Labor
James Cournoyer, of North Smithfield, gets to the heart of the matter (after noting that public employees are paid workers, not volunteers): … a public employee who starts working at age 25 with a $30,000 salary and annual raises of 3.25 percent will contribute $74,425 to the pension system over 20 years, assuming a contribution…
Actually, what struck me about Rhody’s comment was how this early sentence betrays the ridiculousness of his point: If any of us were sent back to work under a court order, our attitude might not be that great, either. Most of us, I venture to suggest, cannot envision circumstances in which a court would have…
Here’s another shining example of what public sector unions — specifically teachers’ unions, specifically the NEA — have wrought: The state Department of Education does not endorse the high school’s plan for students to stand before their English classes to present their senior projects — a new graduation requirement here this year. … Most of…
Pat Crowley’s complaints about a letter that Governor Carcieri apparently sent to Bob Walsh, Crowley’s NEA boss, are transparently two-faced in so many ways that I won’t enumerate them. Simply put, the idea that Walsh would respond otherwise than with the mind-numbing reply that Crowley publishes is laughable. It is, let’s just say, improbable that…
Surely, I’ve become too apt to be suspicious, but something in this labor rep’s reaction to the supplemental budget — in conjunction with the legislators’ “yelling and screaming” during debate of it — reminds me that this was merely the preface: “It’s devastating,” said Dennis Grilli, head of the largest state employees union, Council 94.…
Here’s the laugh line from Jill Rodrigues’s Sakonnet Times story on the professional study that concluded — shockingly — that the Portsmouth school system needs more money: Although much of that money is spent on salaries and benefits, the consultants did not weigh in on contract provisions and their impacts on the district. Reading some…
Steve Peoples’s story, which Marc mentioned earlier, of the likely mass retirement of public workers wishing to retain the current healthcare deal for retirees emanates cognitive dissonance. How are readers expected to react to this: Sheila Ellis waited for nearly an hour inside the stuffy reception area of the state retirement office yesterday afternoon. And…
I’ve most likely been overstating the number of Tiverton teachers who stand to lose their jobs if the union remains implacable. Thirty-four notices of potential layoffs went out to meet a deadline; one position was eliminated in the school budget as passed; so I’ve been saying that intransigence might result in the actual layoffs of…
Throughout my adult years, I’d never so much as considered sending my children to private school (parochial or otherwise) until very recently. Even my particular tincture of religious faith leads me strongly to feel that spending one’s formative years among a cross-section of the local society — an opportunity that my own experience led me…
The budget passed at the last Tiverton School Committee meeting — largely reflecting the latest teacher contract proposed — included the loss of only one teaching position from the payrolls. Prior to that, the district had sent out thirty-four non-renewal notices. Apparently, three-quarters of the teachers are willing to accept the risk (and probable sacrifice)…