Labor
In GoLocalProv.com today, Dan McGowan tells of how Rhode Island has shed more government jobs, as a percentage, than any other state in the country since 2007. He uses some nice numbers and percentages to show the facts. In total, Rhode Island lost about 4,400 government jobs over four years, ranking 33rd among states in…
EastBayRI reports – exclusively, it appears – in an article that also describes the latest development (mediation) in the stalled Bristol/Warren teacher contract negotiations. Mr. Leidecker is the lead negotiator for the NEA-RI in those talks. … Mr. Leidecker, negotiator for the Rhode Island chapter of the National Education Association (NEARI), was recently found guilty…
Moderate Party founder Ken Block has been circulating an interesting letter: I have been waiting for someone to call out Bob Walsh on his comments in the September, 22, 2011 Providence Journal article “Business Coalition Backs R.I. Pension Reform.” Since no one else has yet taken Mr. Walsh to task, I will now do so.…
Statements such as the following are so foreign to my way of seeing things that there must be some fundamental question at the bottom of the difference: To understand how we got here, first consider the Ben Franklin-Horatio Alger-Henry Ford ur-myth: To balk at working hard — really, really hard — brands you as profoundly…
I notice that the wire story that the Providence Journal chose for its coverage of President Obama’s Labor Day speech didn’t make mention of the call to arms of Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. The omission would be one thing if the article were narrowly focused on President Obama’s words (that is, if they took…
Senator Frank Ciccone, who was a leading voice for legislation to generate some monopoly business for a particular media purchase agent and who makes $161,168 working for the Laborers’ State Council, wants to provide micromanagement-level oversight of quasi-public entities: In a letter that went out to the top administrators of these agencies on Aug. 25,…
What am I missing in this story? Providence teachers on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to approve a three-year contract that guarantees that every fired teacher will be returned to the district in exchange for substantial concessions. But: The unprecedented decision to fire every teacher and close five schools left teachers and parents angry and demoralized. Although…
You’ll recall, from a couple of weeks ago, the commentary of Robert Barber, a retired Cranston police captain eight years into a retirement that he began at 50. Well, PolitiFact has looked into his very specific claim that “law-enforcement officers die 10 years earlier than the general population” and found it wanting: Whether a person…
On July 14, Andrew put up an excellent post responding to a comment from Michael Morse and explaining what we mean when we talk about the inherent corruption of the public sector, particularly with respect to unionization: When someone regularly deals on a firsthand basis with people in need of real help — and in…
Disclaimer preamble: The matter of labor unions does not move me either to cheers or to condemnation: neither the philosophy itself of workers banding together – now that we are many decades past sweat shops – nor as the cause of the state’s current fiscal travails. (The overwhelming responsibility for the latter accrues to our…
