The Trojan Horse
SB-1 is a textbook example of how the Republican Party uses culture war window dressing to cover flagrant attacks on worker rights.
Yesterday, I attended the Senate Education Committee proponent hearing on SB-1. By that, I mean I sat outside the Senate’s North Hearing Room, listening to testimony.
You can watch that meeting, in its entirety, over at the Ohio Channel.
The legislation sponsored by Senator Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland) and State Rep. Tom Young (R-Circleville) is a dual-pronged attack on labor rights and diversity in education.
The bill includes post-tenure reviews and annual performance reviews of faculty. It also prohibits faculty from striking and mandates that they publish public syllabi for helicopter parents to shriek about.
On the culture war side, the bill bans diversity, equity and inclusion courses and any faculty training unless required to comply with state or federal law, professional licensure requirements or receiving accreditation or grants.
The attack on “DEI” — the latest acronym the Republican apparatus is feeding to its voters primarily driven by wishing they could say racial slurs in public with no repercussions — is the trojan horse for the attack on worker rights to prevent strikes like the one that happened at Wright State in 2019:
From wright.edu:
In Dayton, Ohio, faculty members at Wright State University have just concluded one of the longest public university strikes in U.S. history. On Sunday, the university’s administration reached a tentative contract agreement with the faculty union’s executive committee, which union members will vote to ratify in coming days. The strike began late last month, when the university imposed a contract on faculty members that worsened working conditions and decreased benefits. When the administration refused to negotiate, 85 percent of Wright State University’s union members voted to authorize a strike
It’s a miracle if you can get 85 percent of any group to agree on anything, which tells you how dire things had become for workers at Wright State. Yet, the faculty got further in negotiations in 19 days of striking than in two years at the negotiating table.
That seems like the system worked as intended. The world continued to spin, and Wright State University still operates today.
But working people having that kind of power is unacceptable to the types of Republicans that currently rule over the Statehouse. And the Republican trustees that run Ohio’s public universities (and the presidents they hire) would love nothing more than to take that tool from unions to make it easier to cut costs by gutting compensation and benefits packages.
However, I did not see trustees or presidents arguing for the legislation yesterday. That’s because they already know the legislature is in their pocket and don’t need to waste their time.
That left the testimony to hardline Republican legislators like State Representative Josh Williams (R-Sylvania), activists from private universities unaffected by the legislation, and kooks like Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, who lost his standing in the UPenn medical community because he once proposed that minority residents receive worse grades than white counterparts because they’re worse residents and not because of systemic racism.
The anti-DEI part of the legislation might as well be inscribed in stone. If it were a standalone bill, it would sail through the legislature because “DEI” has become the new boogeyman for voters whose minds have been consumed by right-wing media.
The anti-labor half of the legislation has a dicier road. Labor groups, especially the trades, have been forced to collaborate with Republicans to ward off death knells like right-to-work legislation. But ultimately, most of those “pro-union” Republicans aren’t that “pro-union” at all.
My sources in the Senate admittedly aren’t as good as in the House. And while there is more ball to play on the House side with the anti-labor part of SB-1, things aren’t looking great as they currently stand.
Shoutout to the Students!
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the efforts of the Ohio Students Association, whom you should follow on Twitter.
If you polled college students in Ohio, I’m not sure more than three percent could tell you anything about SB-1. But yesterday, a handful of students traveled to Columbus across the state to watch proponent testimony and register their disgust as soon as the meeting concluded.
It’s inspiring to me because, at that age, I was too busy drinking and partying to be concerned with the intricacies of the Statehouse. And it’s something I regret to this day.
But I respect the Hell out of every student who is making the continued effort against SB-1 because they all know the odds are stacked against them.
At last week’s introductory press conference, Senator Cirino degraded their efforts by quipping that they were “earning extra credit from their professors” for attending the protest when the reality was that many students skipped class to exercise their rights.
Cirino couldn’t even be bothered to meet with them after the press conference because they dared to chant outside the media room.
I don’t know if “the kids are alright” because I don’t know many kids. But these kids have my approval, and I hope God rewards them with lucrative careers outside of Ohio when they graduate. They deserve nothing less.
With Democrats like these…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Rooster to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.