BY TERRY PARKER
CLEVELAND - About 500 people filled the UAW Local 1250
hall here October 16 to rally against Ohio Senate Bill
45, a direct attack against workers compensation in the
state.
The labor movement in Ohio has joined with other organizations to gather more than 400,000 signatures to put a referendum on S.B. 45 on the ballot for the November elections. If a majority of voters vote no on Issue 2 the bill, which was already signed by Gov. George Voinovich in April, will not go into effect. If a majority votes yes, the law goes into effect immediately.
Warren Davis, the director of UAW Region 2, told workers at the rally that the law was actually written by several corporate law firms. He said the only workers compensation benefit that is increased by the new law is death benefits, and this was only included because the funeral industry complained that there was nothing in the law for them.
Some of the main provisions of the law are:
Reduction of the length of time a person can receive compensation from 52 weeks to 26 weeks;
Reduction of the life of a claim from 10 years to 5 years;
Limiting public access to employer safety records including keeping secret from the public the results of safety inspections;
Exempting agricultural production from safety rules that apply to industrial production; and
Making it virtually impossible to get workers compensation for repetitive motion injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome.
William Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, also spoke at the rally. The largest corporations in the state stand to save $200 million a year on this law, he said, and they have already spent over $2 million campaigning to get the law passed.
Steve Warshell, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Cleveland, is urging a No vote on Issue 2. "Senate Bill 45 is an effort of the employers and the Democratic and Republican parties to gut workers compensation in Ohio," he said. "Workers are taking the vote No campaign seriously. They view it in the context of the resistance to employer and government attacks, like the United Parcel Service strike and the Wheeling Pitt strike. A big No vote can deal another blow to this offensive."
Warshell is a member of the United Steelworkers union at USS/Kobe Steel in Lorain, Ohio. He said that at his mill, "There's no one who has been given a vote no sticker who doesn't have it on their hard-hat."