New Poll Shows Ohioans Favor Right-to-Work Law

Only three months after rejecting Republican Governor John Kasich's restrictions on public sector unions, the Ohio voters may be ready to support a potential ballot initiative this November making Ohio the 24th state to prohibit collective bargaining agreements requiring employees to pay union dues or fees.  According to a Quinnipiac University poll released February 14, 54 percent of the 1,421 registered voters surveyed said Ohio should follow Indiana's lead and become a right-to-work state, with forty percent opposed.  The results are noteworthy since, in November, voters in a referendum rejected, by a 61 to 39 percent margin, S.B. 5, a proposal that sought to rescind most collective bargaining rights of public employees.  Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, noted the contrast: “In the S.B. 5 referendum, independent voters, who are generally the key to Ohio elections, voted with the pro-union folks to repeal the law many viewed as an effort to handicap unions.  The data [in this poll] indicates that many of those same independents who stood up for unions this past November on S.B. 5 are standing up to unions by backing ‘right-to-work’ legislation.”  Quinnipiac's data show that independent voters support right-to-work legislation by a 55 percent to 39 percent majority; Republicans are in favor, 77 percent to 20 percent, while Democrats oppose it, 61 percent to 31 percent.  A right-to-work ballot initiative has been filed with the state's Attorney General, and supporters must now gather signatures of 385,253 registered voters from at least half of Ohio's counties by July 4 in order to get the issue on the November ballot.  The Ohio AFL-CIO said the results show that “Ohioans don't understand what right-to-work is."  Governor Kasich may actually agree on that point, since he recently indicated the state is not ready to tackle the issue and said supporters need to educate the public about the need for change before placing the issue on the ballot.