Obama Continues To Disappoint Workers and Organized Labor, More Anti-Worker Incidents Occur
That this is happening during a so called Democratic administration's term is shameful and makes a damning statement about the corporatist DINO White House.
One of the stories highlights the consequences of Obama and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan's education policy: which is like Bush's, only worse.
From James Parks at the AFL-CIO Now Blog: "In the middle of the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression, more than 90 dedicated professional educators find themselves put out into the street. On Feb. 23, the Central Falls, R.I., school trustees fired the entire teaching staff of Central Falls High School, supposedly because of declining test scores at the school, which is located in Rhode Island’s smallest and poorest city.
"In all, 93 persons were put in the street—74 classroom teachers, plus reading specialists, guidance counselors, physical education teachers, the school psychologist, the principal and three assistant principals. Negotiations over ways to improve the school between teachers and the school superintendent broke down when school officials insisted that teachers add new duties, some without any extra pay at all.
"In a rally before the trustees meeting, some 500 union members and community supporters called on the board to reconsider its decision...."
However, there is more to the story.
From the Providence-Journal: "Jim Parisi, field representative for the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, said Gallo was punishing teachers. “It is never acceptable to threaten anyone’s job as a bargaining tactic. Not in this state,” he shouted.
"U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has taken notice.
“I applaud Commissioner Gist and Superintendent Gallo for showing courage and doing the right thing for kids,” Duncan said Tuesday night."
So the Obama administration's so called education "reform" condones and applauds firing all the teachers.
As Danny Weil wrote last year: "Arne Duncan is part and parcel of an educational movement that we are increasingly witnessing in New York, Washington D.C., New Orleans and Chicago, Texas and elsewhere: a movement towards centralizing decision-making regarding public schools in the hands of an elite autocracy
"....a neo-liberal turn that goes beyond issues regarding the private operation of individual charter schools and instead twists and turns its way right into the heart of privatizing the public urban sphere in entirety, while making the government simply a boardroom or ‘secret parliament’ for powerful corporate interests.
"The Obama education policy differs little from the Bush administration’s policy of hitching student and teacher performance to what many in the educational community and beyond call inauthentic assessments that actually force teachers to teach to the test and do little to encourage critical thinking or collaborative problem solving. Nor does the Obama policy seem to differ much in setting goals for the rapid expansion of charter school networks and non-profit and for-profit ‘providers’ to run them. Where it is more far-reaching than the Bush educational plan, however, is in its commitment to expand the charter school market by forcing all the states in the nation to pass legislation for the creation of charter schools."
If
firing 90 teachers from one high school isn't extremely anti-labor
enough, this should put the icing on the cake: company threatening
workers who protest a plant closing.
From Dave Johnson at Blog for Our Future
".....what's this? Whirlpool Threatens Workers: Protesting Plant Closure Risks 'Future Jobs'
" 'A major corporation planning to shut down a factory in Indiana has warned its union workers that they'll endanger their future job prospects if they protest the plant's closing.
'. . . Activists planned a high-profile protest for this Friday, with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka visiting the plant for the first time. But Whirlpool says the effort is futile -- they are fully committed to shutting the plant down. The company, however, still seems quite wary of the potential for bad publicity. In a memo sent to its employees and passed along to the Huffington Post, [link added] Paul Coburn, division vice president for Whirlpool's Evansville Division, offers a fairly explicit warning to his workers: If they join Trumka's protest they would seriously risk future employment opportunity.
"Threatening workers who show up at the protest that they risk future employment? Click through to read the entire report and to see Whirlpool's letter."
Categories: Labor
Tags: Barack Obama Obama Administration Financial Crisis EFCA People Labor Congress
Comments