Public and private are different

Public and private are different

In 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Wagner Act, which among other things protected the rights of private-sector workers to organize and bargain collectively. But when it came to the public sector, citing “the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself,” Roosevelt thought that “the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public sector.”

It would be very difficult to argue that Roosevelt was an enemy of public employees or of organized labor. He saw a difference between private and public sector employment. Senate Bill 5 does not end public sector collective bargaining, but simply restricts its scope. These are important things to remember in evaluating the intemperate language of the opponents of Gov. John Kasich’s plan.

SB 5 is only one part of a multi-faceted campaign to solve Ohio’s economic and budgetary problems. Those politicians and their backers who are saying that we can ditch the governor’s plans and carry on much as we have been are piling one more empty promise on top of many others which got us here in the first place. In the not-to-distant future, if we keep on going the way we are, some governor of the state will face an unpleasant dilemma, and it is not going to matter whether he is a Democrat or a Republican.

Either he will have to call for a ruinous level of taxation to pay for everything, or he will be forced to make drastic cuts which will impact not only the public at large but public employees as well — cuts in vital public sector jobs and services and public sector health care and retirement benefits. No one wants to see this happen.

Patrick J. Lally, Youngstown