In a demonstration that worker revolt in debt-laden states is not the mere province of cheese loving peoples (the Greeks, the French, and Wisconsinites), members of Ohio’s public employee unions, under the banner of “We Are Ohio”, took to the streets of Columbus on June 29th and presented Secretary of State Jon Husted with nearly 1.3 million signatures in favor of a petition for a public referendum to repeal recently passed amendments to the Public Employees’ Collective Bargaining Law (popularly known as S.B. 5). The 1,298,301 signatures collected far exceed the 231,149-signature requirement for putting repeal of S.B. 5 on the ballot this coming November—and in fact represents the largest haul of signatures ever collected for a referendum petition in the state’s history.

As a quick re-cap, S.B. 5, which passed on March 30, 2011 and will be held in abeyance pending validation of the submitted signatures and the near certain holding of a referendum on November 8, 2011, represented a sweeping revamp of Ohio’s public sector bargaining laws, including...

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