A union member that should be fired but hasn’t been
Feb 14, 2014, 10:49 AM | Updated: 12:26 pm
David Boze welcomed the Freedom Foundation’s Trent England Friday to talk about a troubling story coming out of Tacoma and the implications it has for labor unions.
Originally reported by KING 5, the story involves a supervisor at a Department of Social and Health Services office in Tacoma who coworkers allege shared racist photos on his Instagram feed.
According to the report, one photo showed an African-American baby eating watermelon while sitting in a bucket. The other photo was a meme that said, “I’m not racist. Racism is a crime, and crime is a thing for black people.”
The discovery of the photos, according to KING 5, caused managers to convene a strange meeting to discipline the offending employee. The managers forced African-American staff to form a circle around the offender and tell them how they felt about the photos.
“People were yelling, people were crying, trying to leave, but they couldn’t,” one employee who was there told KING 5.
But that’s not the worst of it. Commenting on the incident, a former aide to Democrat Jay Inslee apparently told KING 5 that the supervisor should be terminated – as long as the employee is not part of a union.
So if he’s non-union he should be fired, but if he’s in a union, it’s OK to share racist photos?
“If you’re union, the rules don’t apply to you,” England commented. “This is pretty bad for someone working on the front lines providing social services in Tacoma.”
England expanded the scolding to other union employees, like teachers who are accused of carrying on inappropriate relationships with students. And instead of being punished, the teachers just get shuffled off to another school.
“They get shuffled along from one school to the next with a string of problems,” Boze said. “We think, ‘Oh this couldn’t happen again … and then you open up the newspaper.'”
Consequently, the Freedom Foundation is working on legislation to combat the political and societal overreach of unions. The watchdog group is urging legislators to pass a bill – SB6300 – that would require public sector unions to meet the same reporting standards of public unions.
But that’s just the beginning. Visit www.BozeForFreedom.com to learn more about what you can do to curb union overreach.
