A friend mentioned that there was a cable access program in the DC area that recently did a piece on the changes in organizing since President Obama took office. Then he tells me, there's a fucking video of it!!
Clearly, I had to share!!
I'm a Government employee. I also belong to the Freelancer's union. I'm a uniongal, through and through. I believe in the right to self determination, which is why I support the Employee Free Choice Act.
As an employee, we should all have the right to have a unified voice to negotiate with the managers, owners and bosses. Together, we have power. United we stand, divided we fall. A very American philosophy, huh?
So, when I heard President Obama announce the freezing of White House Senior Staff wages, it got me to thinking about what it means to be an American Government Worker:
And when I thought about it, I knew that I needed to do something about it. I needed to show my support for the voluntary request the President has made of his senior staff. I decided, I'd take the pledge, too:
I agree to accept a pay freeze for the length of time President Obama needs to restore the US economy. I, (state your name) pledge to accept no Bonus, no increase in pay and my support to President Obama's voluntary program prescribed on January 21st, 2009 for his White House Senior Staff.
This I pledge on (state the date).
From the Washington Post:
The bill, dubbed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, was introduced after a Supreme Court ruling in 2007 rejected a $360,000 award in back pay to Lilly Ledbetter, an Alabama woman who worked for Goodyear Tire and Rubber. Ledbetter had discovered a large gap between her salary and that of her male colleagues, stretching back years.
The discrepancy cost her lost wages and also lowered her retirement earnings because her Social Security and 401(k) contributions were based on her salary. But the court ruled that Ledbetter's case was not allowed under the 1964 Civil Rights Act because the statute of limitations on claims was 180 days after the alleged discrimination took place.
The bill would greatly ease the statute-of-limitations requirements -- too much so, said Republican opponents, who warned that civil courts would be clogged with frivolous lawsuits.
The Senate took an enormous step forward to restore fair pay protections by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act this evening.
...
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is a modest and targeted response to a harmful and unjust U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made it just about impossible for victims of pay discrimination to seek justice in the courts, no matter how severe the discrimination they face. Today, the Senate stood with the American people and committed to ending workplace discrimination.
Did you hear that? Pay freeze? Do you think that includes all the Senior Executive service and their bonuses, too? Because some of them get thousands and thousands in bonuses while workers get very little.
The Freeze is really only for White House staff making more than $100,000, but I can still dream, can't I?
I was reading an op-ed in the Detroit News (yeah, I know, a Right-Wing piece of garbage, but I read lots of things that I'd use to wipe shit off my shoes, really, I do). The Op-Ed is by Rev. Edgar Vann, pastor of Second Ebenezer Church.
Washington, D.C. has a transformational leader making great strides in their school system. Michelle Rhee is the appointee of Mayor Adrian Fenty. Her efforts to bring true reform to that school system have drawn acclaim from a wide range of supporters with a minority of usual suspects still stuck in the old paradigm. She has closed underperforming schools, fired more than 30 underperforming principals and given notice to teachers that there will be no lowering of academic standards -- putting the interests of the children first and making radical changes in the classroom.
Eighteen of nineteen high schools in Detroit are on the failure list; the graduation rates are absolutely abysmal, and we change superintendents and CEOs like changing socks. Well, let's ask ourselves some tough questions. Does the school district's leader have to be an educator? Should we take another look at labor issues that may be distractions to the reform process?
In 11th grade, Allante Rhodes spent 50 minutes a day in a Microsoft Word class at Anacostia Senior High School in Washington. He was determined to go to college, and he figured that knowing Word was a prerequisite. But on a good day, only six of the school's 14 computers worked. He never knew which ones until he sat down and searched for a flicker of life on the screen. "It was like Russian roulette," says Rhodes, a tall young man with an older man's steady gaze. If he picked the wrong computer, the teacher would give him a handout. He would spend the rest of the period learning to use Microsoft Word with a pencil and paper.
In the year and a half she's been on the job, Rhee has made more changes than most school leaders--even reform-minded ones--make in five years. She has shut 21 schools--15% of the city's total--and fired more than 100 workers from the district's famously bloated 900-person central bureaucracy. She has dismissed 270 teachers. And last spring she removed 36 principals, including the head of the elementary school her two daughters attend in an affluent northwest-D.C. neighborhood.
Right now, schools assess teachers before they teach--filtering for candidates who are certified, who have a master's degree, who have other pieces of paper that do not predict good teaching. And we pay them the same regardless of their effectiveness.
By comparison, if we wanted to have truly great teachers in our schools, we would assess them after their second year of teaching, when we could identify very strong and very weak performers, according to years of research. Great teachers are in total control. They have clear expectations and rules, and they are consistent with rewards and punishments. Most of all, they are in a hurry. They never feel that there is enough time in the day. They quiz kids on their multiplication tables while they walk to lunch. And they don't give up on their worst students, even when any normal person would.
Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
