Category: Unions
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The Subversive Power of Doughnuts
by Steve Haner Let me get this straight. An elected member of the General Assembly comes to school buildings to give doughnuts to teachers in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week and the leftist Democrat agitators of the teachers’ union are “triggered”? They whine about her generosity to the gutless school management, which then caves to…
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Teachers’ Unions and Virginia Schools
by James C. Sherlock Virginia is a government union state. Because of the federal workforce in Northern Virginia, Virginia in 2021 had the third highest percentage of any state of government union members as a share of total union members at 64%. That is a higher percentage than Washington D.C. Of all employees in Virginia,…
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The Strike at the AdvanSix Chemical Plant in Hopewell – A Complex Story
by James C. Sherlock We don’t see very many industrial strikes in Virginia. Regular readers know that I have often supported blue collar unions in the private economy. My family roots are linked to Pennsylvania coal mines. Those miners’ strongest claims were for their own safety. Followed very closely by their demands for living wages.…
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Assault and Battery in Schools – Virginia Law and School Division Policies Make “Marks” of Principals
by James C. Sherlock This is addressed directly to Virginia public school principals. You are compliant with current Virginia law whether you report assault and battery to police or do not. Bad law makes for bad policy. Depending upon your school division, your requirements may vary. A lot. In gambling, and this issue is a…
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What Do We Owe To and Expect from a Special Ed Teacher?
by James C. Sherlock On February 16, USA Today published a story by Jeanine Santucci. That is the latest in an excellent series of reports on the shooting of Newport News first grade teacher Abigail Zwerner. Her article, “Virginia 6-year-old who shot his teacher exposes flaws in how schools treat students with disabilities.” raises questions that Virginians…
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Coal in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock When we talk of coal today, which is seldom, it is usually not treated well. It is easy to forget (if some even know) that coal powered the industrial revolution, made America the richest nation in the world and fueled American war production that supported allied victories in both world wars…
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RVA 5×5: Needed Resources for Human Resources
by Jon Baliles Last week we had a story about a glut of open positions at Richmond’s City Hall and the difficulty in filling them. Lo and behold, the Richmond Free Press this week put out an article about the struggle to fill positions as the department responsible for filling those positions (Human Resources, aka…
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Preparing for the Costs to Government of Virginia’s Generation COVID
by James C. Sherlock To justify her insistence on keeping schools closed, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in February of 2021, “kids are resilient and kids will recover.” She brought that same message to Virginia. In one of the strangest choices in Virginia political history, Terry McAuliffe brought Weingarten…
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Projected $312 Billion Cost of Lost Earnings of Virginia K-12 Students due to Pandemic School Closures
by James C. Sherlock Over $312 billion in present value. That is the estimate published by Stanford’s Eric A. Hanushek of expected economic losses attributable to Virginia’s pandemic school closures. Virginia students in the COVID cohort can expect on average 5.5 percent lower lifetime earnings. History indicates that the economic losses will be permanent unless the schools…
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Virginia’s Northam Learning Gap
by L. Scott Ligamfelter It should surprise no one. After the ill-conceived March 2020 closing of Virginia’s public schools by former Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam, it should have been evident that children would suffer academically. We now know the extent of that damage to fourth and eighth grade students. Virginia’s Secretary of Education, Aimee Rogstad Guidera,…
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School Discipline Issues Meet Unshakeable Progressive Dogma
by James C. Sherlock Moral panic has been defined as a: …widespread feeling of fear, often an irrational one, that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society. Virginia’s progressive community is in moral panic over the refusal of school discipline outcomes to bend to their prescriptions…
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Unionize Virginia’s Worst Nursing Home Chains
by James C. Sherlock If you go back to the series of articles I published here in October of 2021, you can refresh your memory on the dangers represented by Virginia’s worst nursing home chains. If you look at the complete spreadsheet of every Virginia nursing home from that data sorted by ownership, the bad…
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Richmond Starbucks Employees Vote to Unionize
by James A. Bacon Employees at five Starbucks coffee stores in the Richmond area have voted for union representation — and I’m just fine with that. I oppose public-sector unions for reasons frequently enumerated on this blog. But if private-sector employees want to band together to increase their bargaining power with management, that’s their right…
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Richmond Parents and Taxpayers, Welcome to Chicago Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock The gulf between what the City of Richmond School Board (RSB) and the Richmond City Council (RCC) on what will be negotiated with their public unions is actually an ocean. The RSB has authorized the negotiation of virtually everything about how the schools are run. It leaves nothing off the table…
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Know the Terms of Surrender in Negotiating With Teachers Unions
by James C. Sherlock Franklin Roosevelt thought collective bargaining agreements incompatible with public sector work. Today’s left, unburdened by the public interest, finds FDR’s principles at best quaint. Since May of last year collective bargaining is legal in Virginia for local government employees by local option, but for not state employees. The issues most people think…