Labor
The dispute between the East Providence School Committee and the East Providence Teachers’ Union has focused attention of the Rhode Island State Labor Relations Board (SLRB), a largely obscure administrative body that referees disputes between management and labor. What little public information is available regarding the Board and its operations has caused taxpayers to be…
So the Ocean State Policy Research Institute has learned that the State Labor Relations Board is a very quick-thinking group (emphasis added): By law, such proceedings must be open unless a recorded vote is taken to close the meeting and an explicit exemption under 42-46-5(a) is cited. Any votes taken in closed session must be…
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…