Labor
The bottom line for Tiverton — indeed, for all of Rhode Island — came into stark relief at last night’s Budget Committee meeting. The town’s infrastructure is crumbling. Taxes have been skyrocketing. The schools are laying off teachers and talking about cutting into services. And town officials are insisting that there is simply no way…
Here comes another historic, philosophical battle, this time in Providence: Education Commissioner Peter McWalters has ordered the city schools to begin filling teacher vacancies based on qualifications rather than seniority, an order that could fly in the face of the teachers’ contract. McWalters, in a no-nonsense letter yesterday to Supt. Tom Brady, said the district…
The conversation between Andrew and Matt, on last night’s Matt Allen show, had to do with open public-sector negotiations. Stream by clicking here, or download it.
Contrary to the Rhode Island Labor Relations Board’s implication that contract negotiations opened to the public constitute “mere surface bargaining“, there are other states that mandate some form of open negotiations — sometimes all the way through the process. The Washington-state based Evergreen Freedom Foundation has compiled a list of different state laws regarding openness…
According to a press release from the Ocean State Policy Research Institute (printed in full in the extended entry), without public discussion, the Rhode Island Labor Relations Board has declined to consider the East Providence School Committee’s complaint against the union: “The State Labor Relations Board reported it has dismissed unfair labor practice charges filed…
I know and trust Lieutenant Michael Morse of the Providence Fire Department, and he certainly makes some persuasive points on minimum manning: From my seat I witness Providence’s manpower used beyond the breaking point daily. Day after day, we are forced to tap resources from surrounding communities to answer 911 calls. Crews from Cranston, East…
The extremity of Mike Cappelli’s comment about unions offers a starting point from which more tempered opinions can be considered: Do these pigs ever acknowledge that the taxpayers are people, too? Do they ever acknowledge that their “clients” are children, too? Dealing with these pigs is like dealing with Hamas, Justin. You just can’t do…
I just heard a report on 630 WPRO in which the public sector unions in New Bedford explicitly rejected a pay cut in full knowledge that the city would have no other option than layoffs. Said one firefighter (approximately): We’re going to have to work harder, and response times are going to be slower. People…
With other contributors covering the state of the state and the hoopla in East Providence, I’m at the Tiverton School Committee meeting, to which I arrived in the midst of Superintendent Bill Rearick’s description of the various cuts to come for the next budget — you know, the one that increased by about $150,000 when…
This is being treated as a secondary matter, but in the long range it might be the more significant thread coming loose in East Providence: The state Labor Relations Board has decided to hold a formal hearing on a complaint by the city teachers union that the School Committee violated Rhode Island labor law by…