Labor
Chris Powell offers it in a different context, but his idea would be a brilliant defense against the ever-looming sledgehammer of litigation threats in contract disputes: The boards that have capitulated to the lawsuit threat say it is all a matter of avoiding litigation expense. But if a board really believes that First Cathedral is…
I was surprised to learn that Warwick is alone in “weighing” its students based on whether or not they have an IEP (Individual Education Plan). It goes like this: kid with normal educational needs = 1; kid with IEP = 1.5 (and sometimes 2). So, as the Warwick Beacon reported last week, “there are 10,482…
Pat Crowley’s in the comment section slinging mud at my numbers. For consistency’s sake, here’s the relevant chart for the state as a whole: Crowley’s claim is that the increases in teachers’ salaries are not keeping up with inflation. One could argue the relevance of that fact on the grounds that everything else must therefore…
Anchor Rising readers shouldn’t have any trouble guessing (let alone discerning) what’s missing from this report out of Cranston: Wednesday night, on what was the first chance for the public to speak on the proposed budget, students, coaches and parents flocked to Cranston West’s auditorium, where the School Committee budget hearing was moved to accommodate…
Ted Nesi reports: The increase in the share of all Rhode Island workers belonging to a union posted an even more dramatic increase, jumping to 17.9 percent. … In New England, no state had a larger share of workers in a union than Rhode Island. It was followed by Connecticut (17.3 percent), Massachusetts (16.6 percent),…
Capers Jones responds in an edition of the RISCy Business newsletter to the pension-related spin of Patrick Crowley, of the National Education Association, Rhode Island. After citing a number of statistics related to public-sector employees and education with which all Rhode Islanders should be passingly familiar, Jones writes: These statistics show that government pensions have…
In keeping with the War on Reality theme, our state’s most egregious propagandist has been striving to insert another grain of sand into the minds of Rhode Islanders who don’t like to think too hard: The key feature of the pension system is that the bulk of the funding comes not from the taxpayers but…
I suppose this Projo editorial opposing the newly legislated board for statewide health insurance benefits for teachers is better late than never, but the editors continue to keep two and two from being joined: Obviously, Rhode Island can do much better than rushing through a new system whereby a panel of special interests reward themselves…
Friday night’s Violent Roundtable on the Matt Allen Show featured Rhode Island House Minority Leader Bob Watson and legal analyst Lou Pulner, and I was surprised to find Pulner nearly standing alone when the conversation turned toward the teachers unions’ blocking the state’s federal Race to the Top application (on which the RI Federation of…
At the end of this post I alluded to the special deal that unions–after much b***ing and moaning– have extracted from Team Obama Health Care Force. In short, the tax on so-called “cadillac plans” won’t be applied to collectively bargained health plans. Heritage’s James Sherk observes: What a deal. Unions want the health care spending,…