Public Sector Bargaining in a Democracy - An Assessment of the Ohio Public Employee Collective Bargaining Law

The purpose of this Article is to examine the Ohio Act in terms of its accommodation of the major theoretical considerations in favor of, or opposed to, public sector collective bargaining. In other words, is the Ohio Act structured so as to maximally achieve the benefits asserted to be available from collective bargaining and to avoid the costs asserted to arise from it? In order to accomplish this task, this Article will briefly summarize major provisions of the Act. An overview of some of the major arguments for and against public sector unionization will then be provided. Once this background has been established, the Act will be analyzed, focusing upon its effect upon individual employees, labor organizations, and the democratic process. The conclusions reached are that the Act is not structured so as to protect public employees to the degree that private sector employees are protected, that the Act will assist labor organizations, and that the Act strikingly fails to provide a structure that can minimize damage to the processes of democracy.