(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
This morning after my workout I passed a newstand and noted this headline in the Sun-Times:
RAHM WARNS UNIONS (Teachers to work longer Hours)
Day Laborers to show up in greater numbers
Surprised boobala! Really. He was a DLCer when he was an alderman in Chicago and Washington DC only strengthened that line of thought. Note also that the stats show more working class, AAs, Latinos are moving out to suburbs and the wealthier are moving into the City of Chicago. I was chased out of my little bungalow in Chicago, so that a $2 million house could be built. I can attest to how the working class, lower middle and now middle were chased out of the City. Rahm was alderman of one of the north side areas during this time period.
Rahm Emanuel warns teaching, labor unions about changes
Mayor-elect RE is layin down the law to two unions whose cooperation he needs to turn Chicago around: teachers he wants to work a longer school day and laborers he wants to simply show up at work in greater numbers. During the campaign, he declared his support for curtailing teachers’ right to strike. He also made it clear that, if teachers won’t agree to work longer hours for extra pay, he’ll ask the Illinois General Assembly to mandate it.
My guess is (and I was a long time resident of Chicago) the “extra pay” will fall by the wayside and charter schools will benefit from this someway.
Also, the use of the word “laborers” troubles me. Nothing wrong with laborer – we’re all laborers in a sense but it cuts down to size certain unions – say carpenters, plumbers – who are rightly proud of what it is they do. It lumps all into the Laborer camp. And we all know how laborers are respected in 2011 USA. Implicit in the wording is that the laborers are getting paid even though they don’t show up for work.
It’s unlikely Chicago’s elites will send their children to public school in any event. They’ll go to private schools where kindergarten for instance costs something like $14,000 a year. Class War, anyone!
LET THE PRIVATIZATION BEGIN. Because of course it will save the taxpayers lots of money! N.O.T.
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pays for many items kids use in school – paper, crayons, pens – toilet paper out of their own pocket.
A truly troubling sign for unions – I suspect they will take a stand here. Chicago is a union town –
It will give RE a chance to strut around and be tough!
extra hours, he’s appealing to the African American community, as they would support this in order to reduce crime and provide more security for their kids. However laudable this may be, the result would be devastating to teachers, as they have physical and emotional limitations.
This would be an absolutely demoralizing event.
He’s also doing this as a shot across the bow to warn teachers that their days are numbered as a political force in “his” city i.e. their union is finished.
As far as “laborers” are considered (I assume non-management city employees), he’s letting them know that
they will be closely monitored. I assume he wants to get more “work” out of them just like the teachers.
He’s basically squeezing public sector employees to the extent that he can as a city mayor, as he can directly threaten city employees/laborers, but he’ll have to trot on up to the State Capitol to do his threatening of teachers.
The scumbag wants to act tough and stay in the spotlight.
His pal Obama must love it. And as far as that extra pay bullshit for teachers, they’d likely be offered some peanuts, but probably wouldn’t get any raises and would have to pay more for their health insurance (among other things).
I’m out in California, but I can smell the stench of Rahm without even sniffing. Class warfare at it’s finest and very clever pitting the AA community and poor people in general against teachers.
push back hard.
(btw, I was reading that private school tuition is something like 35K in the new for profit grade schools)