Local Politics: Columbus isn’t as friendly to labor as the city professes

How pro-labor is Columbus, really?

With Monday’s Columbus City Council meeting, the city has renamed its Wage Theft Prevention and Enforcement Commission to the Labor Commission. The Commission manages the Columbus wage theft ordinance, passed in 2020, and its independent contractor ordinance, passed in 2023. These laws are helpful tools in fighting local labor abuses.

City leadership claims to be very pro-labor, but the results are mixed, to put it kindly. We have certainly heard pro-labor talk from our leaders. But a different story sometimes plays out behind the scenes.

Our “labor guy” on City Council, Rob Dorans, worked in his role as counsel for ACT Ohio to try to obtain a Community Benefits Agreement with Hensel Phelps, the contractor building our new $2 billion airport terminal. Ultimately, Hensel Phelps would not agree, and the Columbus Regional Airport Authority board refused to apply any of its own leverage to reach one. While Dorans and other local labor leaders conveyed disappointment at the result, we might have better outcomes if our mayor and county commissioners would stop appointing Republicans to the Airport Authority board.

Previously, former councilmember Elizabeth Brown and current councilmembers Shannon Hardin and Dorans were excited to pose for a picture with Starbucks cups when the 88 E. Broad St. store won its union vote in March 2022. The successful union drives at that location and other local Starbucks were great wins for local labor, and the support from elected officials was welcome.

On the other side of that coin, just a few months later during Columbus City Schools’ teacher strike in August 2022, Mayor Andy Ginther dumbfoundingly tweeted “no one wins from a strike,” betraying his complete misunderstanding of the political climate and, you know, how strikes work.

City Council responses to the teachers’ strike were mixed. A few called for the parties to come to the table and reach an agreement, which is about as milquetoast and noncommittal as one can get. Councilmember Hardin tweeted a vaguely pleased message once the parties had reached a conceptual agreement. For his part, Councilmember Dorans posted multiple tweets supporting the union, even encouraging people to donate to their strike fund. Councilmember Elizabeth Brown joined the picket line on at least one occasion. 

Social media certainly isn’t the most important way to show support, but it is often telling. The difference between Dorans’ request to support a strike fund and Ginther’s “no one wins from a strike” could not be starker – and they give a good picture of the respective beliefs of these officials.

The absolute pinnacle of anti-union animus from our local leaders has come this year, not from social media, but from a leaked document. At least two Columbus City School board members – Tina Pierce and Brandon Simmons – were involved in creating the document. For anyone unaware of the scandal surrounding their actions, these two (and possibly others) detailed actions the school board could take to fight back against the Columbus teacher and staff unions in order to sway public perception. The most nauseating part of the document was an indication that the school board would not ignore the “racial dynamics” that could be used to divide the teacher and staff unions from each other. 

Initially, all fingers were pointed at Simmons. The school board stated that he was solely to blame and had written the document on his own. He was censured by the school board, and though there were calls for his resignation, he stated that he would not resign and would continue his work. Despite the board’s best efforts to make Simmons appear completely to blame, this was hard to believe, considering that much of the document sounded like it was written by an experienced corporate ghoul, not a 22-year-old. Simmons maintained that others had participated in creating the document but refused to identify the parties involved.

Then earlier this week, WOSU reported that prior to the document leak, Simmons had recorded two phone conversations, one with Pierce and one with board member Jennifer Adair. These conversations revealed that though Pierce had been involved in creating the document, her plan upon learning the document had been leaked was to throw Simmons under the bus. Pierce told Simmons under no uncertain terms that he should not tell the truth and was to wait out the controversy.

Adair’s plan to avoid blowback was to point the finger at board member Sarah Ingles, who had shared the document with the teacher’s union. Adair apparently thought that someone who told the teacher’s union about anti-union and blatantly racist schemes was somehow going to come off in the wrong. Which is the kind of thought that a scab would have.

Only time will tell if Columbus voters continue to ignore the absolutely blatant anti-union, anti-worker positions of some of our local elected officials. It is past time to demand that our mayor, city council, county commissioners and school board members are all friends of labor.