Ohio Profs 'Blindsided'

The narrow passage of Ohio Senate Bill 5 this week could affect unionized employees at public colleges more than they had anticipated, as language to deal with the classification of faculty members was added to the bill "just hours before the full Senate vote, as part of a 99-page omnibus amendement introduced ... by the bill's sponsor, Shannon Jones," reports The Chronicle of Higher Education. "In addition to scaling back the collective-bargaining rights of all state employees, it would effectively prevent many faculty members from engaging in collective bargaining at all, by classifying them as managers, exempt from union representation, if they engage in any of several activities traditionally associated with their jobs," the Chronicle adds. The American Association of University Professors' Mike Maurer, who is a member of the organization's Collective Bargaining Congress, tells the Chronicle that the passage of Senate Bill 5 in Ohio seems to preclude from collective bargaining all faculty who engage in any management activities, and called its reclassification provision "virtually unprecedented." Cary Nelson, AAUP president, says the group was "completely blindsided" by, and plans to challenge, the bill's addendum.