Teacher Amy Berard describes her experience under a
creepy, creepy, creepy instructional model in Lawrence, Massachusetts:
"Give him a warning," said the voice through the earpiece I was wearing. I did as instructed, speaking in the emotionless monotone I’d been coached to use. But the student, a sixth grader with some impulsivity issues and whose trust I’d spent months working to gain, was excited and spoke out of turn again. "Tell him he has a detention," my earpiece commanded. At which point the boy stood up and pointed to the back of the room, where the three classroom "coaches" huddled around a walkie talkie. "Miss: don’t listen to them! You be you. Talk to me! I’m a person! Be a person, Miss. Be you!" [...]
If you’re not familiar with No Nonsense Nurturing or NNN, let’s just say that there is more nonsense than nurturing. The approach starts from the view that urban students, like my Lawrence, MA middle schoolers, benefit from a robotic style of teaching that treats, and disciplines, all students the same. This translated into the specific instruction that forbade us from speaking to our students in full sentences. Instead, we were to communicate with them using precise directions. As my students entered the room, I was supposed to say: "In seats, zero talking, page 6 questions, 1-4." But I don’t even talk to my dog like that. Constant narration of what the students are doing is also key to the NNN teaching style. "Noel is is finishing question 3. Marjorie is sitting silently. Alfredo is on page 6."
Oddly enough, the Lawrence schools ultimately decided Berard was not the right fit.
Continue reading for more of the week's labor news.
A fair day's wage
- If you weren't sure about the problems with guest worker programs, check out Buzzfeed's investigation of abuses of H-2 visa workers:
Guest workers often toil in conditions that are unsafe, inhumane, or simply exhausting, wielding dangerous machinery beneath a scorching sun or standing for hours on end in sweltering factories. And at the end of their shift, many workers retire to grim, squalid quarters that might be little more than a grimy mattress on the floor of a crowded, vermin-infested trailer. For such housing, some employers charge workers extortionate rent.
Though it is against the law, employers often exert additional control over guest workers by confiscating their passports, without which many foreign workers, fearful of being deported, feel unsafe leaving the worksite. Some employers extend their influence over workers to extremes, screening their mail, preventing them from receiving visitors, banning radios and newspapers, or even coercing them to attend religious services they don’t believe in. Some foremen sexually harass female workers, who live in constant fear of losing their jobs and being deported.
- In Indiana, employers can fire workers for being gay or trans—and they do, all the time.
- A subliminal message in a Walmart minimum wage ad?
- Paid sick leave is popular, as is student loan relief:
There is even more overwhelming support from Virginians on another pair of pieces of progressive legislation. 64% in the state think all workers should get a minimum number of paid sick days, with only 19% opposed to that concept. And an equal 64% think borrowers should be able to deduct their student loan payments on their state income taxes, to just 20% against that.
- New favorite tool: The Economic Policy Institute's minimum wage tracker doesn't just tell the minimum wage for each state, it offers information that can be harder to track down, like the tipped worker minimum and whether it's indexed to inflation.
- Grocery chain's financial meltdown could leave thousands of union workers jobless:
Plans to dismember the A&P supermarket chain were revealed in a federal bankruptcy court in New York this week, with dire results predicted for more than 15,000 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union.
- Can auto shed its tiers? And would that happen the right way, or the wrong way?
The second tier was originally supposed to be capped at 20 percent of each workforce. To comply, this spring Ford moved 500 second-tier workers up to the higher rate. But for GM and Chrysler, the caps were lifted as part of the government bailout deals.
And despite the employers’ recovery, now that it can’t be un-bailed out, Chrysler makes no secret of its desire to phase out the top tier altogether. CEO Sergio Marchionne told reporters last year he wants to make first-tier workers “a dying class.”
- Sontia Bailey works at the U.S. Capitol and KFC:
Even though I work full-time at the US Capitol, I only earn $10.59 an hour. Because the federal contractor that operates the cafe pays me so little, I had to pick-up a second job at KFC to make ends meet. It may be hard to believe, but Colonel Sanders actually pays me more than Uncle Sam does: I make $11 an hour at my fast food job.
- A thousand New York City airport workers are planning to go on strike Wednesday:
The workers, who do subcontracted work for Delta, say their subcontractor, Aviation Safeguards, illegally threatened them and violated their rights after they organized for higher wages and benefits.
The workers are demanding a $15 per hour wage, and the union says the strike will be the largest action airport workers have taken in their three-year national campaign for more money, better benefits, improved union representation and "respect on the job."
- Time is political:
“Flexibility” is promoted as a win-win plank of neoliberal labor market reform. Policymakers and employers argue that rigid labor regulations keep employers from remaining competitive in a fast-paced global economy, and prevent them from providing quality customer service. In theory, flexibility sounds good to employees too — particularly those who have to take care of children or elderly parents, who want to work from home, or hold part-time jobs.
In reality, flexibility has meant breaking unions and deregulating — or rather, reregulating — labor markets in ways that benefit employers at the expense of workers. Employers have more ability to shift the costs and responsibility of the employment relationship onto workers through practices like “just-in-time scheduling.”
- Unions continue to debate the Democratic presidential primary.