Saturday, July 30, 2011

WHEN is Less MORE?


ROBERTS OKS 10% PAY CUT AT DPS
Union contract change the 1st under new manager law

By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
   A month after warning union workers that they would see a 10% wage cut next school year, Roy Roberts, the emergency manager for Detroit Public Schools, signed executive orders Friday that impose $81 million in wage concessions on workers starting in August.
   Union leaders called the new law an attempt to bust public unions and pledged to fight for their contracts in court.
   “I’m not taking this lying down,” said Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers.
   All 10,000 workers in the district — union and nonunion, including Roberts — will see a 10% cut in their paychecks starting Aug. 23. They will begin to pay 20% of health care benefits costs Sept. 1.
   The decision marks the first time that Public Act 4 of 2011 — the new emergency manager law — has been used to modify school employee collective bargaining agreements.
   The contract modifications and concessions are part of an effort to eliminate the district’s $327-million deficit, Roberts said in a written statement.
   “The No.1 priority is providing the children of Detroit Public Schools with a quality education. For that to happen, the school district must be financially sound,” he said.
   On Thursday, state Treasurer Andy Dillon gave Roberts the required permission to go ahead with the cuts. Gov. Rick Snyder, who appointed Roberts in May to run DPS, also expressed support for the decision.


Impasse cited in changes at DPS

Union plans to sue, says negotiation efforts lacking

By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
   The state’s controversial emergency manager law is being used to impose cuts on Detroit Public Schools unions partly because of a negotiations impasse with workers, officials said Friday.
   DPS emergency manager Roy Roberts decided to modify the eight unions’ contracts after 45 meet-and-confer sessions with labor representatives, according to a statement released by DPS.
   However, union leaders said there were no real efforts to negotiate.
   “There was really no impasse because there was no back-and-forth,” said Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers. “We were told, ‘I’ll get back to you.’ ”
   Johnson promised to file suit against the district in connection with an executive 
order Roberts signed Friday that modifies union contracts to help get $81.8 million in savings.
   As a result, all 10,000 workers in the district — union and nonunion — will see a 10% cut in their paychecks on Aug. 23 and will begin to pay 20% of health care benefits costs Sept. 1.
   The decision marks the first time that the state’s new emergency manager law — Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act, Public Act 4 of 2011 — has been used to modify collective bargaining agreements for school employees.
   The contract modifications are part of the effort to eliminate the district’s $327-million deficit, Roberts said.
   “We are in an extremely difficult financial period for Detroit Public Schools, requiring extreme measures,” 
Roberts said in a written statement.
   On Thursday, state Treasurer Andy Dillon gave Roberts permission to modify the union contracts. Dillon’s approval was required by law. Gov. Rick Snyder also supported the modification to the union contracts.
   In an e-mail Friday, Geralyn Lasher, a spokeswoman for Snyder, stressed the importance 
of providing DPS students a quality education and making the district financially sound.
   Ruby Newbold, president of the DPS secretaries union and the DPS Coalition of Unions, said, “Roberts is doing what he was sent here to do.”
   Unions agreed to millions in cuts, furlough days and concessions last year, and further cuts won’t bring DPS out of the red, she said.
   “There’s no way they can reduce the deficit with our salaries,” she said.
   The imposed concessions will take the place of previous concessions. Teachers will no longer have to defer $250 per paycheck for the Termination Incentive Plan that has helped address the district’s cash flow problems. Other cuts announced Friday will suspend teachers union bonuses, sick leave payouts and other measures.
   The wage and benefits concessions will affect everyone from teachers to principals and executive staff. Roberts’ $250,000-a-year salary is paid by the district and will also be subject to the 10% cut.
   Public Act 4 of 2011 allows the state-appointed emergency manager to modify or terminate a union contract after meeting and conferring with union representatives. Last month, when Roberts released the 2011-12 budget, he announced that he intended to impose the cuts.
   By law, the contract modifications will last until the state declaration of fiscal emergency in DPS is revoked.
   The lowest paid union workers will now earn at or near minimum wage, said Keith January, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 345, which represents about 1,400 DPS food service workers, technicians and bus attendants. The average worker in the union earns about $20,000 a year, January said.
   “These are the parents of the children in DPS that are being devastated,” he said.
   Union workers are part of a petition drive to repeal the emergency manager law through a ballot initiative.
   • CONTACT CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY:
   313-223-4537 OR CPRATT@ FREEPRESS 
   .COM 
ANDRE J. JACKSON/Detroit Free Press
   Roy Roberts’ $250,000 a year salary also will see a10% cut.

Monday, July 25, 2011

The Good Old Days (Today), A 21st Century Job AND That GIANT SUCKING Sound! (Hummed to the soundtrack of The GOOD, The BAD and the Brutally UGLY!)


Michigan must become a land of opportunity

   Dan Redford has gone from being a Michigan ambassador to one of its exports.
   A 2010 Michigan State University grad with degrees in international relations and Mandarin Chinese, Redford spent four months last year as one of 80 American students taking visitors through the U.S. pavilion at the huge World Expo in Shanghai. He returned to East Lansing to work on community-building projects among MSU’s 2,400 Chinese students and this month moved to Beijing, where he is working for a company that seeks out wealthy Chinese willing to invest in America in return for a green card.
   Unfortunately for Michigan, Redford’s employer is in Wisconsin, which will reap the benefits of his efforts.
   “It’s where the opportunity was,” Redford, 22, said in an interview from his home in 
Frankenmuth before he left for China. “I’ll always be a Michigan guy, but I’m representing southeast Wisconsin.”
   His company is FirstPathway Partners of Milwaukee, which pursues investments under the federal government’s 21-year-old EB5 visa program.
   Investment rewards
   An EB5 is an employment-based visa. Basically, the EB5 program offers permanent U.S. residency to foreign nationals and their immediate family members for an investment 
of at least $500,000 in a federally approved project that will create or retain 10 American jobs. The investor need not take an active role in managing the project. There are regional centers established as investment targets, generally areas of high unemployment. Michigan has five of them.
   Although the program seems a bit mercenary, it is attracting overseas capital to the U.S. — which still offers a standard of living with which most of the world cannot compete. And it’s a way of getting some Chinese money into the U.S. economy, although hardly enough to offset all the dollars we send their way for cheaply made consumer goods.
   “China’s economic boom has created a lot of high-net-worth individuals,” Redford said. “The people who are generally most interested in 
the EB5 have families that they want to get into the American education system. A lot of investors will do this program for their kids. The children don’t have to attend school in the state where the investment is made. The visa holder doesn’t even have to live there.”
   So, Redford says, while he’s trying to line up investments for Wisconsin, he 
hopes to be talking up Michigan, too, as a place to live and learn.
   But he has no timetable for coming back to Michigan himself. For an educated young man who prides himself on thinking “glocally” — that is, forging relationships with people from around the world to effect change in any community you care about, anywhere on Earth — Michigan is simply not the frontier.
   New horizons
   Redford is not entirely at ease in China.
   “I’ll never be Chinese,” he said. “I’m a 6-foot-5 white guy from Michigan. I was out for a run there once and even this little dog was staring at me as I went past. He knew I was different.
   “But I enjoy the adventure of China,” he said. “There is something new going on all the time. It’s an exciting place 
to be.”
   So Redford exemplifies a conundrum for Michigan.
   We support a university system that, as it should, encourages a world view and educates our young people to find their place in it.
   But we don’t yet have a world-class state that offers them an opportunity to use their newfound awareness at home. As a result, they leave — sometimes for China, but more often for any place that needs what they know and, as Redford put it, “is an exciting place to be.”
   If Michigan ever again becomes that kind of place — a bustling ball of energy where new ideas sprout like sunflowers and people embrace adventure — we can only hope our Dan Redfords find their way back.
   • RON DZWONKOWSKI IS ASSOCIATE EDITOR OF THE FREE PRESS. CONTACT HIM AT 313-222-6635 ORRDZWONKOWSKI   @FREEPRESS.COM  .


RON DZWONKOWSKI SAYS IT MUST DO MORE TO KEEP YOUNG MINDS FROM MOVING
G. L. KOHUTH
   Dan Redford is a Michigan State University grad working in China to lure investments to the U.S.

Monday, July 18, 2011


DETROIT
DPS’s Roberts to give council status update
-- COMPILED FROM REPORTS BY CHRISTINA HALL AND GANNETT NEWSPAPERS
   It will be all things educational Tuesday at a Detroit City Council meeting.
   Detroit Public Schools emergency manager Roy Roberts is expected to give a status update about the district since taking over that position in May.
   Gov. Rick Snyder appointed the former General Motors executive to replace Robert Bobb.
   Summer school students from Bennett Elementary School are to attend as guests of Councilman Andre Spivey.
   The 10 a.m. meeting is open to the public. It will be in the Erma Henderson Auditorium inside the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.

Just one example of an universally organic pedagogical learning environment