In Depth
Edward McElroy is a Rhode Island native and happens to be president of the American Federation of Teachers, the fourth largest labor union in the country (1.3-million-members). In the keynote address at the Institute for Labor Studies 25th anniversary awards dinner, he recalled the legitimate fight in the 60’s and 70’s to get teachers the…
The contract negotiations between Providence Mayor Cicilline and the Providence Firefighters Union continues to drag on. It seems that they can’t even agree on what they agree upon. Cicilline said three issues are impeding negotiations: employee contributions to health insurance, cost of living increase for pensions, and “management flexibility.” Cicilline said the firefighters must agree…
here is a good piece from the LA Times on why the compromise on judicial filibusters was a bad idea, and essentially unconstitutional to boot. The author was at one time the dean of BU’s law school
Patrick Ruffini, Republican pollster/blogger, has unveiled his 2008 Presidential Election Tracker. Here’s how it works. Throughout the day, the Wire goes out and scours blog and MSM feeds for news about 22 potential Presidential candidates, both Democrat and Republican. The result is a tool where you can not only read all the news about a…
There was a government worker union rally held yesterday in Providence, but this wasn’t your father’s or grandfathers mill worker union rally, folks. This rally was for members of public service employee unions: state employees, teachers, firemen, police, etc., supported by taxes and rather ungrateful for it. Here are just a couple things that were…
Here are two provocative pieces on public education issues, including teachers’ compensation and public school performance: First, Tom Coyne of RI Policy Analysis on RI Teachers Unions. Second, a multi-part debate in the Narragannsett Times between Robert Walsh, Executive Director of the NEA-RI, and Tom Wigand, an attorney.
In the May edition of Crisis Magazine, editor Brian Saint-Paul, offers this poignant reflection on the life of the late Pope John Paul II: In the end, it was a beautiful death. Surrounded by those who knew and loved him, within earshot of the cheering thousands who came to be near his broken body, John…
To keep pounding the Education drum, a reader (“CL”) commmented on one of my posts from November of last year on how East Greenwich students rallied at a school committee meeting to agitate for a contract and were cheered on by teachers and parents. Within the context of the piece, I mentioned the now-familiar “work-to-rule”…
Nothing is sweeter in a debate than when your opponent makes outlandish statements and hands you an overwhelming rhetorical victory. This just happened in the East Greenwich teachers’ union contract dispute when NEA union officials made public comments that showed how they live in a delusional world, completely disconnected from any form of reality. Recent…
Part of what makes a danger of modern approaches to addressing public policies that bear on “progress” is that we tend to view them on an individual basis, and when we do realize that they are tangential to each other, we hesitate to follow the implications but so deeply. (Sometimes the hesitance results from the…
