What’s all the fuss about?

COLUMBUS

A picture on my computer caught my 10-year-old son’s attention the other morning during breakfast.

It was a shot of some of the protesters who were locked out of the Statehouse last week.

“What are they protesting about?” he asked.

“Collective bargaining,” I said.

“Collecting Barbies?” was his reply.

So I asked my 8-year-old daughter to define collective bargaining.

She didn’t have a clue.

Then I asked my 5-year-old to tell me about unions.

His response: “You mean family reunions?”

And back to my other son: What is binding arbitration?

“That’s easy,” he said. “It’s binding people who betray us.”

You see where I’m going here?

At this point, some of you are probably wondering what all the fuss is about down here in Columbus.

I know of at least three people who are — they sit around my dinner table at night, whether I’m there or not.

And I haven’t been there that much in the past few weeks, thanks to the thousands of union protesters who keep making their presence known on Capitol Square.

I thought it might be beneficial for my kids — whose sole knowledge of “union” comes from their studies of the Civil War — to put together a short primer on collective bargaining.

I called John Russo, a professor up at Youngstown State University who for decades has been heavily involved in organized labor issues, to assist.

He’s staunchly opposed to Senate Bill 5 and offered opponent testimony during a recent committee hearing.

Collective bargaining

It’s a process where workers and management sit down and try to hash out things like wages, hours and working conditions.

Workers are able to push for higher pay, regular raises, adequate sick time and paid vacations because they’ve banded together — ready to walk out the door and stand in picket lines if they can’t reach contract terms.

In Ohio, most public employees collectively bargain, with the resulting agreements, often lasting two to four years. Terms can be renegotiated when economic issues arise.

In the end, everybody leaves the table knowing what’s expected in the workplace.

The rub: There’s a perception among the public — and rightfully so in instances — that public workers are being paid more and/or getting better benefits than their private-sector counterparts.

Think about it: Who gets to retire after 20 or 30 years of work anymore? And who gets paid multiple-years worth of stored-up sick time when they leave their workplace? Nice work if you can get it.

Statehouse Republicans want to give state and local government offices more ability to control their costs, whether through increased employee shares of health insurance premiums or basing pay raises and layoffs on an employees’ performance, not on how long they’ve been on the job.

The other side: But Russo and others point out that collective bargaining has worked well in the state for nearly three decades.

“Some people call it industrial democracy... It reflects the respective needs of both parties,” Russo said.

It’s prevented workers from striking and managers from locking people out. In recent years, it’s led union groups to offer concessions to deal with the economic downturn.

Opponents of SB5 also are quick to cite studies showing that public employees actually make less on average than workers in the private sector.

And they allege that the ultimate goal of Republicans is not to control government spending but to smack down unions, which spend big money to put like-minded Democrats in office.

“We’ve had years and years of this,” Russo said. “It’s worked very well and suddenly this has become an issue of the particular issues? That’s why this is fiction.”

Many opponents aren’t interested in tweaking Senate Bill 5, as evidenced by their frequent “Kill the Bill” chants down at the Statehouse in recent weeks.

“My sense of it is I don’t see a whole lot of tinkering with a bill and public sector bargaining that seems to have done very well,” Russo said, adding later, “I would start over. Let’s identify what are the real problems? If you think there’s problems with sick time or the use of sick days, let’s talk about it.”

Marc Kovac is The Vindicator’s Statehouse correspondent. E-mail him at mkovac@dixcom.com or on Twitter at OhioCapitalBlog.