Senate Bill 5: Danger for the Public - Tyler Fred

Tyler Fred

Professor Lutz

English 151

16 November 2011

Senate Bill 5: Danger for the Public

                  The Industrial Revolution brought about innumerable advancements and triumphs leading to the modern world we have today. However, all those wonderful benefits did not come without any negative counterparts. One of the most despicable and regrettable of these negatives would have to the inhumane treatment of the youth. Children were forced into torturous working conditions not fit for any human being. England’s Industrial Revolution was the home for an abundant amount of these injustices. Sarah Carpenter was eight years old when she began her thirteen year work agreement at the Cressbrook Mill in Derbyshire, England. In an interview with Joseph Rayner she described some of the horrible atrocities she experienced and witnessed throughout her life in the factory. One of the most disturbing instances she shares entails the death of a young girl:

Image from karen-history.wikispaces.com 

"There was a young woman, Sarah Goodling, who was poorly and so she stopped her machine. James Birch, the overlooker, knocked her to the floor. She got up as well as she could. He knocked her down again. Then she was carried to the apprentice house. Her bed-fellow found her dead in bed”.

Due to horrific incidences such as this is the entire reason why we developed labor unions here in the United States of America; for the protection of our workers.  

                  One of the main privileges provided to workers by these labor unions is collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is defined as “a type of negotiation used by employees to work with their employers”. Basically, a group of workers assembles and discusses ways they think their workplace could be improved then contact the union to get back-up. Typical issues discussed in collective bargaining include employees’ wages, benefits, working conditions, and rules of the workplace. Recently, John Kasich, Republican speaker of the house, introduced and passed a piece of legislation called Senate Bill 5 (SB 5) Ohio which deprives workers of this right to collectively bargain with their employers. This means that any government employed Ohioans will no longer be able to go through their union to negotiate any aspect of their job. Due to this, Laura Bischoff predicted that “workplace safety will be compromised”. However, there should be no worry about this though seeing as we have many civil rights protecting workers written into law. Many of these are relevant to the protection of minors preventing any tragedies that occurred during the Industrial Revolution. Such laws ban any minors from working in places that take part in slaughtering, meat packing, coal mining, demolition, power-driven and hoisting apparatus equipment, and multiple manufacturing positions. Minimum wage laws are also in place. Other Ohio laws dealing with workplace safety, workers’ compensation and disability rights can be found at http://ohio.gov/working/. 

Picture form guardian.co.uk

Although Senate Bill 5 will not produce an unsafe work environment equivalent to that of the Industrial Revolution, it still has multiple negative outcomes on the public. One major downfall is that it will reduce most public workers pay. Due to the loss of collective bargaining, public workers will no longer be able to negotiate any aspect of their retirement (Connery). SB 5 also robs government employed workers of the right to strike (Connery). The bill actually outlaws striking entirely, making anyone who partakes in a strike subject to a 1000 dollar fine or up to 30 days in prison, simply for protesting for a more fair work environment. The picture of above represents possible police forces that will be used to disrupt and confine any and all strikers if this bill is passed. Hurting the individual worker is not the intent of the bill, just a negative outcome. The whole purpose of this bill is to cut Ohio’s debt. 

Image from thetruthsyndicate.com

It entails budget cuts totaling roughly 4.5 billion 

dollars. This mass amount is coming from a 

$2,100,000,000 cut in public education, a $1,400,000,000 cut in Medicaid, and a $1,000,000,000 cut to all local governments (Hanauer). All these cuts affect hundreds of thousands of Ohioans. There are a reported 30,000 police officers and fire fighfighters that will be directly impacted by this bill. The video below shows heroic fire fighters and their disdain and opposition towards Senate Bill 5. Others directly affected will be comprised of 180,000 school teachers, 123,000 school district workers, and 300,000 general government employees. That is a total of 633,000 Ohio workers directly impacted by Senate Bill 5, a staggering 10.7% of Ohio’s population. Currently, Ohio’s unemployment calmly rests at 8.9%, about 525,000, and if Senate Bill 5 is passed it has been reported that all the funding cuts will result in 29,000 school employees being dismissed (Hanauer). It has also been estimated that these budget cuts will indirectly result in an additional 14,000 jobs being lost due to lack of revenue for salaries (Hanauer). That ends up in a guaranteed raise of unemployment to at least 9.4% and possibly 9.6%. Seeing as we are already currently in a recession, more lost jobs is not what we need.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfdBF13S5p4

Of all the people anticipated to lose jobs, teachers are among the highest with an expected 29,000 lost jobs across all of Ohio (Hanauer). They are certainly one the groups that will be getting hit the hardest by Senate Bill 5. As of right now, teachers salaries are based upon a step system. The graph below shows how the current system works. You simply find your level of education on the top row and match it to the years you have spent teaching on the side column. If SB 5 is passed, all teachers’ jobs and raises will now depend upon merit as opposed to years spent teaching. At the surface, this seems like a great idea, lousy teachers that make no attempt to improve their student’s education will no longer be able to keep their jobs simply because they have been “teaching” for 20 years. But how will supervisors realistically be able to judge the quality of a teacher? The main criteria found in SB 5 states that merit based pay for teachers will determined by two main gauges, attendance of students and the instruction quality of the professor. Once again, this sounds like quite the noble idea at first. Unfortunately, some less than honest teachers would be able to get around this by merely not marking students as absent when they don’t attend class to make their attendance look better than it really is. They also could grade all their assignments more leniently to ensure that a higher percentage of their classes pass with stellar grades to make their instruction quality depict a higher level than it truly is. This past July in Atlanta 178 teachers in 44 different schools were caught altering answers on a standardized test to better their schools national ranking. If teachers would go through all this trouble and risk their careers to just make their school look better I would have to imagine there would be some who will be more than willing to do the same to raise their pay. .

Picture from cnx.org

Another downfall educator’s face is the inability to negotiate their classroom sizes. This would naturally result in “ballooning classes” (Connery). From personal experience, the larger the class size is, the more difficult it becomes to receive individual instruction from a teacher when struggling with a particular concept being taught. Reducing class size is also one of the few educational strategies shown to increase learning and narrow the achievement gap between ethnic and racial groups. This also could produce more stress for teachers. They would have to try and control a larger amount of adolescences while simultaneously trying to convey complex concepts to a wide range of children with completely different learning styles. Also, they would have a much higher work load in relevance to grading assignments. This could propel teachers to give fewer assignments or simply make the assignments assigned much simpler and less in depth.

Senate Bill 5 would result in a great amount of negative outcomes for the public. It would raise a much unneeded unemployment rate and cut the salaries of those who already work for much less than they deserve.  Collective bargaining would be completely eliminated which was the best resource public employees possessed to obtain more fairness in the workplace. The positives don’t seem to outweigh the negatives which conclusively would point to the fact the Senate Bill 5 is not truly what Ohio needs.

Picture from dailykos.com

Print Works Cited

Connery, Michael. "Ohio Workers, Services Under Fire." Against the Current 26.2 (2011): 12. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 16 October 2011.

Hanauer, Amy. "Ohio: A New Kind of Battleground." Nation 292.22 (2011): 20-22. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.

Tyler Fred blog 16

My partner Michaela understood the basic idea behind my report concerning senate bill 5 and its negative outcomes for the public. I probably do need to address and change some of the pictures and videos in my article to make more persuasive and relevant to the argument I am trying to make. I just found pictures that looked like they may describe what I was talking about but they weren’t directly related or discussed. I probably need to discuss what is happening in the photos to make more of a connection. The feedback definitely was helpful. I never would have thought about the pictures if it wasn’t for Michaela’s input. After reading Michaela’s I wanted to revise my last paragraph and add a way to combat senate bill 5 because I left that out. I also wanted to include more information about my video and pictures. My argument as I would describe is that senate bill 5 is meant to bring down the debt of Ohio but the negatives that come along with it for the public don’t at this point in time outweigh the reduced weight. 

Tyler Fred blog 15

STAKES HIGH FOR BOTH SIDES IN SB5 BATTLE

The author of this blog is Laura A. Bischoff. She basically just shares what positives and negatives could come from the passing or failing of this bill and provides both sides arguments. Right in the first paragraph I found a strong appeal of logos when she says “Voters can expect robo-calls and glossy literature about what the collective bargaining reforms could do for Ohio or could do to public employees”. She takes the annoying things about voting that a majority of people dislike and presents them in a negative fashion about a very important issue as a way to later present the real solid facts without any attempt to harshly persuade the readers. This article was fairly similar to other essays I have because it is simply presenting information about an issue. One difference would that it doesn’t necessarily take a strong stance either way.

OHIO SENATE BILL 5 HAS MANY BENEFITS

The author of this blog is Tara Dodrill. She tries to point out the many benefits that will come from passing senate bill 5, the main one being lowering Ohio’s deficit. She backs her argument by stating that we have civil rights laws protecting employees so they need not fear the loss of a union. That statement is a good logic appeal showing how employees would still have protection. She also appeals to pathos in saying “Police officers, firefighters and EMTs put their lives on the line daily and deserve to be fairly compensated”. She tries to make us feel for the employees. This essay is a little bit different in the fact that she is using more relaxed speech and it doesn’t seem like a strict essay when reading it.

OHIO SENATE BILL 5 MEASURES GAIN TEACHER SUPPORT

This article was also written by Tara Dodrill. Her argument here is concerning the way teachers will be evaluated and given raises. I feel like when she says, “ Dedicated teachers will be rewarded for their stewardship of Ohio's young people”, that could be seen as a pathos appeal because most people want to see young people succeed and her argument here is saying that these dedicated teachers are helping students do so. She also uses logos when comparing both future options for education reforms saying “Both the "Race to the Top" plan developed by Democrats and Ohio HB 153 require teacher conduct”. Here she is talking about teachers getting raises based on the quality of the teacher. This article was very similar to most of the essays I have read before because she is just providing information about a topic trying to get her point across.

GOP LOST THE HANDLE ON SENATE BILL 5 EARLY

This article is written by Thomas Suddes. His main argument, to me, sounded like the Republican Party made a mistake by including police and firefighters in senate bill 5. He uses  pathos when he says “General Assembly Republicans typically are small-town lawyers and beady-eyed "bid-ness" people who read the fine print: Farmer Goodfellow isn't about to let Broad Street's highbinders scam him when he goes to Columbus.” Here he is painting a picture of Republicans. I feel like he is trying to make them out to be deviant people because uses the term “beady-eyed” as one of their descriptions. This article was very different from essays I have read before because he has a lot of emotion in his paper and uses uncommon terminology for an essay.

TylerFred Exploratory Essay

“Mommy, why I can’t I see Daddy?” an innocent confused child would ask his mother. “Because it just isn’t safe right now honey” is how she would casually respond. This was a reoccurring conversation I had with my mother throughout my childhood. I never understand what truly was going on until I grew older and learned more about my family’s history. Alcoholism is a disease that runs rampant in my family. All four of my grandparents suffered from it and my father and brother still struggle with it today. Luckily as of right now I have shown no signs or symptoms of being an alcoholic but coming into college where drinking is so prevalent I couldn’t help but wonder, is binge drinking and the progression of alcoholism linked? Also, seeing this sudden burst of binge from high school to college made me wonder, what motives drive the college drinking craze?

Binge drink is defined as “heavy episodic alcohol use” (Leppel 519), which basically means consuming large amounts of alcohol in a relatively short time frame. But how much alcohol has to be consumed for it to be considered “heavy alcohol use”? The Center for Disease Control stated, “heavy drinking is typically defined as consuming an average of more than two drinks a day” (“Alcohol and Public Health”). I have a problem with that definition. For me, a 150-pound male, consuming two drinks in thirty minutes would give me a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of only .046% (“Blood Alcohol Calculator”). If I was twenty-one years old, I would still be able to drive in the state of Ohio seeing as the legal limit to drive is a BAC of .08% (“Blood Alcohol Calculator”). If I am still able to legally operate heavy machinery then I would not classify two beers as heavy drinking. Karen Leppel also found that “while there were significant fluctuations in binging by high school students and young adults not enrolled in college, college binge drinking remained stable and at a high level” (Leppel 520). My general understanding of this data was that the relationship between binge drinking in high school students and high school graduates not attending college wasn’t necessarily very high or very low and is consistently changing while binge drinking in college remains very prominent and rarely fluctuates. This idea coincides with my initial thought but I did not factor in young adults out of high school that are not in college.  After continuing my reading I found this statistic stating “Over 40% of college students have been found to engage in… binge drinking” (Leppel 519). My primary thought was that this statistic was a bit low. The first weekend I was at Ohio University the streets were flooded with people stumbling and blocking the streets. Now my perception may be marginally skewed seeing how OU is the number one party and other college campuses may not be this nonchalant about public intoxication.

It is clearly evident that a large percentage of college students do engage in consuming excessive quantities of alcohol, but what exactly is the driving purpose for the alcohol abuse? At first I was thinking it might just be the excitement of being on your own and having freedom. Drinking is so easy to get away with when you are not worried about your parents waiting for you as soon as you walk in the door, but as I researched, I found several more motives I had not given any thought to. One obscure reason I discovered was based on the amount of time on spends at a particular campus. Karen Leppel states that “students at four year institutions have a greater investment in the college culture. They are therefore more likely to binge than students at a two year school” (Leppel 521). Now this sounded acceptable to me the first time I read it but once I let it fester in my mind I thought of a minor flaw. If somebody goes away to a four year school, there is a good possibility that they are leaving their group of friends behind, while someone attending a two school would most likely be living at home and still have a large number of close friends still around. Now personally, I feel much more comfortable drinking with people I am more comfortable with as opposed to those that I am not nearly as close too. This might vary from person to person but I believe this fact that Karen Leppel is presenting is not completely valid. One particular reason for why some students choose to drink that really stuck out to me touched on the fact that they are two different cultures in reference to family life and college life. The first culture was called the “Traditional Culture”, their family, friends, teachers and community. This “Traditional Culture” focuses on more socially accepted goals like studying and getting good grades as opposed to drinking (Leppel 520). However, once students leave for college, they no longer have such close ties to their “Traditional Culture”, but are instead surrounded by a “Second Culture”, being Fraternities/Sororities and new college students looking to party (Leppel 520). This “Second Culture” encourages drinking (Leppel 520). They push others to join into the party atmosphere. I have never really thought about this idea before but it makes a lot of sense. Every time I talk with my mom she always pushes the idea “Studies come first. Be safe”. She has never said “Be sure drink a few me honey!”, but whenever I would go out when I got to Ohio University all the frat houses would have open doors, just inviting random people in. Typically I would see a group of attractive girls inside so I would poke my head in and somebody there would offer me a free drink. This “Second Culture” really does encourage consumption. They make it seem fun. Brandie Pugh, a twenty-two year old who attended Ohio University was quoted saying “It’s about the effects. It’s about the lowered inhibitions” (Jayson). She drank because she liked the way it made her feel which I believe is the same reason many people choose to drink. It makes you feel good. However, for some people drinking isn’t just for the sensations. I found that social anxiety seems to be another large factor in some college student’s decision to drink heavily. “Socially anxious people tend to believe they are undesirable to others…and that their own actions will lead to embarrassment and social rejection” (Tennen 600). Coming to college is a scary thing for a lot of people, especially when they’re surrounded by thousands of new faces they don’t recognize. Being in this new environment allows people to reinvent their identity. They no longer have to be remembered as the weird girl who peed her pants in the fifth grade. It’s a fresh start. I can see how the burden to make good impressions and not be rejected could weigh heavy on someone’s mind. Now I am absolutely positive that this is not the case for all college students. There is probably a decent amount of college students that are fairly secure with the person they truly are by the time they reach college. The article goes on to say, “social anxiety should be positively related to alcohol use because alcohol reduces anxiety which, in turn, reinforces drinking in similar situations” (Tennen 601). Drinking helps these people feel better about themselves. They no longer are afraid of not being accepted so alcohol becomes their crutch they use to overcome their anxiety. If somebody needed alcohol to operate in a social situation, would that be considered alcoholism?

                An alcoholic is defined as someone who is dependent on alcohol (“National Institute…”). This can include “strong cravings or urges to drink, not being able to stop drinking once drinking has begun, or withdrawal symptoms such as nausea, sweating, shakiness, and anxiety after stopping drinking” (“National Institute…”). Alcoholism is a disease and it makes those suffering from it desire alcohol just like they desire food and water (“National Institute…”). I know my father was very dependent on alcohol. He did not just drink for the fun of it, he needed it to survive. The first time he tried quitting his body completely shut down. His withdrawal symptoms were so body that his respiratory system completely stopped functioning and he had to be hospitalized for two weeks.. He eventually got treatment and has sober for seven years. All the information I found about alcoholism stated, “the risk for developing alcoholism does indeed run in families” (“National Institute…”). I know for certain that alcoholism does run in my family, so drinking any amounts of alcohol could be detrimental for my future.  I found no solid information proving or disproving that binge drinking could lead to being an alcoholic. However, I feel that after what I read on those with socially anxieties using alcohol as a crutch that it certainly is possible for individuals without the genetic background of alcoholism to become dependent on alcohol. 

Tyler Blog October 5th

A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble. Mohandas Gandhi

I liked this piece of rhetoric because Gandhi is saying how important it is to stand to our convictions and what we know is right or wrong even it could put us in trouble.
Gandhi lead many peaceful movements and stood up against oppression even when it could put him in danger so he knows what he is talking about.
I also liked how he used the phrases "deepest conviction" and "merely uttered" because it helps to draw the picture of somebody standing firm as opposed to breaking and giving in.

Suheir Hammad Poetry Blog (Tyler Fred)

Suheir Hammad uses poetry and beautiful words to make her argument real and descriptive. She very strongly used pathos, playing on people’s emotions to make a very clear distinction that the stereotype of being a terrorist shown towards any and all Arab people is not only unfair, but also very infuriating for these people. “One more person ask me if I knew the hijackers. One more mother fucker ask me what navy my brother is in. one more person assume no Muslims or Arabs were killed” is one quote she has showing her own distain for these racist stereotypes. By showing her own anger about this issue, Suheir gives personality to her argument. She also tries to make these Arab and Palestinian people look like the everyday people they are by describing her brothers. “Their faces are of the Arab man. All eyelashes and nose and beautiful color and stubborn hair”.

 To show how unfair these stereotypes are, she shared some other terrorist acts such as The Oklahoma City Bomber. “We did not vilify white people when they bombed Oklahoma”, referring to  when caucasian Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people with a car bomb. Also, she makes reference to white supremacist saying “When we talk about holy books, hooded men, and death, why never mention the KKK”. Ms. Hammad very clearly points out that there are many terrorist acts that have taken place in America that were committed by people with no affiliation to an Arab nation. 

Exploratory Essays Blog

Not “asserting a thesis too soon” was the first important element of an exploratory essay that I found from our reading (Ramage 105). The book claims that this will help keep the writers mind open to the idea that their first hypothesis on their topic may be incorrect and allows them to change their opinion as the paper builds with the discovery of new information and I would completely agree. In high school the first thing my teachers wanted was a nice, good, strong thesis statement, but I can’t even count how many times I would be actually doing some real research and would stumble across sources contradicting my thesis, which of course, I would exclude entirely form my paper. I definitely like the idea of a delayed thesis.

The second element of an exploratory essay that I found was in the third chapter on page 48. We already discussed it a little in class but recognizing who your audience is and adjusting the angle of vision to paint a specific picture for whoever you’re trying to reach. The Pearson English Reader used the example of describing a party to your parents and then to your best friend (Ramage 48). Most people would definitely have different key events and stories to share with the respective audience.

Taking “Double-Entry” research notes was another important tool I found. This is basically where somebody makes two columns and in the first they write the raw information they found form their source in the second they write their opinion on the information and how it’s changed their original thoughts and predictions. I feel like doing this would also help someone retain the info they find and understand it better by thinking and recording how it effects their original hypothesis.