Tag Archives: Union

News

Two reasons why Christians should not support public schools

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From two stories. Here’s the first from the Alliance Defense Fund.

Excerpt:

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a lawsuit Thursday on behalf of a student-led pro-life club against Independent School District #885 for denying the club, at St. Michael-Albertville High School, official status because it allegedly “does not support the student body as a whole.” Despite that claim, school officials have recognized more than a dozen other non-curricular clubs, including the Environmental and Animé clubs, providing them with benefits and access currently denied to the pro-life student group, known as the All Life Is Valuable (ALIV) Club.

[…]The principal of St. Michael-Albertville High School denied equal treatment to the ALIV Club and the local chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes even though District Policy 801 requires the district to grant equal access to student clubs wishing to meet for “religious, political, or philosophical reasons during non-instructional time.”

The ALIV Club addresses a variety of issues that students face, including those related to faith and religion, life, abortion, abstinence, personal responsibility, leadership, community service, peer pressure, promoting respect and dignity for all others, and examining governmental and political issues. Neither the ALIV Club nor FCA, however, receive any of the benefits enjoyed by more than a dozen other recognized non-curricular student clubs. Officially recognized clubs, such as the Diversity Club, Environmental Club, Animé Club, and Book Club are able to meet during a special club period, make announcements, and engage in fundraising activities, among other benefits.

When Democrats complain about needing more money for public schools, they want to take your money and use it against your children. They want to pound conservative Christian views out of your children, using your money, and replace those views with their secular leftist views.

Here’s the second story from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

The controversial Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association is building a $3 million war chest on the backs of all its member to defeat the province’s Progressive Conservative Party in the upcoming fall election.

The 45,000-strong union, whose leadership has become infamous for advancing causes opposed to Catholic teaching, voted at its annual general meeting in Toronto last month to force every member to pay an extra $60 towards its political campaign.  The fee takes effect July 1st.

Teachers have refused to comment publicly on the powerful union’s activities out of fear of retaliation.  But one teacher told LifeSiteNews, under condition of anonymity, that he’s disappointed they’re taking $60 “for a campaign that I don’t really agree with in the first place.”

“I’ve got to vote in conscience always.  If I voted Liberal, it wouldn’t be in conscience,” he said.  “It comes down to what’s the greater good here.”

The campaign aims to “protect the gains” made in education since Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals took office eight years ago, OECTA union president James Ryan wrote in a March 23rd letter to union members.  He said delegates left the AGM “acutely aware of how the election of a Conservative government under Tim Hudak would threaten the common good, particularly education.”

The union has long used portions of the mandatory dues, which already can amount to nearly $1,000 per year, to fund a range of activities violating Catholic teaching.  In December, LifeSiteNews revealed that OECTA provided funding to Egale, a leading homosexual lobby group, to promote gay-straight alliances in Catholic schools – in opposition to the Ontario bishops.

[…]Vouchers and charter schools, in particular, are initiatives aimed at promoting parental choice in education as an alternative to current teachers’ union dominated public education monopolies. There is also a growing trend in North America to question the automatic pay scales based on seniority and degrees that public system teachers receive, rather than on regularly assessed personal skills or merit.According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, a conservative think-tank, OECTA’s partisan fee shows the need for reform of Ontario’s labour laws.  “Regardless of what political party stands to gain, forcing workers to support partisan political activity of any kind is a fundamental violation of their individual rights and profoundly undemocratic,” said president Joseph Ben-Ami.

“Giving unions the power to force workers to join, or to pay dues even if they aren’t forced to join, is a recipe for abuse and corruption,” he added. “The law needs to recognize and respond to this.”

You can’t even be a teacher in Canada without joining a union. The unions use union dues to elect Liberal (socialist) and NDP (communist) candidates. Christians should always vote for right-to-work laws to deny power and money to the public schools. Public schools don’t represent your values. They represent their values. With your money.

News

Harper would ban political contributions from unions and corporations

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Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

From PostMedia News.

Excerpt:

Stephen Harper says scrapping taxpayer subsidies for political parties could help break Canada’s cycle of holding federal elections every few years, but his political foes say it’s another attempt to financially cripple the other parties.

On Friday, Day 7 of the campaign, Harper said he will ban the subsidies if the Conservatives win a majority government on May 2. Any party that receives more than two per cent of the vote in a general election receives a subsidy of roughly $2 per year for each vote the party received.

Harper said the system funnels taxpayers’ money to political parties they don’t necessarily support, and allows parties to operate in perpetual campaign mode.

“We think money should come from voters. Not from corporations, not from unions and not from government. (It) should come from the voters,” he told reporters.

[…]In January, Harper revealed for the first time, in an interview with Postmedia News, that a ban on the subsidies would be a “clear plank” in his party’s platform for an election.

Shortly after winning the 2008 election, the Tories proposed to end the subsidies, but that sparked anger from the opposition parties and they rallied to form a coalition that nearly defeated Harper’s government. On Friday, Harper made it clear he hasn’t changed his mind. However, in an apparent bid to take some of the sting out of the move and to reduce criticism, he revealed there would be a three-year transition.

“I’ve wanted to change this, but we’re very clear: Unless we have a majority government, we’ll never attempt to change it, because we know that in a minority government you could never move this forward. So if we get a chance to change it, we will,” Harper told reporters.

Basically, there should only be ONE WAY for parties to get money in my view. Individual contributions from workers and small businesses. Anyone who can use government to grant it a monopoly (unions, big corporations) should NOT be allowed to contribute money to politicians. Get the big money from left-wing unions and left-wing big corporations out of politics.

Here’s the latest poll, showing the Conservatives steady at 41.3% support. (H/T Jeanie)

Commentary

We’ve become a nation of takers, not makers

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From moderate conservative Stephen Moore, writing in the Wall Street Journal. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?

Every state in America today except for two—Indiana and Wisconsin—has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Consider California, which has the highest budget deficit in the history of the states. The not-so Golden State now has an incredible 2.4 million government employees—twice as many as people at work in manufacturing. New Jersey has just under two-and-a-half as many government employees as manufacturers. Florida’s ratio is more than 3 to 1. So is New York’s.

Even Michigan, at one time the auto capital of the world, and Pennsylvania, once the steel capital, have more government bureaucrats than people making things. The leaders in government hiring are Wyoming and New Mexico, which have hired more than six government workers for every manufacturing worker.

Now it is certainly true that many states have not typically been home to traditional manufacturing operations. Iowa and Nebraska are farm states, for example. But in those states, there are at least five times more government workers than farmers. West Virginia is the mining capital of the world, yet it has at least three times more government workers than miners. New York is the financial capital of the world—at least for now. That sector employs roughly 670,000 New Yorkers. That’s less than half of the state’s 1.48 million government employees.

The problem with having a high number of government workers is that government workers don’t actually produce anything to sell. They pay the salaries of their workers by taking a percentage of the money that productive business make when they sell customers useful things like cell phones and laptops and automobiles.

This article is the second most popular on the Wall Street Journal. Recommended.