Protesters
The Theatrical Stagehands Union Local #675 protested outside Mac Court Thursday morning because concert promoters hired out-of-town help to set up Bob Dylan’s stage at a cheaper rate than the union. Though the University’s agreement with the union was “non-binding,” the stagehands won their fight and later brought Dylan’s set down for $17 an hour — the rate they usually receive from the University. Sure, the local stagehands probably won because no one wanted the folk icon to be called a union
buster, but the outcome was still pretty cool.
Faculty union
University professors are making a serious push to be unionized and seem more likely to achieve unionization than they have been at any point in the past 30 years. During that time, faculty have been marginalized in the University’s decision-making. University professors currently have the lowest salary average of all 34 public universities in the American Association of Universities. Better pay could mean recruiting top talent to the University, as well as happier professors.
Congressman Charlie Rangel
The Harlem Democrat who heads the committee that writes the nation’s tax laws has repeatedly failed to pay taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars in income. He’s been under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee for months for occupying multiple apartments intended to be low-income housing, and the scope of the investigation is expanding daily. He survived a mostly partisan vote to strip him of his chairmanship this week, but Rangel is a liability to his party and the wrong guy to be writing tax policy.
Chamber of Commerce
This week, Apple, Nike and three large utilities left the nation’s largest business advocacy organization in protest of its stance on climate change. A chamber vice president this summer said the group was pushing for a “Scopes monkey trial” on the science behind global warming. The chamber opposed a bill that recently passed the U.S. House aimed at curbing carbon emissions, but on Thursday, Chamber President Tom Donahue tried to back away from his silly previous stance that any climate bill had to mandate that other countries also limit emissions. He also tried to distance himself from the monkey business. But the chamber has a long way to go before it could be considered environmentally friendly.
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