Labor
Let’s order things clearly: It was objectionable for a Central Falls high school teacher to dangle an Obama doll upside down with a sign saying “Fire CF Teachers,” because it involved the students in a union dispute. Talk of its being a hate crime is utterly outlandish: To Clifford Montiero, president of the Providence branch…
Not unexpectedly, my column in last month’s Rhode Island Catholic was my first to garner a letter to the editor of that paper. I’m not sure, though, that William Schecher, of Smithfield, understood what I was trying to say when he writes: The whole purpose of unions is to join together for the common cause…
Here’s the decision from Superior Court Justice Silverstein: PDF. About halfway through the document, it appears that Silverstein would draw his lines very tightly around his ruling in favor of the school committee: Under the language of § 16-2-9 a school committee must bargain in good faith with certified public school teachers in accordance with…
Columnist Mark Patinkin has been focusing on the teacher dispute in Central Falls for weeks, now, but an essay on teachers who (quietly) disagree with the union’s activities brings to the fore a central reason that many of us have a constitutional aversion to unions: “As a C.F. High School teacher I agree with you,”…
I didn’t want to let this one slip by without mention: The business-backed [Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council] found that the state taxpayer contribution to those pensions nearly tripled over the last decade, jumping from $79.9 million in 2001 to a projected $218 million in the coming year. … … Overall, state personnel expenditures will…
Rep. Joseph McNamara (D, Pawtucket) — himself the Alternative Learning Program Director for the Pawtucket School Department — recently published an op-ed defending legislation that he submitted (and which passed) that created a healthcare panel to design insurance benefits for all of Rhode Island teachers. (The legislation, incidentally, inspired the introduction of our legislative stooge…
Back when I made my (thus far) erroneous prediction that Rhode Island’s unemployment rate would hit 14 or even 15%, I didn’t take into account the effects of discouraged workers. Doing so, the rate would actually be much higher than that. It is, without a doubt, a confounding variable, which is why I’m not so…
Honestly, I don’t know how Rhode Islanders can read articles like this one without wanting to storm the State House. In brief, the General Assembly is now letting months pass by without resolving this year’s nine-figure budget deficit, and every day of delay makes the task more difficult, thus building political tolerance for the most…
By now, you’ve likely decided whether or not you agree with the statement that the Obama administration’s approach to “stimulus” was meant not so much to stimulate growth in the private sector economy as to shore up the public sector and insulate government at all levels from the real effects of the recession. Whether the…
I know many of the right reform crowd in Rhode Island disagree with my general take on regionalization, but I’m relieved to see this, from Tuesday’s Newport Daily News: Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, and Rep. Deborah L. Ruggiero, D-Jamestown, met with members of the Town Council and School Committee before the regularly scheduled…
