Ohioians voting overwhelmingly to restore collective bargaining rights for public workers

Good news out of Ohio tonight: It looks like Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor John Kasich and his pals’ plot to strip the Buck­eye State’s pub­lic work­ers has been resound­ing­ly halt­ed in its tracks in a major pro­gres­sive victory.

As of around 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacif­ic, Ohioians were over­whelm­ing­ly vot­ing down Issue 2, a ref­er­en­dum on Sen­ate Bill 5 (Kasich’s anti-work­er leg­is­la­tion). A mam­moth 63.8% of votes tab­u­lat­ed so far are against the mea­sure. with only 36.72% for. Well over three quar­ters of a mil­lion votes have been count­ed so far.

Issue 2’s fail­ure means that Sen­ate Bill 5 will be repealed.

S.B. 5 tried to ban pub­lic work­er strikes, weak­en unions by requir­ing them to pay work­ers who choose not to join their union, restrict the num­ber of days pub­lic work­ers can cash in upon retire­ment, and pre­vent unions from nego­ti­at­ing on cer­tain ben­e­fits on behalf of their work­ers. S.B. 5 shared many sim­il­iar­i­ties to the un-Amer­i­can leg­is­la­tion ram­rod­ded through the Wis­con­sin state­house by Scott Walk­er and Repub­li­can legislators.

Fol­low­ing S.B. 5’s approval, Ohio’s union move­ment launched a sig­na­ture dri­ve to force a pub­lic vote on the leg­is­la­tion, which has just tak­en place. The results speak for themselves.

We extend our con­grat­u­la­tions to the peo­ple of Ohio for reject­ing S.B. 5. This vote makes clear what pro­gres­sives have been say­ing for months: Ohioians do not sup­port John Kasich’s war on work­ing families.

POSTSCRIPT: The White House has released a strong state­ment from Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden hail­ing the out­come of Issue 2.

“Tonight the peo­ple of Ohio deliv­ered a gigan­tic vic­to­ry for the mid­dle class with their over­whelm­ing rejec­tion of a Repub­li­can attempt to strip away col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights,” Biden said. “Fun­da­men­tal fair­ness has pre­vailed. By stand­ing with teach­ers and fire­fight­ers and cops, Ohio has sent a loud and clear mes­sage that will be heard all across the coun­try: The mid­dle class will no longer be tram­pled on. The peo­ple of Ohio are to be congratulated.”