Labor
Here’s a Dilbert cartoon from July that certain segments of Rhode Island society should consider:
Yes, this is a local instance, but I’ve no doubt whatsoever that similar opinions exist — and the same arguments would be made — in towns across Rhode Island, were school committees to begin considering a demand for open negotiations. I’ve posted video of the discussion about the topic at the last school committee meeting…
Brian Hull summarizes the approaching resolution between the governor and the state’s public sector unions thus: Under the agreement, state workers would take eight unpaid days in this fiscal year and four unpaid days in the next fiscal year. State workers will wait an additional six months for their next pay raise. There will be…
From a press release just out from the East Providence School Committee: The proposal calls for a collaboration among “stakeholders” in developing the system of evaluating teachers that will be the basis for paying them beginning in 2011. The “stakeholders” would include parents, teachers, administrators, the teachers’ union and educational experts from Rhode Island and…
Doesn’t it seem that school districts somehow always just happen to find money? I mean, sometimes a car’s brake lines just happen to go the day after it’s been in the shop for a tuneup, but it’s difficult to know what to make of the Woonsocket superintendent’s claim that the district can now hire a…
General Assembly Auditor General Ernest Almonte has rejected East Providence’s budget balancing plan (PDF): The City of East Providence and the School Department have a well established history of deficits. Unfortunately, the City has failed to adequately resolve its financial dilemma. The current Plan is similar to prior deficit reduction plans which proposed the sale…
In the ongoing dispute over state-government shutdown days, as frequently occurs in public-sector union negotiations in Rhode Island, labor representatives are claiming they have a plan that will save just as much money as the plan put forth by government officials. Scott MacKay from WRNI’s On Politics blog reports…Union representatives now say publicly that they…
Arriving at tonight’s Tiverton School Committee meeting even a few minutes before the usual time wasn’t sufficient for me to catch most of the meeting. According to the current agenda, an executive session began at 5:30, with the public meeting scheduled thereafter, and the committee is almost all the way through the scheduled topics. Luckily,…
Yesterday, I related an anecdote in which I used my vehicle as a means of forcing traffic etiquette. The part of the tale on which National Education Association of Rhode Island Assistant Executive Director Patrick Crowley honed in was that I’d used my work van to get to a political event: You are allowed to…
So, firefighters from three cities have joined the state carpenters’ union in picketing the construction site of a new firehouse in Johnston — perhaps erroneously: Two hours after the lines went up, Mayor Joseph M. Polisena said that when the town awarded its contractor to the low bidder, Iron Construction, two months ago, it clearly…
