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GOP Forces Senate Bill 5 on Ohio
The absolute determination of Republicans to force Senate Bill 5 on the people of Ohio became crystal clear in the struggle that occurred in the Senate committee where the bill was sourced.
Sen. Bill Seitz is a Republican stalwart from Cincinnati. He is an attorney of the venerable law firm Taft, Stennius & Hollister, the firm that was home to “Mr. Republican” Robert Taft. As noted on its website, “The firm’s labor department led by J. Mack Swigert was instrumental in helping Senator Taft draft and pass 1947’s groundbreaking Taft-Hartley Act despite President Harry S. Truman’s veto.”1 In the Senate Bill 5 fight, however, Seitz was an early critic. He was an acknowledged expert on labor law, and certainly any bill that was going to make historic changes to Ohio labor law should have included him in its formation. Neither he nor other experts on labor law in the Senate were consulted. Seitz believed, as he said more than once, that some changes ought to be made to Ohio’s labor law. But he was opposed to Senate Bill 5 because it failed the basic test of fairness. And he did not mince words. He emphasized that, contrary to pronouncements by Sen. Jones, Sen. Bacon, and others, Senate Bill 5 unilaterally eliminated the reality of collective bargaining in Ohio.
The problem for the Republicans was that Seitz was chair of the Senate Insurance, Labor, and Commerce Committee that held Senate Bill 5, and with Seitz in charge, it was unlikely that the bill would get out of committee. So Senate President Tom Niehaus, a close ally of Gov. Kasich and an ardent supporter of the union-busting legislation, made Sen. Kevin Bacon chair instead and then kicked Seitz off the committee just 30 minutes before the committee was to meet to decide on the bill. Niehaus then replaced Seitz with Cliff Hite, a reliable pro-SB 5 senator. “It was not lost on our hundreds of thousands of police and firefighters and others that if that’s what can be done to a senator, what will happen to other workers?” Seitz told The Wall Street Journal.2
With Seitz off the committee and the threat of a tie vote gone, the committee quickly voted 7–5 to approve Senate Bill 5 and send it on to the full Senate. Ironically, Seitz and Niehaus shared the same residence in Columbus. No matter how often Niehaus emphasized that such a politically ruthless action was normal, no union member who witnessed that pure political power play aimed at their own livelihood would ever forget it. Senate Democratic Leader Capri Cafaro of Mahoning County correctly called the last-minute committee changes “an abuse of power.” A couple of weeks later, Seitz had also been bounced from his lodging with Niehaus and was looking for a new place to live in Columbus.3
After all the fireworks on March 2, the committee vote led to even more rapid action. Only a few hours after passing the committee, the full Senate picked up the bill in the afternoon. Many Senators spoke with anger and eloquence