Students and workers unite to protest Issue Two

A small but spirited crowd of students, faculty and town residents gathered Sunday to protest Issue Two, a bill on the Ohio ballot which, if passed, would have cut $200 million per year from injured workers' compensation. Issue Two was already made into law by Ohio legislators, but the Ohio labor movement banded together to form a coalition and conducted a referendum for the bill to reappear on the ballots of last Tuesday's election.

The rally was organized by the Oberlin Socialist Student Union (OSSU) and Oberlin's International Socialist Organization (OISO) and was supported by representatives of the Ohio labor movement..

"We are supporting rights of Ohio workers injured on the job," junior Sara Marcus, who represented the Student Labor Action Coalition at the rally, said. "It's not labor that's the biggest threat to democracy in this country. . . and if you didn't know that already, along comes something like Issue Two to remind us that it's big business that's the real threat to justice, freedom and fairness in this country."

"There is a whole slew of horrible things Issue Two does," sophomore Felicia Mello, a member of OISO, said. "One of the main things it does is put the burden on workers to prove that the occupational disease they got on the job is peculiar to their job. You have to prove you got it from work only, so it's impossible to do."

Mello cited the example of workers who get Carpel Tunnel, a disease of the wrist tendons, from jobs which require a lot of wrist movement. "They may be asked after their injury if they drive a lot or push a shopping cart. People may try to prove that the workers got Carpel Tunnel that way, and how do they prove that they didn't?" she said.

In addition to cutting 92 percent of payments to permanently injured workers, Issue Two also stipulates that employees and the media would have no access to safety and hygiene records kept by a company following an inspection.

"I'd say this is like taking candy from a baby, but it's worse because in this case big businesses aren't only taking the candy but they own the candy store," Marcus said. "This is the fight of everyone here who has ever worked for a living or is ever going to work for a living."

"Our goal in this has been to get students and other folks in the community actively working against this issue and against the frightening greed that goes along with it," senior Matthew Borus said.

Bruce Bostick, chair of the Grievance Committee of the Local 1104 Lorain County chapter of the United Steel Workers' Association, echoed this sentiment. "We're building a wide coalition under labor's leadership. That includes academic votes. Oberlin has always had a strong sense of fighting injustice. We feel a kinship here," he said.

Visiting Professor of Religion Barbara Blodgett agreed. "I think it's important to forge coalitions between academia and labor," she said.

"Workers around the country need to unite to fight corporate greed so human life and the quality of human life are not allowed to be sacrificed," Mello said. "We need to show corporations we are not commodities and our rights cannot be bought and sold."

"Issue Two is the fourth bill since the Republicans took control of the legislature which has consecutively taken more and more rights from injured workers. In the last 25 years there has been a massive redistribution of wealth from working people to big business. By now, people have enough sense to say corporations have enough and injured workers should have their share," Bostick said amidst chants and cries from the crowd.

Bostick's union and many others, along with OSSU and OISO, worked to gather the 200,000 signatures from 88 Ohio counties necessary for a referendum to put Issue Two back on the ballots to be formed.

"Labor knew they couldn't do this by themselves. So they reached out to women's organizations, to doctors, attorneys, academics, church and community organizations and wound up forming a massive coalition and gathering over 415,000 signatures from more than 100 counties," Bostick said.

The outreach continued as the crowd chanted "The workers united will never be defeated."

Perhaps the chant was an omen of Tuesday's election, since Issue Two received 44, 144 votes against it and only 23, 704 in favor of it.

Bostick attributed the ultimate defeat of Issue Two in the ballots to the effectiveness of the labor movement's newly-formed coalition. "It's a tremendous victory for labor and common people over corporate greed. We've turned the tables. The genie of that new people's coalition is out of the bottle and it ain't going back in," he said.