Labor
According to 7 to 7, none of the teachers’ unions in the eight districts that are currently without (or soon to be without) contracts are planning to strike: With Rhode Island schools scheduled to start opening next week, teacher unions in eight districts have not signed new contracts — including Providence, the state’s largest district,…
Commenting to my initial mention of my latest Providence Journal op-ed, Michael writes: I wonder why you find satisfaction in the “non-union” designation. I’ve worked for years in the construction trades and for the most part found union carpenters and their non-union counterparts have equal skills and ethics, only the union guys are making a…
Whenever I read about arrangements such as Paul Edward Parker describes at the end of his Projo piece about state worker overtime, I wonder how polluted the public budget is with similar tricks and instances of advantage-taking: One area that [Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals Director Ellen R. Nelson] hopes to address is…
The “Industrial Workers of the World” have been drawing some media attention due to their North Providence protest where one protester, Alex Svoboda, was hospitalized after a confrontation with police. In a Richard C. Dujardin article in today’s Projo on the latest developments, a local IWW leader briefly describes the history and the mission of…
It’s amazing enough that Cranston firefighters can retire after twenty years at any age, but this is stunning: Once retired, retirees continue to receive extra pay each year for longevity bonuses and extra pay for 15 holidays! So, they get longevity bonuses for a job that they no longer do, as well as holiday pay…
After slipping into another certainly fruitless discussion with a certain of our regular commenters, it occurred to me that one of humanity’s detrimental tendencies, with particular implications for modern society, is to think of societal mechanisms with too narrow of a focus, usually adjusted to the breadth at which our preferences appear clearest. The case…
Well we’re waiting here in Allentown For the Pennsylvania we never found For the promises our teachers gave If we worked hard If we behaved So the graduations hang on the wall But they never really helped us at all No they never taught us what was real Iron and coal Chromium Steel And we’re…
Douglas Gablinske, a Bristol Democrat, wrote a spot-on piece this weekend: As a private person, Rhode Island resident, taxpayer and small-business owner, I have wondered about something for years: How can state legislators who are full-time business agents of unions write, promote, and move legislation through the General Assembly, yet not be in violation of…
So far, I’ve posted on how the Democrats in the House have attempted to remove the ability of workers to vote via a secret ballot if they want to unionize and how most workers dislike union card checks, which is the “approved alternative” of the House Democrats and their Labor Boss buddies. One area of…
In an earlier posting, I introduced a book entitled The New New Left: How American Politics Works Today by Steven Malanga and a review of the book in the Claremont Review of Books. The core theme of the book was described by one reviewer as “American politics is not about [political] parties, it is about…
