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MAIL BAG  LETTERS FROM READERS

January 7, 2009

MAIL BAG  LETTERS FROM READERS

Author/historian seeking information on miner

I am a Massachusetts author and historian. I am conducting an important research project about child labor; I am looking for anyone who might be related to, or who knew of, Neil Gallagher, a boy who was born in 1891 and lived in Luzerne County.

He was the son of Patrick and Dolly Gallagher. His left leg was amputated in 1904 as a result of a mining accident. His mother may have died before 1910.

He was photographed in Wilkes-Barre, in 1909, by the great photographer and child labor activist Lewis Hine. The photo is in the Library of Congress.

Is there anyone who knows what happened to Neil? If yes, please contact me at joe@sevensteeples.com or 575 Bridge Road, Unit 9-1, Florence, MA 01062.

Teacher terminations a costly move by diocese

In November 2006, the Diocese of Scranton announced its plans to restructure its schools. That decision simultaneously brought closure to the old schools and the bargaining relationship that several of those schools had with their in-house unions, all of which were under the umbrella of the Scranton Diocese Association of Catholic Teachers (SDACT).

The closures also triggered contractual provisions in some schools requiring that the employers pay teachers money owed them for accumulated sick leave and severance pay when their employment with those schools was terminated.

Knowing this to be the case, the SDACT asked the employers how they intended to make good on their contractual promises, or how a workable compromise could be arranged through collective bargaining. When no responses to the union’s requests were received, grievances were filed for breach of contract.

Since May 2008, separate arbitration hearings have taken place between the parties at the former Bishop Hoban, Bishop Hafey, Bishop Neumann, St. Vincent’s Elementary School, Bishop O’Reilly Junior High and Bishop O’Reilly Senior High.

On Sept. 3, the first arbitration award was handed down, that affecting Bishop Hoban. SDACT and the teachers were the winners in the dispute. The arbitrator’s award called for the employer to immediately begin paying $725,000 to Hoban’s 40 teachers. Since then, similar awards were handed down in the other disputes. When the dust settles and all of the arbitrators have ruled, the diocese may owe nearly $2 million to the teachers in the 12 affected schools.

This immediate payout (and the enormous associated legal costs) will no doubt have an unfavorable impact on the diocese and its schools. It is just one more foreseeable and avoidable consequence of a reckless policy of union-busting initiated by Bishop Joseph Martino and his advisers.

The diocese has attempted to spin this outcome to make it a demonstration of the union’s “greed.” The fact is that what was designed as a small benefit per individual employee, if properly applied under a union contract in the new school system, would have had a nearly negligible financial impact as individual teachers left the employment of the diocese through retirement or attrition. (It must be noted, that such provisions were cooperatively designed to benefit both parties, and took their shape in negotiation as much from employer input as from the union.)

To illustrate the point, all one needs to do is to see how these provisions worked under the old union contracts in place before 2007. That is, each year, on average, a small number of teachers would retire. Those teachers were entitled to cash in the sick days that they had banked or receive severance pay – a benefit designed to augment their insufficient 401(k) retirement plans and to help defray the cost of medical insurance in retirement.

Viewed as an individual budget item at each school, the amount was very small and easily absorbed, as new teachers hired to replace retiring veterans came onboard at much lower salaries. In most cases, the employer would have come out ahead in this transaction.

However, by its actions, the diocese upset this agreed-upon balance by now making an expense that would have been allocated in dribs and drabs over a number of years immediately due and owing. This situation did not have to be. This immediate and extremely large payment is a direct cost of union-busting.

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Joe Manning Florence, Mass. Michael A. Milz President, Scranton Diocese Association of Catholic Teachers (SDACT) Dunmore