Labor

A Refresher on Teacher Salaries

By Justin Katz | January 31, 2010 |

Pat Crowley’s in the comment section slinging mud at my numbers. For consistency’s sake, here’s the relevant chart for the state as a whole: Crowley’s claim is that the increases in teachers’ salaries are not keeping up with inflation. One could argue the relevance of that fact on the grounds that everything else must therefore…

The Usual Ommission from School Budget Fights

By Justin Katz | January 30, 2010 |

Anchor Rising readers shouldn’t have any trouble guessing (let alone discerning) what’s missing from this report out of Cranston: Wednesday night, on what was the first chance for the public to speak on the proposed budget, students, coaches and parents flocked to Cranston West’s auditorium, where the School Committee budget hearing was moved to accommodate…

Bankrupted for Solidarity

By Justin Katz | January 27, 2010 |

Ted Nesi reports: The increase in the share of all Rhode Island workers belonging to a union posted an even more dramatic increase, jumping to 17.9 percent. … In New England, no state had a larger share of workers in a union than Rhode Island. It was followed by Connecticut (17.3 percent), Massachusetts (16.6 percent),…

Unspinning the Union

By Justin Katz | January 26, 2010 |

Capers Jones responds in an edition of the RISCy Business newsletter to the pension-related spin of Patrick Crowley, of the National Education Association, Rhode Island. After citing a number of statistics related to public-sector employees and education with which all Rhode Islanders should be passingly familiar, Jones writes: These statistics show that government pensions have…

A Local War Against Reality

By Justin Katz | January 22, 2010 |

In keeping with the War on Reality theme, our state’s most egregious propagandist has been striving to insert another grain of sand into the minds of Rhode Islanders who don’t like to think too hard: The key feature of the pension system is that the bulk of the funding comes not from the taxpayers but…

What Consolidators Are Missing

By Justin Katz | January 19, 2010 |

I suppose this Projo editorial opposing the newly legislated board for statewide health insurance benefits for teachers is better late than never, but the editors continue to keep two and two from being joined: Obviously, Rhode Island can do much better than rushing through a new system whereby a panel of special interests reward themselves…

Blame and Motivation in Education

By Justin Katz | January 19, 2010 |

Friday night’s Violent Roundtable on the Matt Allen Show featured Rhode Island House Minority Leader Bob Watson and legal analyst Lou Pulner, and I was surprised to find Pulner nearly standing alone when the conversation turned toward the teachers unions’ blocking the state’s federal Race to the Top application (on which the RI Federation of…

Labor Gets its Special Health Care Deal

By Marc Comtois | January 14, 2010 |

At the end of this post I alluded to the special deal that unions–after much b***ing and moaning– have extracted from Team Obama Health Care Force. In short, the tax on so-called “cadillac plans” won’t be applied to collectively bargained health plans. Heritage’s James Sherk observes: What a deal. Unions want the health care spending,…

Why the Proposed Teachers’ Health Insurance Board is an Unconstitutional Violation of Separation of Powers

By Carroll Andrew Morse | January 4, 2010 |

A non-trivial question concerning the new teachers’ health insurance board proposed by the legislature but opposed by the Governor is which branch of government it would belong to. It’s obviously not the judiciary. And as currently structured, the board cannot be an offshoot of the legislature. A legislature has no power to delegate its statewide…

Re: Is a New Way for Labor to Limit the Options

By Justin Katz | January 3, 2010 |

Turning on my home computer after a weekend on the road, I was relieved and concerned to see the legislative bomb that Andrew has spotted. Relieved that we’ve come across this in time to shine some light. Concerned because I recall glancing at these bills back when they were on the agenda and making the…

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