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May. 2, 2010 at 3:07pm

Greedy Schools Union squelches volunteers

your tax dollars not at work

This, my dear friends is absurd.

Last weekend, a group of volunteers descended on Fawcett Elementary, ready to do some work. They intended to quite literally clean the place up, repaint, cut back bushes, et cetera, et cetera. Thee were parents, community members and 100 volunteers from Comcast.

Read the News Tribune article. Also, read the article that made it onto Mish.

This is good.: members of the community and parents got together to make their school better. This is exactly what we need: people who care.

However, Mark Martinez (president of the Pierce County Building and Construction Trades Council) along with the School District put a stop to this, because the volunteer cleanup last weekend will "take away union jobs".

Ultimately, volunteers were allowed to spread some bark, plant a tree and spread some gravel.

With over 100 people there, a LOT of work could have been done. Considering schools come out of our taxes, this would have been a double-win for the taxpayer.

However, the greed of the union is once again putting your kids second to their pocketbooks. Shame on you, Mark Martinez. I hope you sleep well at night on your pile of my tax money.

comments [4]  |  posted under greed, Schools, Tacoma, Unions, volunteers

Comments

by Jesse on 5/2/2010 @ 3:42pm	Hopefully volunteers don't use this as an excuse to never volunteer again.
by NineInchNachos on 5/2/2010 @ 4:28pm	crime, like caring, doesn't pay.
by Crenshaw Sepulveda on 5/2/2010 @ 5:31pm	If it is the motivation of the volunteers to make the union employees look bad then I'd think the union was right in standing up against this business. On the other hand if the volunteers were there to do work beyond what the union members were doing in the spirit of helping out a beleaguered school I'd say it was shameful how the union acted. I think it would do the school district good to formulate a clear policy allowing certain things that volunteers could do for the schools. Parent involvement is key to a successful education and quite frankly the unions have no business standing in the way of this. Create the rules for volunteers, make sure that the volunteers can do meaningful work and unions stop keeping parents and concerned citizens away from participating in their schools. I'm sure there is plenty of work to go around for all, indeed some of the union members could stand to do a little volunteering on their own.
by fredo on 5/2/2010 @ 9:37pm	The Comcast/Fawcett School volunteer day fiasco provided incontrovertible evidence that government labor unions run this country. By providing labor to keep the schools neat and clean parents would have made it easier for the administration to use scarce dollars for classroom purposes. Unfortunately, unions are not interested in academic progress, only wage and benefit progress.
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