By Tom Blumer | For Ohio Watchdog
In Columbus on Saturday, a Michiganunion member and a leader of that state’s leading free-market think tank said grass-roots activists can persuade voters to add a right-to-work amendment to Ohio’s constitution in 2014.
Terry Bowman is a Ford Motor Co. employee, a member of United Auto Workers Local 898 inYpsilanti and the founder of Union Conservatives. He told a meeting of the Ohio Liberty Coalition that a well-organized and properly framed campaign can overcome organized labor’s intense opposition, as well as indifference from the state political establishment.
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Vinny Vernuccio, director of Labor Policy for The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said framing the argument as being about “giving freedom” and not about workers’ collective bargaining rights, which would not be disturbed by the “Ohio Workplace Freedom Amendment,” is a key to success. Bowman reinforced that argument, asserting that “right-to-work is about freedom specifically.”
To be successful, Ohioans for Workplace Freedom, the outfit leading the petition drive to place the amendment on the November 2014 ballot, must first gather 386,000 valid signatures and submit them to Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted. Columbus TV station NBC4 reported Saturday that OWF “has gathered a little less than 100,000 signatures. It needs 386,000 valid signatures … but organizers hope to gather around 500,000.”