Articles and commentary on the role of unions and union endorsements sat for review under the Paperweight last week.
The Glendale Firefighters Association and the Glendale Police Officers Association are endorsing three city council candidates who advocate current public safety funding and staffing levels. Some other candidates object to current staffing levels or the amounts paid to firefighters for overtime, citing the city’s budget problems and Glendale Water and Power income transfers to the general fund paying city salaries.
Senior citizens have appeared regularly and protested high utility rates at city council meetings, and city hall activitists have repeatedly complained about both high utility rates and city salaries. Challenger Aram Kazazian has made the conflicts of interesting surrounding unions’ campaign contributions and endorsements one of his campaign issues.
Union declines pay raise, in Friday’s Glendale News Press, reported the Firefighters Association’s decision to forgo pay raises totaling up to $3 million for the next two years. Neither the association president, Captain Chris Stavros, or the Glendale News Press, reported any concessions related to overtime compensation, which likely represents more than $3 million over two years time.
In the same News Press issue, Glendale Teachers Association President Allen Freemon announced the local union’s endorsement of two challengers in the school board election (his letter to the editor is not available online), while Hoover High School educator and News Press columnist Dan Kimber stated that the union’s division hinders its progress and criticized the union’s heated rhetoric in this election cycle.
Earlier last week, but many days after Sunroom Desk’s commentary on the same issue, the News Press reported on criticism of the school district’s website updates. The Teachers Association said the updates, which report on the school district’s stable budget situation, appear to endorse the actions of incumbents seeking re-election to the School Board.
The facts in the school board case are that incumbents have, over the past two years, resisted union calls for large teacher pay increases. As a result, the district is not currently running a deficit and is not laying off teachers or cutting back instructional programs while surrounding districts like LAUSD are being forced to do so.
Glendale’s union-related election stories reflect national ambivalence about the role of unions in politics and in the economy. At the national level, the fiercely debated “Employee Free Choice Act” would allow unions to individually approach and sign up members instead of conducting secret ballot elections. As the issue receives more press and public attention, the words “Free Choice” are being broadly recognized as a Big Lie. Other stories under the Paperweight document this developing debate.