THIS ATTACK ON LABOR IS NOT ONLY AT THE BOTTOM WAGE SCALE......IT IS HITTING THE MIDDLE-CLASS HARD.
We have political pundits who are all 'centrists' that hold all of mainstream media....EJ Dionne and David Brooks for example as public media's voice for all things political. These two are both Brookings Institution, free-trade corporate globalists who will not speak ill of corporations in any way and they represent 'democrats' and 'republican' view......AND THEY BELIEVE THE SAME THING. So when Brooks constantly tells his audience that what is happening isn't class-warfare but simply inequity caused by education status, he is lying to you and I. These labor protests always seem to be about the lower-class because those protests make the news and higher professionals are fearful of being public even as these wage and benefit cuts move them closer to lower-class. Teachers and academic professors, firefighters, postal workers, health industry workers have many people working for them who have degrees....some many degrees....and they are watching their quality of life disappear. This impoverishment is hitting every labor sector and it is all driven by the consolidation of US business sector into the hands of a few people who are making billions in profits as we sink further in earnings.
VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!
We hear over and again that it is about US businesses remaining 'COMPETITIVE' and we must have 'FREE-MARKETS' when in actuality they are working to end all of these things with hostile takeovers, capturing market share, and price-fixing at high levels to soak the consumer. NONE OF THESE THINGS ARE FREE MARKET OR COMPETITIVE. THEY CERTAINLY ARE NOT DEMOCRATIC. So high unemployment was deliberately created with this massive collapse of the economy......they all knew the collapse was coming years before it happened as they worked to make it as deep as possible. They are working to keep it with the Fed policy and the consolidation of businesses that will control all hiring. Mom and Pop are even being stomped out of this economy. THIS IS WHAT BROOKINGS INSTITUTE CALLS THE 'NEW ECONOMY'.
Below you will see the nurses unions on the street as these corporate execs squeeze a typically middle-class employment sector for all the profits it can. This is important because it is health care that is identified as a leading growth industry. We are told the other major growth industry, technology, will not create jobs as the number of people hired by that industry is a drop in the bucket. THIS HIRING SITUATION WOULD NOT BE HAPPENING IF WE STILL HAD REGIONAL BUSINESSES WITH A DIVERSIFIED OWNERSHIP AND LAWS THAT PROTECTED AND NURTURED COMPETITION.....IT IS A PRODUCT OF THIRD WAY CORPORATE POLITICIANS AND THEIR GLOBAL MARKET POLICY. The US is stagnant as these corporations grow in leaps and bounds overseas. The businesses that come back to the US do so with the intent of having third world wages.
We can reverse this by simply demanding Rule of Law be reinstated and all of those trillions in corporate fraud is brought back to the US economy. It is impossible with these Third Way corporate pols but we can RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES NEXT ELECTIONS!!!!
DO YOU HEAR YOUR LABOR LEADERS CHOOSING CANDIDATES TO RUN AT EVERY LEVEL? DO YOU HAVE CANDIDATES CHOSEN FROM YOUR JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS? IF NOT, YOUR LEADERS ARE NOT WORKING FOR YOU AND ME!!!!!!
MAKE YOUR NEW JOB TITLE 'POLITICIAN' AND DON'T SELL THE PEOPLE OUT!!
Nurses are strong on union support for their members and for the general public health benefits!!! THANK YOU NURSES UNION FOR SHOUTING AGAINST DECLINING WAGES AND BENEFITS IN WHAT WILL BE ONE OF THE FEW GROWTH INDUSTRIES. Below is a call to arms from one medical community that mirrors all in this country:
This weekend, dozens of nurses from Steward Quincy Medical Center were out in their community meeting with the public and distributing leaflets detailing their serious concerns about unsafe staffing conditions at the facility and their need for improvements in these conditions to ensure quality patient care. Nurses were at local shopping centers, T stations and other highly trafficked locations, where they received a very positive response from the public, handing out thousands of leaflets. Below is the text from the leaflet:
A Message to Our Community from the Nurses at Steward Quincy Medical Center
For nurses, working in a hospital is more than just a job. It comes with a sacred duty to our patients to provide the best care possible. That includes the duty to speak out when we believe our patients' well being may be at risk. We are so severely under-staffed at Quincy Medical Center that nurses believe this is the time for us to speak out:
• Registered nurse staffing at Quincy Medical Center is at a bare bones level, forcing nurses to care for too many patients at one time, which may compromise our ability to provide safe patient care.
• At the same time, there is not enough non-RN technical and support staff to provide the care our patients deserve.
• RNs have submitted more than 125 official written reports of unsafe staffing incidents to management in 2012.
• Our community hospital is now owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a multi-billion dollar private equity investment firm. Health care staffing decisions are now being made at the corporate level driven by the profit motive, and not at the local level based on the needs of our patients and community.
• There is no medical justification for this level of staffing. In fact, the only reason management has provided is that staffing costs money.
This is our community hospital. We are proud to be RNs at Quincy Medical Center and we are committed to its future success. We ask for your support to ensure that you and all our families receive the safe, quality care patients deserve.
Call Quincy Medical Center at 617- 773-6100 x4012 or email Daniel.Knell@steward.org and tell him to listen to his own staff! No hospital can ethically increase its profit by putting patients at risk by failing to provide enough staff.
______________________________________________
THESE STANDARDIZED TESTS ARE NOT ABOUT QUALITY EDUCATION...THEY ARE ABOUT MEASURING PERFORMANCE FOR WHAT IS TO BE AN AUTOCRATIC EDUCATION SYSTEM DESIGNED FROM THE CHINESE SCHOOL SYSTEM. IT IS ABOUT TRACKING STUDENTS AND ABOUT MAKING SURE EDUCATORS PROVIDE ONLY THE INFORMATION DICTATED BY THESE COMMON CORE AND ONLINE REGISTERED LECTURES.
THERE IS NOT SO MUCH A PROBLEM IN STANDARDIZING HARD SCIENCES WHERE MATH AND SCIENCE HAVE DEFINITIVE LAWS....BUT THIS IS REACHING ALL LEVELS OF EDUCATION HUMANITIES AND LIBERAL ARTS THAT THRIVE BY DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT.
Standardized test backlash: Some Seattle teachers just say 'no' Resistance to standardized tests has been simmering for years, but now a group of Seattle teachers is in open revolt. No longer will they administer the tests, they say, citing a waste of public resources.
By Dean Paton, Correspondent / January 11, 2013 Christian Science Monitor
Students walk out of the lunchroom past a poster urging preparing for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessments System (MCAS) tests, in this March 1999 file photo. Massachusetts students who don't pass the test don't graduate.
John Nordell/Staff/File
Forty-five minutes after school let out Thursday afternoon, 19 teachers here at Seattle's Garfield High School worked their way to the front of an already-crowded classroom, then turned, leaned their backs against the wall of whiteboards, and fired the first salvo of open defiance against high-stakes standardized testing in America's public schools.
To a room full of TV cameras, reporters, students, and colleagues, the teachers announced their refusal to administer a standardized test that ninth-graders across the district are mandated to take in the first part of January. Known as the MAP test – for Measures of Academic Progress – it is intended to evaluate student progress and skill in reading and math.
First one teacher, then another, and then more stepped forward to charge that the test wastes time, money, and dwindling school resources. It is also used to evaluate teacher quality.
“Our teachers have come together and agreed that the MAP test is not good for our students, nor is it an appropriate or useful tool in measuring progress,” said Kris McBride, academic dean and testing coordinator at Garfield High. “Additionally, students don’t take it seriously. It produces specious results and wreaks havoc on limited school resources during the weeks and weeks the test is administered.”
RECOMMENDED: Are you as well read as the average 10th grader?
Garfield’s civil yet disobedient faculty appears to be the first group of teachers nationally to defy district edicts concerning a standardized test, but the backlash against high-stakes testing has been percolating in other parts of the country.
Dr. Burris co-authored the letter for the New York State principals. On Dec. 31, she started a petition in New York opposing high-stakes testing. In 10 days, she says, 5,500 administrators, teachers, and parents have signed it.
“Parents are stressed. Teachers are stressed. Kids are stressed by these tests more than parents,” Burris says. “And when you tie teachers’ evaluations to these tests, the teachers end up focusing their lessons on the tests. And that’s starting to destroy elementary education.”
__________________________________________________
I WANT TO INCLUDE THIS AGAIN TO EMPHASIZE THAT IT IS THIRD WAY CORPORATE DEMOCRATS WHO ARE WORKING AS HARD AS REPUBLICANS TO SHRINK UNIONS. THE PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS ARE THE LAST STRONGHOLD FOR UNIONIZING AND AS SUCH IT IS IMPORTANT TO FIGHT TO KEEP THEM STRONG AS THEY HELP STRENGTHEN PRIVATE SECTOR UNIONS.
BELOW YOU SEE WHERE O'MALLEY NEGOTIATED A DEAL THAT HE KNEW WOULD LEAD TO THE MTA EMPLOYEES WHO WERE UNIONIZED IN STATE UNIONS BEING SLOWLY IMPOVERISHED AND NOW FIRED AS UNION MEMBERS WITH THE OFFER OF REHIRE AS NON-UNION DOING THE SAME JOB.
THIS IS DELIBERATE UNION-BUSTING!!!
MY COMMENTS TO THE ARTICLE BELOW:
The key word here is other contractor. This is our public transportation system and we do not want any of it to fall to private contractors because, as you see, there is no stability for the employees attached to these contractors.....which is the point says Mayor Rawlings-Blake and Baltimore City Council. These are employees that should be working for the MTA making a middle-class salary with strong public sector benefits. What Baltimore politicians are doing is privatizing public transportation a little at a time and throwing these employees into a private hiring situation that impoverishes them, takes their benefits, and now we see they are losing their jobs and seniority. When Veola took jobs from the MTA there were contract protections for the workers. The idea was that the employees would remain unionized just as they were with MTA but, as is the plan with all these public-private partnerships, they are brought down to poverty and then if unionized, a reason is found to dismiss. Now, when/if these employees are rehired or moved to yet another private contractor will they be unionized? You can bet that won't happen in Baltimore with this City Council and mayor.....they seek to make you as poor as possible!!
Veolia Transportation warns that it will lay off 78 Most could be hired by a competitor, company tells state
By Jamie Smith Hopkins, The Baltimore Sun 1:02 p.m. EST, January 15, 2013
Veolia Transportation warned state officials that it will be laying off 78 employees in Baltimore as it stops servicing a portion of an unspecified contract, but added that most could be hired by the new contractor.
The cuts are expected March 3.
Veolia's notice to the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation said the workers are based at a Huntingdon Ave. location. Veolia's services in Baltimore include paratransit.
State labor officials said the company hopes that employees who don't switch to the new contractor will find other jobs at Veolia. The company is based in Illinois and has operations across the country.
jhopkins@baltsun.com
We have political pundits who are all 'centrists' that hold all of mainstream media....EJ Dionne and David Brooks for example as public media's voice for all things political. These two are both Brookings Institution, free-trade corporate globalists who will not speak ill of corporations in any way and they represent 'democrats' and 'republican' view......AND THEY BELIEVE THE SAME THING. So when Brooks constantly tells his audience that what is happening isn't class-warfare but simply inequity caused by education status, he is lying to you and I. These labor protests always seem to be about the lower-class because those protests make the news and higher professionals are fearful of being public even as these wage and benefit cuts move them closer to lower-class. Teachers and academic professors, firefighters, postal workers, health industry workers have many people working for them who have degrees....some many degrees....and they are watching their quality of life disappear. This impoverishment is hitting every labor sector and it is all driven by the consolidation of US business sector into the hands of a few people who are making billions in profits as we sink further in earnings.
VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!
We hear over and again that it is about US businesses remaining 'COMPETITIVE' and we must have 'FREE-MARKETS' when in actuality they are working to end all of these things with hostile takeovers, capturing market share, and price-fixing at high levels to soak the consumer. NONE OF THESE THINGS ARE FREE MARKET OR COMPETITIVE. THEY CERTAINLY ARE NOT DEMOCRATIC. So high unemployment was deliberately created with this massive collapse of the economy......they all knew the collapse was coming years before it happened as they worked to make it as deep as possible. They are working to keep it with the Fed policy and the consolidation of businesses that will control all hiring. Mom and Pop are even being stomped out of this economy. THIS IS WHAT BROOKINGS INSTITUTE CALLS THE 'NEW ECONOMY'.
Below you will see the nurses unions on the street as these corporate execs squeeze a typically middle-class employment sector for all the profits it can. This is important because it is health care that is identified as a leading growth industry. We are told the other major growth industry, technology, will not create jobs as the number of people hired by that industry is a drop in the bucket. THIS HIRING SITUATION WOULD NOT BE HAPPENING IF WE STILL HAD REGIONAL BUSINESSES WITH A DIVERSIFIED OWNERSHIP AND LAWS THAT PROTECTED AND NURTURED COMPETITION.....IT IS A PRODUCT OF THIRD WAY CORPORATE POLITICIANS AND THEIR GLOBAL MARKET POLICY. The US is stagnant as these corporations grow in leaps and bounds overseas. The businesses that come back to the US do so with the intent of having third world wages.
We can reverse this by simply demanding Rule of Law be reinstated and all of those trillions in corporate fraud is brought back to the US economy. It is impossible with these Third Way corporate pols but we can RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES NEXT ELECTIONS!!!!
DO YOU HEAR YOUR LABOR LEADERS CHOOSING CANDIDATES TO RUN AT EVERY LEVEL? DO YOU HAVE CANDIDATES CHOSEN FROM YOUR JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS? IF NOT, YOUR LEADERS ARE NOT WORKING FOR YOU AND ME!!!!!!
MAKE YOUR NEW JOB TITLE 'POLITICIAN' AND DON'T SELL THE PEOPLE OUT!!
Nurses are strong on union support for their members and for the general public health benefits!!! THANK YOU NURSES UNION FOR SHOUTING AGAINST DECLINING WAGES AND BENEFITS IN WHAT WILL BE ONE OF THE FEW GROWTH INDUSTRIES. Below is a call to arms from one medical community that mirrors all in this country:
This weekend, dozens of nurses from Steward Quincy Medical Center were out in their community meeting with the public and distributing leaflets detailing their serious concerns about unsafe staffing conditions at the facility and their need for improvements in these conditions to ensure quality patient care. Nurses were at local shopping centers, T stations and other highly trafficked locations, where they received a very positive response from the public, handing out thousands of leaflets. Below is the text from the leaflet:
A Message to Our Community from the Nurses at Steward Quincy Medical Center
For nurses, working in a hospital is more than just a job. It comes with a sacred duty to our patients to provide the best care possible. That includes the duty to speak out when we believe our patients' well being may be at risk. We are so severely under-staffed at Quincy Medical Center that nurses believe this is the time for us to speak out:
• Registered nurse staffing at Quincy Medical Center is at a bare bones level, forcing nurses to care for too many patients at one time, which may compromise our ability to provide safe patient care.
• At the same time, there is not enough non-RN technical and support staff to provide the care our patients deserve.
• RNs have submitted more than 125 official written reports of unsafe staffing incidents to management in 2012.
• Our community hospital is now owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a multi-billion dollar private equity investment firm. Health care staffing decisions are now being made at the corporate level driven by the profit motive, and not at the local level based on the needs of our patients and community.
• There is no medical justification for this level of staffing. In fact, the only reason management has provided is that staffing costs money.
This is our community hospital. We are proud to be RNs at Quincy Medical Center and we are committed to its future success. We ask for your support to ensure that you and all our families receive the safe, quality care patients deserve.
Call Quincy Medical Center at 617- 773-6100 x4012 or email Daniel.Knell@steward.org and tell him to listen to his own staff! No hospital can ethically increase its profit by putting patients at risk by failing to provide enough staff.
______________________________________________
THESE STANDARDIZED TESTS ARE NOT ABOUT QUALITY EDUCATION...THEY ARE ABOUT MEASURING PERFORMANCE FOR WHAT IS TO BE AN AUTOCRATIC EDUCATION SYSTEM DESIGNED FROM THE CHINESE SCHOOL SYSTEM. IT IS ABOUT TRACKING STUDENTS AND ABOUT MAKING SURE EDUCATORS PROVIDE ONLY THE INFORMATION DICTATED BY THESE COMMON CORE AND ONLINE REGISTERED LECTURES.
THERE IS NOT SO MUCH A PROBLEM IN STANDARDIZING HARD SCIENCES WHERE MATH AND SCIENCE HAVE DEFINITIVE LAWS....BUT THIS IS REACHING ALL LEVELS OF EDUCATION HUMANITIES AND LIBERAL ARTS THAT THRIVE BY DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT.
Standardized test backlash: Some Seattle teachers just say 'no' Resistance to standardized tests has been simmering for years, but now a group of Seattle teachers is in open revolt. No longer will they administer the tests, they say, citing a waste of public resources.
By Dean Paton, Correspondent / January 11, 2013 Christian Science Monitor
Students walk out of the lunchroom past a poster urging preparing for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessments System (MCAS) tests, in this March 1999 file photo. Massachusetts students who don't pass the test don't graduate.
John Nordell/Staff/File
Forty-five minutes after school let out Thursday afternoon, 19 teachers here at Seattle's Garfield High School worked their way to the front of an already-crowded classroom, then turned, leaned their backs against the wall of whiteboards, and fired the first salvo of open defiance against high-stakes standardized testing in America's public schools.
To a room full of TV cameras, reporters, students, and colleagues, the teachers announced their refusal to administer a standardized test that ninth-graders across the district are mandated to take in the first part of January. Known as the MAP test – for Measures of Academic Progress – it is intended to evaluate student progress and skill in reading and math.
First one teacher, then another, and then more stepped forward to charge that the test wastes time, money, and dwindling school resources. It is also used to evaluate teacher quality.
“Our teachers have come together and agreed that the MAP test is not good for our students, nor is it an appropriate or useful tool in measuring progress,” said Kris McBride, academic dean and testing coordinator at Garfield High. “Additionally, students don’t take it seriously. It produces specious results and wreaks havoc on limited school resources during the weeks and weeks the test is administered.”
RECOMMENDED: Are you as well read as the average 10th grader?
Garfield’s civil yet disobedient faculty appears to be the first group of teachers nationally to defy district edicts concerning a standardized test, but the backlash against high-stakes testing has been percolating in other parts of the country.
- The New York State Principals association recently issued a scathing letter, nearly four pages of “unintended negative consequences” it claims such tests foment.
- In Maryland, Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr has called for a three-year moratorium on standardized testing.
- In north Texas last year, superintendents of several high-performing school districts signed a letter to state officials and lawmakers saying high-stakes standardized testing is “strangling our public schools.” As of Jan. 8, 880 districts that educate more than 4.4 million Texas students have adopted a resolution opposing these tests.
Dr. Burris co-authored the letter for the New York State principals. On Dec. 31, she started a petition in New York opposing high-stakes testing. In 10 days, she says, 5,500 administrators, teachers, and parents have signed it.
“Parents are stressed. Teachers are stressed. Kids are stressed by these tests more than parents,” Burris says. “And when you tie teachers’ evaluations to these tests, the teachers end up focusing their lessons on the tests. And that’s starting to destroy elementary education.”
__________________________________________________
I WANT TO INCLUDE THIS AGAIN TO EMPHASIZE THAT IT IS THIRD WAY CORPORATE DEMOCRATS WHO ARE WORKING AS HARD AS REPUBLICANS TO SHRINK UNIONS. THE PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS ARE THE LAST STRONGHOLD FOR UNIONIZING AND AS SUCH IT IS IMPORTANT TO FIGHT TO KEEP THEM STRONG AS THEY HELP STRENGTHEN PRIVATE SECTOR UNIONS.
BELOW YOU SEE WHERE O'MALLEY NEGOTIATED A DEAL THAT HE KNEW WOULD LEAD TO THE MTA EMPLOYEES WHO WERE UNIONIZED IN STATE UNIONS BEING SLOWLY IMPOVERISHED AND NOW FIRED AS UNION MEMBERS WITH THE OFFER OF REHIRE AS NON-UNION DOING THE SAME JOB.
THIS IS DELIBERATE UNION-BUSTING!!!
MY COMMENTS TO THE ARTICLE BELOW:
The key word here is other contractor. This is our public transportation system and we do not want any of it to fall to private contractors because, as you see, there is no stability for the employees attached to these contractors.....which is the point says Mayor Rawlings-Blake and Baltimore City Council. These are employees that should be working for the MTA making a middle-class salary with strong public sector benefits. What Baltimore politicians are doing is privatizing public transportation a little at a time and throwing these employees into a private hiring situation that impoverishes them, takes their benefits, and now we see they are losing their jobs and seniority. When Veola took jobs from the MTA there were contract protections for the workers. The idea was that the employees would remain unionized just as they were with MTA but, as is the plan with all these public-private partnerships, they are brought down to poverty and then if unionized, a reason is found to dismiss. Now, when/if these employees are rehired or moved to yet another private contractor will they be unionized? You can bet that won't happen in Baltimore with this City Council and mayor.....they seek to make you as poor as possible!!
Veolia Transportation warns that it will lay off 78 Most could be hired by a competitor, company tells state
By Jamie Smith Hopkins, The Baltimore Sun 1:02 p.m. EST, January 15, 2013
Veolia Transportation warned state officials that it will be laying off 78 employees in Baltimore as it stops servicing a portion of an unspecified contract, but added that most could be hired by the new contractor.
The cuts are expected March 3.
Veolia's notice to the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation said the workers are based at a Huntingdon Ave. location. Veolia's services in Baltimore include paratransit.
State labor officials said the company hopes that employees who don't switch to the new contractor will find other jobs at Veolia. The company is based in Illinois and has operations across the country.
jhopkins@baltsun.com
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