BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Faculty members and service workers have potentially powerful new weapons in their quest for higher wages at the University of Cincinnati.
The Ohio Supreme Court has apparently cleared the way for union members to strike without 10 days' notice and to picket their bosses' homes.
For tactical reasons, however, those weapons were sheathed Tuesday.
"I don't have a plan to use them," said Debbie Schneider, regional director for Service Employees International Union District 925. "That doesn't mean tomorrow we don't develop such a plan. . . . Negotiations are not going well."
Informational picketing outside the home of the UC president was something professors did in "the old days" before it was barred by state law, said James E. Cebula, president of the UC chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
At this point in AAUP contract negotiations, Mr. Cebula added, "I don't see that as something we'd engage in. I don't see what's gained by public humiliation of people who have control over your destiny."
At issue were two sections of the Ohio Revised Code.
One prohibited union pickets at employers' private residences. The other prohibited union picketing or strikes without a 10-day warning to a public employer and the State Employment Relations Board (SERB).
A union trying to organize part-time workers at the Ohio Turnpike Commission fought those restrictions and won.
In May, Ohio's 8th District Court of Appeals in Cleveland struck down both anti-union rules as unconstitutional restraints on free speech.
On Oct. 8, the Ohio Supreme Court refused to hear the joint turnpike-SERB appeal.
Lawyers familiar with the case could not agree on its applicability to UC.
Some said the AAUP and District 925 could assume the decision is valid in Cincinnati because SERB is a statewide agency and the court said rules it enforces are unconstitutional.
Others -- including SERB Executive Director Jeffrey Taylor -- said the loss in Cuyahoga County does not bind SERB action or courts in Hamilton County.
Labor-management tensions went public at UC when hundreds of District 925 members went on a one-day strike Sept. 23, the first day of the fall term, demanding higher pay and a system for wage progression. The union represents 850 office support staff, technical staff and paraprofessionals who work in campus registration, library, parking support, financial aid, admissions and purchasing.
On Oct. 18, members of the AAUP authorized a strike.
AAUP represents nearly 2,000 faculty members who have been working since Aug. 31 without a contract. They want a 3.25-percent salary hike. UC administrators have offered no increase.
UC general counsel James E. Wesner said the university still expects a 10-day strike warning.
