No one is happier than organized labor to see Scott Walker drop out of the 2016 contest.
In July, when the Wisconsin governor announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination, AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka issued a one-sentence statement:
"Scott Walker is a national disgrace." On Monday, after hearing that
Walker's candidacy had ended, Trumka said in a written statement: "Scott
Walker is still a disgrace, just no longer national."
For labor, Walker's failure as a presidential candidate is especially
sweet given the twin humiliations it's suffered from Walker in
Wisconsin. A labor-backed effort to recall Walker failed in 2012 after
Walker pushed through a bill drastically reducing public employees'
bargaining rights. Then, in 2014, Walker won re-election
after Trumka declared Walker's defeat organized labor's top priority.
Earlier this year, Walker had made Wisconsin the country's 25th
right-to-work state, freeing public and private workers from any legal
requirement to pay dues or their equivalent to a union that bargains
collectively on their behalf.
But Walker was never able to
gain traction with his anti-union message in the pre-primary contest
for the White House — in part, possibly, because unions have been
gaining greater public approval in recent years, even among Republicans.
Since 2009, Gallup found, union approval has risen from 48 percent to
58 percent for all voters, and from 29 percent to 42 percent for
Republican voters.
There have been a lot of surprises in the presidential race already, but this may be the biggest one.
Scott Walker, once the frontrunner for Iowa, is out four months before the caucus is held.
Highlights of
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's proposed changes to federal labor law
affecting unions, which the Republican presidential hopeful plans to lay
out on Monday in a town hall meeting in Las Vegas:
-Make
it illegal for federal workers to form unions. That would take an act
of Congress, but Walker said he's for it because "big-government unions
should have no place in the federal workplace."
-Eliminate
the National Labor Relations Board, transferring some of its powers to
the National Mediation Board and leaving what Walker calls its
"quasi-judicial functions" to the federal court system.
-Impose
right-to-work laws, under which workers can't be forced to pay union
dues as a condition of their employment, nationwide. Twenty-five states,
including Wisconsin, already have such laws. Walker's proposal, if
passed by Congress, would require states to vote to opt out of the
right-to-work requirement.
-Prohibit unions
from automatically deducting dues from state public employees that are
used to pay for political activity. Walker said if the Supreme Court
does not address the issue in a pending case, he will send a bill to
Congress to change the law.
-Require federal
employee unions to disclose and certify the portion of dues used for
political activity and prohibit withholding that amount.
-Prohibit
union organizers from having access to employees' personal information
and require union recertification votes "on a periodic basis."
-Repeal
any regulations proposed by President Barack Obama's administration
that require employers to pay overtime rates to salaried workers and
provide paid sick leave. "These rules will only reduce wages and deprive
workers of the flexibility to balance work and life commitments,"
Walker said.
-Require online disclosure of
union expenditures, including total pay of union officers, additional
reporting for local affiliates of government employee unions and more
conflict-of-interest reporting requirements.
-Change
federal law to ensure unions can't fire, discriminate or otherwise
retaliate against a whistleblower who reports wrongdoing.
-Repeal wage controls and project labor agreements for federal highway projects.
The chances of this agenda getting enacted by Scott Walker are zero.
Barring a miracle, he's not getting elected president, let alone enacting this agenda and getting it through Congress.
That said, it's instructive to see Walker fall back on union-busting and union-bashing as his poll numbers fall and his chances to president fade.
Today's Walker union-busting gambit is a sign that he knows he's done as a candidate unless he can quickly turn things around in a race where all the oxygen has been taken up by outsiders like Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina.
Scott Walker's summer plunge was put in stark relief on Friday, with a new Quinnipiac University survey showing the Republican presidential candidate polling near the bottom of the heap in Iowa.
Walker, the governor of neighboring Wisconsin, dropped 15 points in the state in the last two months in Qunnipiac's poll. In July, Walker led the pack at 18 percent. This time, he's near the bottom of the field of 17, at 3 percent. He earned similar support in last weekend's NBC News/Marist poll, at 5 percent.
The latest numbers underscore the cruel turn of events for Walker, who caught fire earlier this year with his plainspoken style and his track record of taking on and triumphing over the unions in Wisconsin. He has since tanked due to series of fumbles and a lackluster performance both on the campaign trail and in last month's first GOP debate.
I guess that "I stood up to the unions so I can stand up to Al Qaeda message he's running on isn't resonating with voters so much.
To see Chris Christie and Scott Walker, two pols who live off union bashing, plummet in the polling - well, that is enjoyable.
“Maybe all these left-wing politicians that want to blame police, maybe
there’s some blame here that has to go to the teachers union, for
refusing to have, for refusing to have schools where teachers are paid
for performance, for fighting charter schools, for fighting vouchers, so
we can drastically and dramatically improve the education situation.
Maybe they should be talking about and holding rallies about the problem
of black fathers taking care of the children they fathered,” he said.”
Wow.
I've heard all sorts of reasons for why ed deformers want charter schools, vouchers, merit pay and a busted teachers union, but this is a new one.
MIDTOWN — Gov. Andrew Cuomo
warned the city’s municipal labor unions Tuesday that they should be
prepared to signficantly manage expectations as they prepare to sit down
and negotiate new contracts with soon-to-be-mayor Bill de Blasio.
While he praised the unions for their “superb”
willingness to help the city during tight times in the past — most
notably during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s — the governor said labor leaders need to be “realistic” in their demands amid the difficulties currently faced by the city.
“Going into the conversation, everyone needs a
reality adjustment,” Cuomo said during an unrelated press conference at
the Javits Center.
“The unions have understood that in the past and they've acted accordingly and my guess is that they will again.”
UFT members did not get the last 8% pattern raise.
The APPR teacher evaluation system and its ancillary rules have forced concessions from UFT members on ratings, observations, lesson planning, and work load.
This UFT member does NOT need a reality adjustment.
This UFT members needs the 8% raise he deserved as part of the old pattern and additional compensation for all the concessions made to APPR.
And there will be NO additional concessions in this contract to health care or pension, no additional days or time added.
This UFT member gave at the office already - that's the reality whether Sheriff Andy Cuomo cares to admit that or not.
Last July was a good month for factory workers in Anderson, Ind.,
where a Honda parts supplier announced plans to build a new plant and
create up to 325 jobs. But it was a grim month in the Cleveland suburbs,
where an industrial plastics firm told the state of Ohio it was closing
a plant and laying off 150 people.
Nearly all of the Ohio workers belonged to a labor union.
Workers at the Indiana plant don’t. Their fates fit a post-recession
pattern: American factories are hiring again, but they’re not hiring
union members.
U.S. manufacturers have added a half-million new workers since the
end of 2009, making the sector one of the few bright spots in an
otherwise weak recovery. And yet there were 4 percent fewer union
factory workers in 2012 than there were in 2010, according to federal
survey data. On balance, all of the job gains in manufacturing have been
non-union.
Shed union jobs, add non-union jobs.
It's happening in manufacturing, and it's happening in education.
That's what charter schools are all about.
That's what teacher evaluation systems based upon test scores are all about.
That's what the anti-teacher media movement is all about.
They're putting into place the climate and the tools necessary for unionized teachers to be fired and non-unionized teachers to be hired.
It would be nice if teachers unions like Randi Weingarten's AFT actually fought this trend instead of aiding it with their "solution-oriented unionism" garbage.
But we have seen no coherent or coordinated messaging from the teachers unions telling the public what the anti-teacher movement is all about.
Instead we get collaboration and "a seat at the table."
A Manhattan principal accused of trying to intimidate a teacher by sending an anonymous and hateful letter is the focus of a criminal probe, officials said.
The property manager at teacher Michael McPherrin's apartment building got the letter in June, according to NY1, which broke the story Friday.
"There is always a strong odor of marijuana coming from their apartment as well as underage boys who are being coerced into unsafe sex practices with those two openly gay men with AIDS," the letter read.
McPherrin, in a followup letter to the property manager, said he thought the initial missive was related to his "role as union representative" at Independence High School.
The teacher hired an expert who analyzed the handwriting on the envelope.
The expert compared the writing in an address to a handwriting sample from principal Ron Smolkin, who McPherrin believes was responsible for the letter.
The analysis showed a match was highly likely, NY1 reported.
Education Department officials declined to comment.
The teachers' union, the Manhattan District attorney's office and the state Human Rights Commission are investigating McPherrin's allegations.
Smolkin didn't return calls seeking comment.
The concerted effort to destroy union representation in schools continues.
Coincidence that the teacher targeted by the principal is a union rep?
I think not.
Coincidence that the DOE has done nothing to look into the matter?
I think not.
If this principal had the opportunity to lay off by "merit, he would lay off this teacher first - regardless of merit.
Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have been wrangling for months over how best to reform LIFO, the "last-in first-out" teacher firing policy. One such idea that has been proposed is for principals to be given more power with their recommendations as to who should be fired or not. But there's one downside to this: what if your principal is a crazy lunatic out to get you?
Michael McPherrin, who teaches at Independence High School in Manhattan, told NY1 that he believe his boss, Principal Ron Smolkin, sent a vicious anonymous letter to his co-op as a personal vendetta. The author of the note, who claims to be representing concerned residents of the building, reveals intimate personal details about McPherrin, and makes several accusations about him and his longtime partner Andre Lopes: "The talk of the building is that both Mike and illegal immigrant Andre suffer from full blown AIDS and have no problem infecting others including the underage boys they bring to the apartment." McPherrin was stunned by the note: "As you read, your jaw just keeps dropping because it just gets worse...This was an attempt to destroy our lives and me professionally," McPherrin said.
The building management called it "anonymous hate mail" and wrote McPherrin that, "our records indicate there are no complaints against you or your partner." The handwritten letter was brought to an analyst who found it "highly likely" they matched samples of handwriting McPherrin said were Smolkin's. McPherrin believes that Smolkin targeted him after he became the teacher's union rep and organized staff members concerned about Smolkin's leadership. "He has a history of retaliatory vindictive actions," McPherin said, including one case where a judge ruled Smolkin falsely accused a school aide of an assault inside the building and fired her without benefits.
Smolkin is a bad guy, he shouldn't be a principal, he shouldn't have power over other people - and yet not only does the DOE still let this guy run a school, they're not even looking into these allegations about the letter.
But ending LIFO and teacher tenure will make schools and education better, right?
Nearly half of this city’s workers were told late last week that, come September, they would probably be out of a job. Nearly every city department will be eliminated. More than a dozen tasks will be outsourced, including graffiti removal, firefighting, building maintenance and street cleaning.
Unlike the drama that played out over several months in Madison, Wis., the battle over public workers in this bustling suburb of upscale shopping malls in the heart of Orange County is happening at lightning speed.
The letters went out last week to more than 200 of the city’s roughly 450 workers, sending many into a panic as they scurried to look for new jobs. The move will, in one great swoop, reinvent municipal government here, and perhaps lead the way for other cities to adopt similar plans.
Emotions in Costa Mesa, already running high, grew more intense after one city worker, summoned to receive his pink slip, instead climbed five stories to the roof of City Hall and jumped to his death. A small side entrance to the building is now decorated with supermarket bouquets and tall, white candles, a memorial to the 29-year-old man, who had worked for the city’s maintenance department for four years.
The layoffs have deeply divided this small city, just over the coast from affluent Newport Beach. While Costa Mesa has long been a politically conservative enclave, much like the other wealthy suburbs that surround it, the move to privatize so many city services strikes many residents as a harsh political tactic, meant to remake the city into a national model in the battle over public employee unions.
But the City Council, which moved quickly to approve the outsourcing and layoff plans, says the layoffs are the only way to solve a budget gap of as much as $15 million next year and deal with pensions that grow exponentially each year, eating away at the city’s $93 million budget.
...
This is the Wisconsin labor battle in miniature — union officials and opponents of the layoffs say it is politics and not money that is driving the decision. City officials say they do not know how much money they will save by outsourcing, although Mr. Righeimer said he expected to cut anywhere from 15 to 40 percent in labor costs.
They don't really care about saving money.
They just want to outsource.
Just as the Mayor of Money in NYC never met an outside consultant contract he didn't want to put up the money for, these people running the city government in Costa Mesa - real estate developers and other business owners - are going to make money coming and going on this stuff.
First, they get to cut government and government workers and bust the unions, which is the major intention here.
Then they get to turn some business the way of their business cronies who will pay them back in kind later on down the line.
Just another example of the New Feudal Order - making money coming and going, enriching themselves and their cronies at the public trough.
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) has ordered the removal of a 36-foot mural depicting the state's labor history from the lobby of the Department of Labor headquarters, according to WMTW-TV.
A spokesman said the mural was "not in keeping with the department's pro-business goals and some business owners complained."
Diane Ravitch called the current nexus between authoritarian politicians and anti-democratic business conglomerates "fascism" the other day in her blog post at Ed Week.
What would one call the removal of a 36-foot mural depicting a state's labor history from the Department of Labor headquarters because it upset some business guys?
First we remove the murals depicting labor history, then we remove any vestige of labor protections.
I seem to remember hearing about this somewhere else...might be a book or something...
(Reuters) - Saying that public employees have become scapegoats for the fiscal problems of U.S. states, New York City Comptroller John Liu plans to release a report on Wednesday that compares public sector salaries with those in the private sector.
Speaking at a National Institute on Retirement Security conference on Tuesday, Liu said he will "battle rhetoric with research," with a further series of reports on public employee compensation and pensions.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has suggested the state close its budget gap with cuts to public employees' pay and benefits. He also has called for the end of public employees' collective bargaining rights, which has sparked demonstrations at the state capital.
"I'm happy about what they said in Wisconsin because I think it lays bare the ideological underpinnings of what's really happening," Liu said.
"A year ago it was about big corporate bonuses," said Liu about taxpayers' anger over the financial crisis and subsequent economic recession. "Now there seems to be a great deal of vitriol directed at public employees."
Liu, who manages the city's $113 billion pension funds, said eliminating collective bargaining "is rather extreme."
"Chipping away at the retirement security of public employees won't enhance the retirement security of private sector employees," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.
No, it sure won't - but it WILL enhance the retirement security of the wealthiest 400 Americans (Gates, Broad, Bloomberg, Buffet, Koch Brothers, et al.), which is really what all this is about anyway.
Once again, John Liu is proving that some Democrats actually still represent working and middle class Americans as opposed to the corporate oligarch class so many Dems (think Obama) represent.
Compare Liu to the former Democratic darlings of the education reform movement - Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee - both of whom have come out in support of Scott Walker's union-busting proposals, and Liu just looks better and better to me for 2013 in NYC.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a politician elected who doesn't, you know, reflexively bash teachers and union members to make his/her corporate overlords happy?
If you're paying attention to the LIFO issue, the last few hours have been pretty wild.
As of 8:40 PM, here is where we stand with the LIFO changes.
The State Senate Education Committee passed Mayor Bloomberg's LIFO proposal, but with "lukewarm" Republican support - 10 members of the committee voted to advance the bill out of committee, but 6 did so "without recommendation."
The Senate as a whole voted on the bill in the evening and passed it 33-27 with two Dems not voting.
Assembly Speaker Silver said the Assembly would NOT take up the bill and referred the issue to the Board of Regents. The Regents are working on new teacher evaluation systems as part of the Race to the Top legislation passed last year that NYSED Commissioner David Steiner says would supersede any changes to LIFO.
Then, moments after the State Senate passed the LIFO bill, Governor Cuomo issued his own LIFO proposal that closely tailors the RttT guidelines but moves the timeline up by a year. Teachers would be evaluated under the new ratings starting in 2011-2012 under Cuomo's proposal rather than starting in 2012-2013 as decreed by the RttT legislation.
Cuomo's legislation essentially undermines tenure and seniority protections for teachers, but unlike Bloomberg's LIFO bill, does so ALL across the state rather than just in NYC.
Bloomberg's aides trashed the Cuomo proposal tonight because the governor issued it without consulting with Bloomberg first and did not give Bloomberg the power to lay off teachers indiscriminately right NOW.
I haven't seen any comments from either the UFT or Assembly Speaker Silver.
This will be a very short diary, as others more in the know are covering Wisconsin brilliantly.
As an aside to the larger issue: I have been wringing my hands for years over whether it is right and wise to speak my mind politically, or to only do so anonymously. My first account at Dkos was under a different name.
in truth, I really can't believe that I went to a Facebook fan page and let fly on Wisconsin, even in such a minimalist way. That tells me something about how strongly I feel that THIS fight in Wisconsin is a pivotal battle in the future of America. Personally, I believe that an America where the middle class can't afford their health care, their college education, their retirement, even their homes, is an America doomed.
A couple of posters have already said they won't read my books anymore...oh well.
To the bigger issue: unions are the only things that are going to save the middle class. The Democrats - even those who believe in the middle class - won't be able to do it, or won't dare try, but the Republicans will continue to go after them for the benefit of the already obscenely rich.
I'm a blue collar kid from a blue collar neighborhood. Shared sacrifice? How about making the wealthy pay a bit more?
The mayor of Providence FIRED EVERY teacher in the city on Thursday and I have yet to see ANY action from the union to push back on this.
I know that the protests in Wisconsin are sucking up a lot of media oxygen, but it shouldn't be too difficult to tie the Rhode Island firings to the Wisconsin workers' protests.
I wonder if the fact that the mayor is a Democrat has anything to do with the silence on the part of many on the left on this issue?
I also wonder if Barack Obama, cheerleading the firing of teachers up the road from Providence in Central Falls, Rhode Island last year doesn't complicate this somewhat?
Not for me, of course.
I see Barack OBama for EXACTLY who he is - a bought politician doing the dirty work of his corporatist owners and overlords, no different from George Bush or Bill Clinton before him.
Frankly on education, Obama is EVEN WORSE then Bush, perhaps because the Dems in Congress decided to give in on every neo-liberal wet dream policy Obama wanted as part of Race to the Top - from school closures, to teacher firings to merit pay to teacher evaluations tied to test scores.
No way the Dems would have given Bush that stuff.
So now here we are, a year and a half later and the fall-out from the concerted Obama teacher bashing policies are coming to fruition all across the country, but especially so in Rhode Island.
It's easy for the Dems and the unions to get together and push back against Scott Walker for trying to bust the public employees unions in Wisconsin.
But how do they get together to push back against a Democratic mayor who fires ALL of the teachers in his city in order to bust their union after a Democratic president put into place policies that helps unionbusters in public education and cheerled the firing of teachers in Rhode Island last year?
I posted yesterday that if the Assembly and State Senate bills are passed that allow the mayor to lay off teachers using measures other than seniority - like ever being "u" rated or convicted of any crime or fined by the DOE - the first thing I would do after receiving such a notice is seek legal counsel to protect myself and my job.
A bill introduced in the Senate and soon to be introduced in the Assembly seeks to change the law that requires teachers to be laid off solely on the basis of seniority. It aims at the 529 New York City teachers who have been convicted of crimes.
The bill also aims to put at the top of the layoff list those teachers who have been rated "unsatisfactory" by principals; who have been absent or late too often; or who have faced misconduct allegations that have been substantiated.
The assistant general counsel for New York State United Teachers, Claude Hersh, said he doubts there are 529 teachers who have been convicted of crimes, as most in that position tend to seek out the union for help. He said there are fewer than 50 such cases coming through his office each year, and added that the Department of Education has the option of seeking to dismiss any teacher convicted of a crime, but doesn't always do so.
Mr. Hersh also said that in many cases the crimes are related to teachers who did not properly disclose their incomes as they sought to continue to qualify for subsidized public housing.
The DOE did not provide figures for how often it seeks to dismiss teachers who have been convicted of crimes.
"The vast majority of our teachers are law-abiding citizens who are doing a great job—but, if we have to lay off 4,600 teachers, we certainly think those who have been convicted of crimes should be laid off before a good teacher who has done nothing wrong," said a DOE spokeswoman, Natalie Ravitz.
Legal experts said picking off teachers merely because of their convictions is problematic. State law bars discriminating against people with criminal convictions unless the crime was directly related to the job at hand.
"It's unfair and discriminatory for all employers in New York, not just school teachers, to hold against someone a conviction based on conduct that had nothing to do with the fitness of their job," said Samuel Estreicher, who teaches labor and employment law at the New York University School of Law.
Okay - couple of things here:
First, note that the DOE can ALREADY fire teachers convicted of a crime, but the NYSUT says they don't always seek to do so.
Next, note that the NYSUT doubts the figure of teachers convicted of crimes publicly disclosed by the mayor and the DOE.
Gee - Mayor Moneybags and the DOE lying about data? What a surprise!
Then note that they're going to seek to fire ANYBODY ever convicted of ANY crime - including someone who has been arrested and convicted of trespassing or making a public nuisance during a public protest or someone who got arrested for some public vandalism as a teenager.
In other words, misdemeanors AND felonies will be treated the same under these layoff provisions.
Look, I'm not out to defend teachers convicted of crimes, but I do want to make the point that this is Bloomberg, the DFER's and all the other anti-union forces looking to manipulate public opinion by tarring any teacher ever "u" rated, arrested for something or fined as some scumbag criminal malcontent who belongs in jail, not a NYC classroom.
If that is so, then the DOE ALREADY has the means to seek their dismissal - as they have with the two teachers allegedly found to be having sex in a classroom or the former sex worker who openly bragged about her prostitution past on her blog.
So for the mayor and the DOE and the DFERer's and the Journal to make believe like there is a whole bunch of scumbag criminal malcontents in NYC schools who ought to be fired is just jive.
This is about PUBLIC MANIPULATION to get their way on a larger issue that will allow them to lay off senior teachers at will and save the system millions of dollars.
Finally, let me state again that if the state senate and assembly bills go through with the convoluted provisions for how to lay off teachers using "U" ratings, two years of "bad" student test scores as measured by a value-added assessment with 12%-35% margins of error, a criminal conviction, or a DOE fine, there are SO MANY grounds to sue on, both individually as a teacher and collectively as a union, that the first thing everybody who gets notice should do is LAWYER UP.
In LA, the ACLU successfully sued to ban the use of seniority in determining layoffs in some schools.
In NY State, Mayor Bloomberg has had his paid state senate and assembly whores introduce bills that will end the seniority system as a basis for layoffs.
There are no guarantees the mayor will get what he wants on this issue, since the plan put into place to replace seniority is complicated and even some lawmakers in favor of ending LIFO for teachers have expressed reservations about the bills.
These are all shots at the seniority system, damaging but perhaps not completely fatal to it.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- No matter how you slice it, the decision Thursday by the city School Board to notify Providence teachers that they might be terminated at the end of the school year strikes at the heart of their union contract's seniority system, school experts say.
Mayor Angel Taveras says that the decision he recommended to the board is strictly about balancing the city's budget.
He says that termination will save money because teachers who are dismissed and not rehired will not end up in a substitute teaching pool.
But David V. Abbott, the state's deputy education commissioner, said the difference between layoffs and dismissals is this: When a teacher is laid off under state statute, he or she is put on a recall list. Although that teacher is no longer working and no longer paid, that person exists in an employment "limbo." The teacher hasn't been actually dismissed.
If a job becomes available for which that teacher is qualified, that person must be rehired based on seniority.
"If you are laid off, you have the right of recall," Abbott said Friday. "You still have one stick in your bundle. If I'm dismissed, I'm out of work and I need to be rehired."
In effect, every teacher who is terminated has to re-apply for his or her job as would any new teacher entering the system.
As I pointed out yesterday, Rhode Island has become the union-busting, teacher-bashing laboratory for America, so forget about Wisconsin for a moment and focus your sights here:
If Mayor Taveras is able to get away with this move legally to fire EVERY teacher in the city and rehire whoever he wants to teach (i.e., the cheapest and the newest), then mayors and governors all across the country will be doing this stuff next year.
Yes, the Wisconsin battle is an important one for unions.
But this Rhode Island battle against teachers is even MORE IMPORTANT for teachers.
So Randi Weingarten, rather than issuing some jiveass comments about the move on the same day that she issues an AFT plan to fire teachers ought to be doing what her members want her to do - protect them against corporate scum like Mayor Taveras who seek to balance their budgets - budgets that were blown up by the Wall Street criminals who caused the financial crisis of 2007-2008, btw - on the backs of loyal, hard-working teachers.
The future of American public education has been happening in Rhode Island these days.
In Central Falls, Rhode Island, teachers were all fired this week last year because their school was "failing". These firings were a DIRECT result of the Obama administration's Race to the Top policy which promotes firing teachers at the "worst" schools in America, closing those schools and reopening them as charters.
Eventually those teachers were rehired when they agreed to concessions like a longer work day, a longer work year and extra professional development.
But the point had been made - GIVE the administrations in Washington, the states and the municipalities what they want or you're gone.
In the year since, the teachers union in Rhode Island has gone out of its way to be collaborative with reform - agreeing to a new teacher evaluation process, signing onto Race to the Top without any reservation (and hrlping the city get $75 million in federal funds), agreeing to other concessions in school turnarounds to make the districts and state happy.
And what have the teachers of both Central Falls, Rhode Island and Providence, Rhode Island gotten for all this "collaboration"?
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, considers it "shocking" that Providence may send dismissal notices to the city's 2,000 teachers.
"What makes this even more stunning is that the district and the Providence Teachers Union have been working collaboratively on a groundbreaking, nationally recognized school transformation model," Weingarten said in a statement released Wednesday night. "A mass firing, announced in the middle of a school year, does not help solve a budget problem -- the purported reason -- but, rather, disrupts the education of all students and the entire community.
"The mayor claims he needs flexibility," she said. "We looked up "flexibility" in the dictionary, and it does not mean destabilizing education for all students in Providence or taking away workers' voice or rights."
Weingarten said that mass firings are not fiscally or educationally sound. She urged the mayor and the school superintendent to resolve their issues by working in a collaborative way.
"For the past two years,'' she said, "that's what they have been doing when it comes to work on improving low-performing schools, developing an innovative hiring process and revamping the teacher evaluation system."
Yes, for the last two years the teachers have been collaborating with the state and the districts, giving them the "reforms" they wanted, even when those reforms seemed short-sighted, badly designed or just plan wrong, and what have they gotten for all that collaboration?
They ALL got FIRED.
So much for the collaboration on the part of the state and the districts, eh?
As the fall-out from Obama's Race to the Top continues to spread nationwide, you can be sure that what happened in Central Falls, Rhode Island last year will happen all across the country in the next few years.
And just as the Providence, Rhode Island mayor decided to fire EVERY teacher in the city to plug an alleged hole in the budget, you can be sure that many mayors and governors around the country will do the same if they can get away with it.
This Rhode Island mass firing is in many ways WORSE than Scott Walker's trying to end collective bargaining rights for public employees in Wisconsin.
The mayor of Providence just said "F--- you, I don't care what rights you have or what union you belong to. You're all fired and I'll hire who I want to hire. What are you going to do about it - complain to Obama? Ha!"
Okay, so what have we learned from the last two years of collaborating with Barack Obama and Arne Duncan, with the ed deform movement and with the corporatists who insatiably ask for more, more, more from teachers and teachers unions.
That collaboration gets you fired.
Collaboration gets you screwed.
There is NO amount of collaboration that will save you when they want to fire you.
In fact, if you've collaborated with them in the past, you might be first on the chopping block because they KNOW what a stupid sap you've been, that you've given them EVERYTHING they wanted and gotten NOTHING in return.
I don't want to take this analogy too far, but really, Weingarten and the union leadership act like Neville Chamberlain in these aggressive, anti-teacher and anti-union times.
They declare we need to do more collaboration with the ed deform movement and hail past collaborations even as the end result of that collaboration is that EVERY TEACHER IN PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND HAS BEEN TERMINATED.
View the tape of the fired teachers above and then read Randi's words and tell me she doesn't sound like Chamberlain?
We have collaboration in our time.
Uh, huh.
And a whole swath of fired teachers and a broken teachers union in Rhode Island.
It is time to end COLLABORATION - with Obama, with Duncan, with the mayors and governors, with anybody in the ed deform movement, especially the rich oligarchs like Bill Gates.
They ARE the enemy and until every teachers union local in the country realizes this and bands together to STOP them, they are going to keep squeezing, keep scapegoating, keep firing.
PROVIDENCE — After two hours of contentious discussion, the School Board voted 4 to 3 Thursday night to send out termination notices to each of the city’s 1,926 public school teachers.
More than 700 teachers jammed a high school gymnasium to tell school officials that their hearts were broken, their trust violated and their futures as teachers jeopardized.
“How do we feel? Disrespected,” said Julie Latessa, a special-needs teacher, before the vote. “We are broken. How do you repair the damage you have done today?”
Every teacher received a certified letter from the School Department on Thursday informing them that they might be terminated at the end of the school year. It also said the School Board would vote on the proposed dismissals at Thursday night’s meeting, which was moved to the Providence Career and Technical Academy to accommodate the huge turnout.
Many of the teachers were caught off guard by Mayor Angel Taveras’ decision to terminate teachers instead of laying them off. Last night, speakers questioned the mayor’s rationale: a $40-million school budget deficit and a March 1 deadline by which the School Department must notify teachers if their jobs are in jeopardy.
“This is a quasi-legal power grab,” said Richard Larkin, a teacher at Classical High School. “You want to pick and choose teachers. Well, we will not be bullied.”
...
Speaker after speaker demanded to know why they were being fired. Didn’t the teachers union sign on to the federal Race to the Top initiative? Hasn’t the union collaborated with Supt. Tom Brady on new curricula? Isn’t the union working with the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers on a new teacher evaluation?
“I’m feeling disrespected, devalued and marginalized,” said Ed Gorden. “Termination is a career-ender. You are putting a scarlet letter on every one of us.”
Teachers begged the School Board to issue layoffs rather than fire them outright because, under the layoff provisions, teachers are recalled based on seniority. There is no guarantee that seniority would be used to bring back any of the fired teachers. School leaders have been vague about exactly how seniority will play out in the case of terminations.
It's very simple - Providence, Rhode Island just busted the teachers' union.
They can hire the cheapest teachers now, dispense with the more expensive vets and save the district millions.
So what if the school system is destabilized beyond breaking?
Hey, Randi, haven't you noticed the oligarchs have been doing this pretty easily already?
So now we're down the the end game. Hundreds of thousands of teachers will be fired across the country this year, evaluation rules have been changed so that in the near future most teachers will be graded using value-added systems tied to test scores with huge margins of error, setting up perhaps a million teachers to be fired in the next few years.
And that's not hyperbole - that's reality.
Hell, they just fired nearly two thousand in Providence alone.
Oh, and those teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island who were fired as a result of Obama's RttT policy who got their jobs back because they collaborated with the ed deformers to add time, days and other goodies to the school?
And right now they are blowing AGAINST Scott Walker and the anti-union forces.
I saw that tonight on TV as I watched four shows on MSNBC for the first time in close to a year and heard actual TV people say actual nice things about actual unionized teachers.
You can see it in the poll numbers too - 61% of Americans oppose the Walker plan to bust the unions in the latest Gallup poll.
City Council members joined labor leaders on the steps of City Hall this morning to condemn what they called concerted attacks on unions in Wisconsin.
Standing before a raucous crowd of union employees, speakers equated moves to diminish collective bargaining rights with an assault on the middle class and charged that such measures were motivated more by political calculus than by saving money.
"The conversation that is going on in Wisconsin is not a conversation," Council Speaker Christine Quinn said. "This isn't a discussion with municipal or state workers about how to balance a budget. This isn't a discussion about how to keep a pension system sustainable. This is a governor standing up and engaging in union busting."
Make no mistake, Christine Quinn doesn't give a shit about unions, union members or anything to do with the working class.
She does care about appearing to be on the right side of the issues, at least when everybody else is on that side too.
But the words from today do NOT erase who Quinn is and just who she works for.
She is a corporate whore, owned by the corporate class through and through, and does Bloomberg's bidding for him.
If you read this blog, I'm sure you already know that, but I'll make sure to remind you come 2013 or so.
Unless Bloomberg has already assumed dictatorial powers and had the Internets shut down by then.
