Injured workers’ benefits sabotaged

In 2004 the massive disenfranchisement of African-American working class voters was worldwide front page news. Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell—who just suffered a crushing defeat in his bid for governor—gained national notoriety for his role in securing the Bush victory.

In 2006 the working class was again disenfranchised, but this time there was almost no coverage in Ohio and none whatsoever outside the state.

On Nov. 7, voters in Ohio passed State Issues 2 and 5 and rejected Issues 3 and 4. Issue 2 raises the state minimum wage to $6.85 an hour. Issues 3 and 4 were deceptively worded constitutional amendments, backed by the gambling and tobacco industries respectively. Issue 5 protects workers and the public from the ravages of second-hand smoke.

The obvious question for anyone who knows how to count, though, is what happened to Issue 1? This ballot measure was to allow voters to reject Senate Bill 7, passed by the state legislature and signed by outgoing Governor Bob Taft last April. This bill was a vicious attack on injured workers, eliminating or reducing a number of benefits under the state workers compensation system.

Given the facts, most workers would vote to protect those benefits that they might one day need. The huge support for Issues 2 and 5 shows the working class voting to uphold its economic interests. Yet the votes on Issue 1 will not even be counted.

This court ruling is the latest chapter in a conspiracy to rob workers, first of their benefits and then of their democratic right to vote to keep those benefits.

The push to roll back state workers compensation benefits—which were already inadequate and sometimes took years of legal battles to collect—dates back to 1997, when Ohio legislators passed a series of benefit cuts. Immediately, the United Auto Workers launched a petition drive to place Issue 1 on the ballot. Despite massive corporate funding of the opposition, along with confusing ballot language, the bill failed miserably. Labor out-mobilized capital.

Shouldn’t that have been the end of it? Majority rules, right? Yet the bill passed in Columbus this year is almost identical to that rejected by the voters eight years ago.

What happened in the interim period is that funds set aside to help workers hurt on the job were stolen in a series of scandals involving privatization of claims processing, arbitrary reductions of employer premiums and bogus investment schemes.

The most famous scandal, and a contributing factor in Republican losses in Ohio, has become known as “Coingate.” Some $50 million in BWC funds were turned over to rare-coin dealer Tom Noe, ostensibly as an investment. Noe has been quoted referring to the fund as “an ATM.” On Nov. 13 a jury found Noe guilty of one count of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, two counts of theft, four counts of tampering with records, four counts of money laundering and 18 counts of forgery. A prominent Republican backer, Noe is already facing jail time for an illegal fundraising scheme in which he gave his own money to friends for them to donate to the Bush campaign. This way he bought “Pioneer” status for having “raised” over $100,000.

In another scandal, former Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) Chief Financial Officer Terry Gasper pled guilty to taking bribes from two financial brokers who are currently on trial for bribery. A third scheme involves prominent Democrats as well as Republicans.

2.5 million workers lose pay

How would the BWC recoup those losses? Humanitarian considerations aside, the most obvious choice would be to take it from those who need it most, injured workers. Every year, some 2.5 million workers in the U.S. lose pay due to workplace injuries. They can hardly afford benefit cuts.

Senate Bill 7, among other things, reduced lump sums for workers who lose an arm and a hand, reduced the number of weekly payments for workers forced to take a lower paying job, eliminated final settlement payments to family members when workers die, and stripped away the right to collect workers compensation for psychological injuries.

The last point particularly hurts people of color, women, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers, who often face debilitating stress from brutal harassment and bigotry on the job.

UAW mobilizes against bosses

Once again the UAW took on the nearly impossible task of reversing this assault at the polls. Having two months to collect 193,000 signatures of registered voters, an army of volunteers swung into action across the state.

They took on the challenge of an additional requirement—that petitions contain signatures from at least 3 percent of those voting in the last general election from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties. They chased voters down in the most sparsely populated rural counties. Wherever volunteers went, most workers were eager to sign. On June 29 the union delivered close to 225,000 signatures to Blackwell’s office in Columbus.

Initially, the state ruled that the campaign was 73,000 signatures short. Challenges had that 73,000 reduced to closer to 40,000. This time only 10 days were allowed to make up the shortfall. In September over 100,000 additional signatures were turned in, yet the state claimed a majority was invalid, that petitioners were still 13,000 signatures short, and the issue would be kept off the ballot!

Volunteer petitioners became volunteer detectives, painstakingly comparing disqualified signatures with the records at county boards of elections.

Countless examples were found of bona fide registered voters who were wrongly identified as not being registered. Others were eliminated by a state regulation that disqualifies actual registered voters if they are registered at a different address—even with a statewide issue and even if they move within the same city ward. These voters are allowed to fill out a change-of-address form at the polls and submit a provisional ballot. Why can’t their signature count on a petition?

(It was the Workers World Party 1988 election campaign that filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of this gross disenfranchisement. The judge refused to rule one way or the other, allowing the restriction to remain to this day.)

Legal challenges to the state’s position led to an initial court ruling to place Issue 1 on the ballot; hence both absentee printed ballots and touch screen ballots had Issue 1. The state appealed, however, and a higher court reversed the lower court, and then the Ohio Supreme Court refused to hear the matter. Therefore, the votes on Issue 1 will never be counted, despite all the rhetoric since 2004 about making every vote count.

Is this democracy in action or democracy inaction? Whether it’s being imposed at gunpoint around the world or through crass maneuvers here in Ohio, Marx had it right when he called it what it is: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.