Remember s***ting your pants waiting for what seemed like forever outside?
"Chicago mayor takes plan for longer days directly to teachers" by Monica Davey, New York Times / September 18, 2011
CHICAGO - One by one, teachers at public elementary schools here have been voting to buck their own union and take Mayor Rahm Emanuel up on an unusual offer: to accept bonus pay in exchange for waiving union contract provisions and keeping children at some schools longer each day.
Bought 'em off!
By Friday, nine schools were on board and city hall said more might be on the way, even as union leaders objected to the tactic and furiously pledged to take Emanuel and his school system before a labor relations board.
For Emanuel, who has portrayed himself as a calmer, more reserved leader in his year of transformation from White House chief of staff to mayor, the uncompromising and blunt approach is both a keeping of a campaign promise and a reminder, as one political analyst put it, that “Rahm is still Rahm.’’
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Union leaders have suggested a broader motive, saying that the sidelining of labor unions and a mood against public workers seen this year in Republican-led states such as Ohio and Wisconsin are now coming through in subtler ways in Democratic-leaning cities like this one, the nation’s third largest.
And states:
Unions Surrender Rights in Massachusetts
Democrats Abandon Unions in New Jersey
Even the federal government is into kicking them around these days.
“It’s a nightmare,’’ said Karen Lewis, the Chicago Teachers Union president, who added Emanuel lived up to his reputation for foul language in a recent meeting. “You expect this stuff out of Republicans.’’
I've got some foul words for them myself.
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