Labor

Some comments from Michael, of Rescuing Providence, touch on basic differences of assumptions and perspectives. The first was to my “Proud to Be Non-Union” post: I never expected the folks here at Anchor Rising to be pro-union, but the depth of misunderstanding concerning organized labor and the willingness to serve as lackeys to powerful corporate…

New Hampshire employs more public employees per citizen than Rhode Island does — so explained the Rhode Island NEA’s Bob Walsh in a comment to this post: Mike – Well, I am not a Marxist (unless Groucho counts) but I assume you know by now that the “New Hampshire” miracle is really the New Hampshire…

According to 7 to 7, none of the teachers’ unions in the eight districts that are currently without (or soon to be without) contracts are planning to strike: With Rhode Island schools scheduled to start opening next week, teacher unions in eight districts have not signed new contracts — including Providence, the state’s largest district,…

Commenting to my initial mention of my latest Providence Journal op-ed, Michael writes: I wonder why you find satisfaction in the “non-union” designation. I’ve worked for years in the construction trades and for the most part found union carpenters and their non-union counterparts have equal skills and ethics, only the union guys are making a…

Whenever I read about arrangements such as Paul Edward Parker describes at the end of his Projo piece about state worker overtime, I wonder how polluted the public budget is with similar tricks and instances of advantage-taking: One area that [Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals Director Ellen R. Nelson] hopes to address is…

The “Industrial Workers of the World” have been drawing some media attention due to their North Providence protest where one protester, Alex Svoboda, was hospitalized after a confrontation with police. In a Richard C. Dujardin article in today’s Projo on the latest developments, a local IWW leader briefly describes the history and the mission of…

It’s amazing enough that Cranston firefighters can retire after twenty years at any age, but this is stunning: Once retired, retirees continue to receive extra pay each year for longevity bonuses and extra pay for 15 holidays! So, they get longevity bonuses for a job that they no longer do, as well as holiday pay…

After slipping into another certainly fruitless discussion with a certain of our regular commenters, it occurred to me that one of humanity’s detrimental tendencies, with particular implications for modern society, is to think of societal mechanisms with too narrow of a focus, usually adjusted to the breadth at which our preferences appear clearest. The case…