Letter by Council 8 President John A. Lyall Published on the Columbus Dispatch Web Site June 30, 2010

Given its less than enthusiastic attitude towards unions, I wasn't surprised that the Dispatch decided to take pot shots at AFSCME. But while all of us have a right to our own opinions, none of us are entitled to our own facts.

For example, to read the Dispatch editorial of June 21, AFSCME and Gov. Strickland concocted a plot "authorizing independent home-health-care workers and self-employed child-care workers to unionize." A look at the facts tells a much different story.

In January, 2008 Gov. Strickland signed an executive order guaranteeing the right of 7,000 child care workers to form a union.  No one was "authorized" to one. Instead, workers weighed out the pros and cons and decided, by a secret ballot vote, to form a union with AFSCME.

One might think that the Dispatch would have celebrated the outcome. After all, in a March 30, 2009 editorial attacking the Employee Free Choice Act, the Dispatch opined: "The secret ballot is the cornerstone of democracy and always will be the fairest measure of the will of the majority."  Now we learn that doesn't really matter to the Dispatch "because there is a crucial difference between unionization in the private sector and unionization of government workers."

Taken together with its ongoing jihad against public sector pension funds, the Dispatch's attitude about public sector unions suggests that, in the view of its editors, the real problem is public sector employment itself. If that's the case you could do us all a favor and quit mincing words and say so. It's a debate we'd love to have.

John Lyall

President, AFSCME Ohio Council 8

Worthington

Link to original Dispatch Web Letters- see Union View - click here