Something I’ve been meaning to write about – a Rhode Island high school that is threatening to fire every teacher in an under-performing school. The superintendent wanted longer school days and the teacher’s union refused without financial incentives. The school board voted 5-2 to fire the entire staff at the end of the school year. Teachers have offered a counterproposal and talks will resume.
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This NYT article from 10 days ago offers some perspective to go along with the more recent Globe article.
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There’s something appealing about a nuclear option like this when conditions warrant a reboot of a failing system. I’d expect to see more actions like this with other public employee unions as local budget shortfalls continue to collide with the costs of supplying raises and generous benefits to government employees.
From the Norwich Bulletin:
Given the strong union support of the Mashpee Wampanoag casino being planned for Middleboro, it would be interesting to know how the unions view this sort of thing. Calter was right on when he told the unions that the IGA makes no provisions whatsoever for any union jobs – even contruction ones.
Without being privvy to any information, it seems to me that union support was gained by promising to use union labor to construct the socio-economic Chernobyl casino. This seems like giving away the farm – getting a bunch of temporary jobs and losing out on all the permanent ones.
These sorts of things should be very clearly spelled out in any tribal/state compacts. The federal laws applicable to sovereign land seem to be woefully unspecific given the number of lawsuits and disputes that seem to crop up between Indian country and the rest of the nation.
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