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Thread: The Republican Party has finally gotten to reinvent itself. I'm so proud.

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    Arena Senior Member Crazed Rabbit's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Republican Party has finally gotten to reinvent itself. I'm so proud.

    Quote Originally Posted by jabarto View Post
    Where do people keep getting this stupid notion that unions make it impossible to fire people? Again, they only make sure that the employer can't cut corners in firing them.
    Because in some cases they do:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    The eighth-grade boy held out his wrists for teacher Carlos Polanco to see.

    He had just explained to Polanco and his history classmates at Virgil Middle School in Koreatown why he had been absent: He had been in the hospital after an attempt at suicide.

    Polanco looked at the cuts and said they "were weak," according to witness accounts in documents filed with the state. "Carve deeper next time," he was said to have told the boy.

    "Look," Polanco allegedly said, "you can't even kill yourself."

    The boy's classmates joined in, with one advising how to cut a main artery, according to the witnesses.

    "See," Polanco was quoted as saying, "even he knows how to commit suicide better than you."

    The Los Angeles school board, citing Polanco's poor judgment, voted to fire him.

    But Polanco, who contended that he had been misunderstood, kept his job. A little-known review commission overruled the board, saying that although the teacher had made the statements, he had meant no harm.
    ...
    The district wanted to fire a high school teacher who kept a stash of pornography, marijuana and vials with cocaine residue at school, but a commission balked, suggesting that firing was too harsh. L.A. Unified officials were also unsuccessful in firing a male middle school teacher spotted lying on top of a female colleague in the metal shop, saying the district did not prove that the two were having sex.

    The district fared no better in its case against elementary school special education teacher Gloria Hsi, despite allegations that included poor judgment, failing to report child abuse, yelling at and insulting children, planning lessons inadequately and failing to supervise her class.

    Not a single charge was upheld.


    And in New York City...
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    The teachers have been in the Rubber Room for an average of about three years, doing the same thing every day—which is pretty much nothing at all. Watched over by two private security guards and two city Department of Education supervisors, they punch a time clock for the same hours that they would have kept at school—typically, eight-fifteen to three-fifteen. Like all teachers, they have the summer off. The city’s contract with their union, the United Federation of Teachers, requires that charges against them be heard by an arbitrator, and until the charges are resolved—the process is often endless—they will continue to draw their salaries and accrue pensions and other benefits.
    ...
    Seven of the fifteen Rubber Room teachers with whom I spoke compared their plight to that of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay or political dissidents in China or Iran.

    It’s a theme that the U.F.T. has embraced. The union’s Web site has a section that features stories highlighting the injustice of the Rubber Rooms. One, which begins “Bravo!,” is about a woman I’ll call Patricia Adams, whose return to her classroom, at a high school in Manhattan, last year is reported as a vindication. The account quotes a speech that Adams made to union delegates; according to the Web site, she received a standing ovation as she declared, “My case should never have been brought to a hearing.” The Web site account continues, “Though she believes she was the victim of an effort to move senior teachers out of the system, the due process tenure system worked in her case.”

    On November 23, 2005, according to a report prepared by the Education Department’s Special Commissioner of Investigation, Adams was found “in an unconscious state” in her classroom. “There were 34 students present in [Adams’s] classroom,” the report said. When the principal “attempted to awaken [Adams], he was unable to.” When a teacher “stood next to [Adams], he detected a smell of alcohol emanating from her.”

    Adams’s return to teaching, more than two years later, had come about because she and the Department of Education had signed a sealed agreement whereby she would teach for one more semester, then be assigned to non-teaching duties in a school office, if she hadn’t found a teaching position elsewhere. The agreement also required that she “submit to random alcohol testing” and be fired if she again tested positive. In February, 2009, Adams passed out in the office where she had to report every day. A drug-and-alcohol-testing-services technician called to the scene wrote in his report that she was unable even to “blow into breathalyzer,” and that her water bottle contained alcohol. As the stipulation required, she was fired.


    Oh, and please tell me what 'conservative anti-union legislation' you're talking about.

    It's nice to see GOP'ers running with an actual agenda, not opposition to Obama, not parroting Reagan and then abandoning all those principles when in power. I still don't trust 'em though.

    EDIT: Some of his ads refer to Snyder as "One Tough Nerd". Awesome.

    CR
    Last edited by Crazed Rabbit; 08-08-2010 at 16:38.
    Ja Mata, Tosa.

    The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England cannot enter – all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement! - William Pitt the Elder

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