Labor
A moment’s review of one’s own life will likely provide plenty of basis for answering Rep. John Loughlin’s rhetorical question, by which he argues for preserving the pension scheme for vested employees: How can we say to a valued teacher or employee that has contributed to a plan for ten, twenty, or nearly thirty years…
Mickey Kaus has been on top of “card check” from the get go. His latest takes on some of the media spin regarding the issue: The labor side’s ability to get reporters to use their version of card-check’s controversial secret ballot provisions continues to amaze. Here’s WaPo‘s Alec MacGillis: The bill, first introduced in 2003,…
The unions have made an honest blog of RI Future: Working Rhode Island, a coalition of most of Rhode Island’s labor unions, and RIFuture.Org, the State’s premier political blog, announced a first of its kind partnership designed to increase the visibility of the labor movement in the online world. Through the partnership Working Rhode Island…
In attempting to get a handle on the recently approved AFSCME labor contract in Tiverton on a Saturday morning, I made a data entry error that resulted in a too-dramatically opposing result from the town administrator. He inadvertently jumbled the starting points for his increase/decrease calculations, leading to a stated savings of $117,065, and I…
For whatever it’s worth, the “study commission” looking at pensions for the Rhode Island House approved a plan to increase the minimum retirement age to 65, and although it didn’t vote to eliminate cost of living adjustments (COLAs), it did suggest tying them to inflation data. The curious result came during the vote to apply…
I’m hearing that the Tiverton Town Council ratified the contract with the AFSCME municipal workers. That’s one out of four contracts in the town becoming available for negotiation this year that is now off the table. One out of four contracts that will now represent a “locked in,” unchangeable portion of the budget over the…
WPRI’s Tim White has been looking into the practice of teacher healthcare buybacks in Rhode Island (with the television segment airing tonight at eleven): After combing teacher contracts for all 36 school districts, Target 12 crunched the numbers. Here are some of the most generous buy-back offers we found. -Newport teachers can get up to…
The talking point of local unionists and ostriches is that our pension system is in trouble because a few years of low contributions in the ’90s threw everything off, and all we have to do is to maintain funding for just a couple of decades, and the whole thing will work itself out right. That…
It so happened that, the week my letter about Tiverton officials’ relationship with the public unions appeared in the Sakonnet Times, the town council posted a “tentative agreement” with AFSCME Council 94, slated for ratification at Monday’s town council meeting. The coincidence led one commenter on the Sakonnet Times site to aver hypocrisy, on my…
I’ve got a letter in the current Sakonnet Times, responding to some discouraging observations at recent town meetings: To the editor: The self-presumed ruling class of Tiverton — in and out of office — has no governing ideas but to raise taxes in good times and bad while comfortably accepting that most of the town’s…
