a science department, whom I had never met, sent me a very supportive note. Saying he was quite “incensed” by Schaefer’s letter, which was “entirely misrepresentative of the collective bargaining process as it has worked at UC,” he thanked me for writing my column. “I’ve always regarded [collective bargaining] as an open, non-coercive, and participatory process involving the faculty—members and nonmembers alike.” In closing, the professor wrote, “I hope we can weather these difficult challenges and maintain the active role the faculty have had in contract negotiations as well as in shaping the broader mission of providing the best possible academic environment for our students.”8 We had some good news about this time: a Quinnipiac poll reported on May 18 that if the referendum were held at that point, Senate Bill 5 would be heavily defeated. It is important to keep in mind that, despite the uproar that had occurred thus far, the public debate had not really begun in earnest yet. “The measure to strip many collective bargaining rights from state and local government workers,” The Columbus Dispatch reported, “would be rejected by 18 points, 54 percent to 36 percent.” In language that described what would, in fact, be close to the final result, the Dispatch noted that independent voters, crucial to the success of any statewide candidate or issue, opposed the controversial measure by 19 points and that it was losing by a large margin in nearly every region of Ohio. Central Ohio voters were turning thumbs down by a whopping 26 points. “Although it is a long way until November when opponents of SB 5 hope to ask voters to overturn it, at this point there is strong support for repealing Gov. (John) Kasich’s signature plan,” Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a news release.9
Though obviously we were encouraged by the poll, and would continue to be by subsequent polls over the coming months, we never allowed it to slacken our fervor in killing the legislation. Although perhaps we never said this in so many words, I think many of us believed, as I did, that the issues at stake were so important, not just to us but to the nation’s future, that it was necessary to defeat Senate Bill 5 badly enough to send a message that this kind of attack on working people was really beyond the pale.
One sign of the collaborative nature of the fight against the bill was that we were contacted by some area public school teachers who wanted to know if they could help gather signatures with us at the university. I’d already seen crowds of public school teachers at intersections in the city and suburbs, waving signs of protest against SB 5, so I was happy to enlist their help. Some of them joined students and faculty at the main campus tables on McMicken Commons and in the Tangeman University Center, and some of them joined us at tables at my regional campus in suburban Blue Ash. Many of our students had been their students, and it was great to see the young people stopping to talk with their former high school teachers.
Our student activists were busy as well. The statewide organization began to create student press captains at each university to try to boost coverage of student opposition to Senate Bill 5. At Ohio State, students organized a rally with popular local bands and speakers—both politicians and union leaders—about SB 5. “Live Against 5,” set for May 26 at the Columbus campus, was billed in a news release as “an open event for ALL Ohio State students, and all Ohioans who want to come out and have a great time for a great cause! And make sure to SIGN A PETITION!”
One newspaper that did some very fair reporting on the Senate Bill 5 battle was The Toledo Blade. On May 31, The Blade reported who was backing the pro-SB 5 movement. The paper announced the creation of a pro-SB 5 committee headed by Vaughn Flasher, a longtime statehouse lobbyist and Senate Republican political director. Flasher’s reputation among Democrats as a dirty campaigner led us immediately to expect that we would face a barrage of misleading, underhanded, but hopefully ineffective campaign advertisements. Sen. Majority Leader Niehaus and House Speaker Batchelder, The Blade reported, were also expected to be on the committee. This group would eventually become known as Building a Better Ohio, which we promptly dubbed “Bitter Ohio.”
Rebecca Heimlich, state director of the very conservative Americans for Prosperity, said—in classic double-speak—that her organization would be “working together but not technically together” with the pro-SB 5 forces. Americans for Prosperity was the Washington-based organization founded by the right-wing brothers Charles and David Koch to fund extremist causes like SB 5, corporate schools, and voter suppression laws. Heimlich said that the campaign was raising money in-state at this early point but would be happy to take checks from out-of-state sources. Because of new campaign finance laws, Americans for Prosperity would have to report expenditures during the campaign but not sources of revenue, which could remain secret.10
During this period of the signature gathering, we at the AAUP had a minor dustup, an incident in which a professor used his college—not university-wide—listserv to report that he and another faculty member would be in a particular hallway with signature booklets for the SB 5 referendum if anyone wished to come by to sign. A right-wing blogger got wind of this and organized phone calls to the UC administration with overblown concerns about “liberal” professors brainwashing students. The UC student newspaper, The News-Record, learned of the issue and gave us a call. I responded to James Sprague, an excellent student journalist, and tried to provide a commonsense perspective.
“We do not believe professors should use their positions to pressure students to take a particular political position in the classroom—that’s contrary to AAUP principles,” I wrote to Sprague. “But this announcement didn’t do that; it made graduate students aware of a ballot petition and the opportunity to vote. Listservs are basically high-tech announcement boards. I think university students are smart and independent enough to ignore announcements if they’re not interested, no matter who sends it to them.” This had been an independent action by the faculty and not on the advice of the AAUP. But we encouraged faculty after this to not use college listservs, to avoid any misperceptions. My response seemed to resolve any issues locally. On right-wing blogs, however, the response was, “Professor McNay is being intellectually dishonest.”11
In the midst of all this, like clockwork, we returned our first wave of signature booklets to the AAUP office, where they would be forwarded to We Are Ohio headquarters in Columbus. We then picked up new books that we would have for two weeks before we would have to turn those in again as well. Our goal was not to be concerned about whether the books were full or not but instead to keep a steady flow of valid signatures moving to Columbus, where an unofficial count would be kept so the campaign could measure our progress toward the more than 231,000 signatures we needed.
On June 17, the AAUP received great and surprising news from We Are Ohio. We carried the news in our chapter newsletter with a big headline: “SB 5 Repeal Signatures Hit Astounding Number: 714,137!” In the accompanying article, Dr. Herman and I focused on just what we had accomplished so far: “Since February of this year, the Chapter has been involved in political battles as never before in its history. Within weeks of taking office, Gov. Kasich introduced, with Ohio State Senator Shannon Jones, Senate Bill 5, legislation that declared all faculty ‘managers’ and stripped all other municipal and state employees of any real bargaining rights.” We outlined how We Are Ohio had been formed as a great coalition among labor organizations, faith groups, and others who wanted to work together to defend the middle class in Ohio.
“The signature campaign has been successful beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations just two months ago,” we wrote. The Ohio AAUP had done its part and delivered more than the 10,000 signatures it had committed to the campaign (a large number, considering the collective size of our chapters across Ohio). In Cincinnati alone, AAUP staff trained 56 petition collectors: faculty members from UC and Cincinnati State, UC students, and community volunteers. “Team UC” had gathered a total of 2,298 signatures just from the UC campuses.
Although most faculty were about to break from their regular schedules for summer research and writing projects, working on developing new courses, attending conferences, or even getting some well-deserved rest, we urged them to stay engaged. “This summer we cannot rest . . . We cannot cede the summer to legislative activity that is, potentially, a grave danger to affordable, accessible education for Ohio students. Or which might strip us of our bargaining rights and eliminate the obligation to respond to open records requests at one or more of Ohio’s public universities.” Clearly, the extremist behavior of the Ohio legislature had us on guard. We warned our faculty: “This summer we must stand up. Stay tuned, watch your email, and be ready for action!”12
Now that Senate Bill 5 was definitely going to be on the ballot in November, Gov. Kasich and the Republicans, in desperation, tried another tactic. The Ohio Ballot Board, which arranges for the presentation of issues on the ballot on Election Day, was controlled by the GOP and was being pressured by Republicans to split the complex bill up into several separate ballots, with the hope that some individual issues would not be defeated. But Secretary of State Husted ruled that Senate Bill 5 could not be split up and had to be voted on in its entirety.13
As part of an ongoing research project on the career of George V. Allen, the American Ambassador to Iran from 1946 to 1947, I traveled to Washington DC and spent a couple of weeks at the National Archives and the Library of Congress in June. Ensconced in the archives, deep into the burgeoning Cold War in the 1940s, I was unable to attend the parade that was planned on June 29 to deliver our signature booklets to the Secretary of State’s office in Columbus. I caught the stunning news on the internet.
“1,298,301 signatures,” announced Melissa Fazekas, the spokeswoman for We Are Ohio. Led by a police escort with lights flashing, a parade of thousands of people—bagpipers, motorcyclists, a fire truck, church members, and large groups of union members—moved through downtown Columbus accompanying a semi truck loaded with petitions for delivery to the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. Fun fact: the Secretary of State’s office had to bring in a structural engineer to ensure their floor could hold the estimated 26 tons of petitions being dropped off by We Are Ohio. The office had 60 staff members waiting to process the petitions, which would soon be sent off to each of Ohio’s 88 counties for each board of elections to validate the signatures.
Complete with overhead photographs of the huge crowd, The Columbus Dispatch headlined their story “SB 5 Opponents Make a Statement in a Big Way.” As the story noted, “They dubbed it the ‘million signature march’ and then delivered, literally.” The paper noted that the amount was equivalent to one out of six of Ohio’s eight million voters. State Rep. Matt Szollosi (D-Oregon) marched in the parade and told the Dispatch: “From the standpoint of workers, Senate Bill 5 was a declaration of war. It’s kind of hard to put the lava back in the volcano.”14
“Record 1.3 Million Back Vote to Torpedo Senate Bill 5,” reported The Toledo Blade, noting that it was the largest signature drive in Ohio history. “Politics are politics and [politicians] are going to do what they want to do. Fortunately, there’s a checks-and-balances system to make sure that they do hear our voices,” Mike Haynes, a member of the Toledo police, told The Blade.15
“We are public servants,” said Mahoning County Sheriff’s Sgt. T. J. Assion, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 141, who had marched with the parade. He told The Youngstown Vindicator, “We are public employees [and] the governor has trampled all over our rights—the governor and his cronies—with this new law commonly referred to as SB5. We’ve collected . . . over 1 million signatures on petitions, and it’s time to turn those in and show the governor that he’s not as popular as he thinks he is, he’s not as smart as he thinks he is, and that he’s dead wrong.”16
Filing five times the number of required signatures needed seemed to ensure that even the most devious activities could not now prevent Senate Bill 5 from appearing on the November ballot for repeal. On July 21, Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted announced that our campaign had enough valid signatures, more than four times the necessary amount, to put SB 5 to the people for a vote. Of the signatures submitted, 915,456 were found to be valid, a nearly 70 percent rate, which is very good for such a signature campaign and evidence of the effectiveness of our planning and determination.
After We Are Ohio delivered the massive number of signatures, Sen. Shannon Jones, the Springboro Republican who had introduced the bill, said that she expected the voter referendum on the fall ballot. “If it is,” she said in a statement reported by The Cleveland Plain Dealer, “I’m confident there will be a broad, grassroots campaign in support of the reasonable reforms we’re asking of our public employees.” Jones would be wrong, once again.17