Showing posts with label union. Show all posts
Showing posts with label union. Show all posts

Friday, November 06, 2015

Why I'm Incredulous of Polls and Union Endorsements


Fortune
Article cites Bloomberg politics polls, not the rate of campaign cash donations.

Los Angeles Timmes
Union leaders seem to be ignoring their members cries for supporting Bernie Sanders

In These Times
Examples of grass-roots union support for Bernie Sanders

U.S. News
A Union President chose Hillary over Bernie because "we need to win."

Forbes
Small donors are far from reaching their contribution limits, and they can donate again.

Open Secrets
Look how much cash Bernie Sanders has raised so far.
When I saw the headline at Fortune, I had to do some digging and sure enough, the media is relying on polling data, because after all, polls can tell you what you want to hear if you know who to ask.

Other media outlets are glomming onto the the counter-intuitive union endorsement of Hillary Clinton, who hasn't really been fighting for labor as much as Bernie Sanders.

One union leader said he personally loved Bernie but endorsed Hillary because he thought she had a better chance of winning, but the media and the union leadership cannot see the groundswell of support for Bernie coming from the rank-and-file.

It appears the media are presupposing a Clinton advantage based on the assumption that union leaders held a vote among the members. I couldn't find the rules for endorsing candidates, but The Daily Caller reported that Bernie and Hillary met with union leaders in a private meeting. which suggests that the rank-and-file union members don't have much of a voice in the matter.

Sunday, February 08, 2015

STRIKE

Why do we need to fight for fair wages, safe working conditions and the right tools we need for the job? The people are getting sick and tired of the greed, contempt and neglect. The people should not suffer. Here are some strikes the main-stream press is not covering.

Oil Workers
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/02/08/3620627/oil-workers-strike-grows-to-include-ohio-indiana/

Longshoremans of the West Coast ports. Handling our imports and exports.
http://www.breitbart.com/california/2015/02/06/longshoremans-union-to-strike-29-west-coast-ports/

After a six-day strike, Unite Here Local 5 Kaiser Permanente employees say: mission accomplished.
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/28053732/no-agreement-yet-as-kaiser-workers-head-back-to-work-after-week-long-strike

Potential strike at USC
http://intersectionssouthla.org/story/worker-delivers-tearful-plea-to-usc-president-to-increase-wages/

Aramark workers call for equal treatment
http://georgetownvoice.com/2015/02/05/serving-up-justice-aramark-workers-call-for-equal-treatment/

We desperately need to rebuild our unions.
http://www.themilitant.com/2015/7905/790555.html


Tuesday, November 16, 2010

The corruption of employment tests.

Sometimes you must take a test for employment, such as when applying at Central Management Services for a job working for the state of Illinois, or perhaps a union job such as Engineering Operators Local 965, or to enter the MBA program at the University of Illinois.

You may become extremely frustrated while taking the multiple choice portion of those tests because there are inserted within the tests, questions with more than one correct answer.

How many times did you wish that you could explain your answer in a little box under the question?

How many times did you want to raise your hand for the proctor and explain that more than one answer can be correct on a particular question?

And finally, did you ever wonder why you consistently just barely arrived within a couple of answers of passing the test, but not quite?

With computerized tests, it's very easy to code a subroutine to automatically pick the answer other than that which you chose, as the correct answer, if your name in the test database wasn't part of another secret database, thereby giving you a non-passing grade, keeping you from getting a job, joining a union, or an elite fraternal organization.

Perhaps the other secret database is a collection of names of certain families, political contributors, certain organizations or associations, etc.

One way to determine if a test is corrupt is to file a Freedom of Information Act request for the tests results of, say, all the employees of the Department of Human Services, or the Department of Transportation, students in the MBA program, union members, etc. and check for the following:

1. Look for all test questions that were graded as correct, but with different answers selected. In other words, if the same question was answered differently by different people, but the question was graded as correct, then you have a guaranteed corrupt question, and the individual was flagged by the computer for a passing grade.

2. Follow the guidelines set by the authors of the book "Freakanomics" and look for patterns in the test questions among all the test-takers who were hired, and the test-takers who were not hired.

How do they try to cover up the corruption? By changing up the test questions under the guise of "preventing cheating." It won't really matter if you select all the tests over a ten year period, because you can easily divide up the tests into subgroups based on the question changes and still get the results.

So, if you must take a test to get a job and you don't pass, but the questions were vague, open to interpretation, and more than one answer could be correct for various reasons, then you probably need bribe money.

The problem in Illinois is that there is little or no fulfillment of Freedom of Information requests.