STANDING UP FOR COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
Unions will roll with change, but without rolling over
March 17, 2011
YOUR MARCH 14 editorial “The state chops ‘hack’ holidays — and ends up paying for it’’ is a hack job by your staff.
The United States is last among all of the industrial nations in providing holidays and vacation time to its citizens. If that does not give you pause, remember all of the holidays on which many businesses, which used to be closed, are now open, including New Year’s Day and Memorial Day. The most egregious example, of course, is Labor Day.
It is not unions’ fault that the Legislature rushed to end the practice of closing government offices in Suffolk County on Evacuation Day and Bunker Hill Day — “hack holidays,’’ as you term them — without planning for a schedule of implementation.
No doubt you are aware that the parties of a collective bargaining agreement are bound by law to uphold the wording of contracts. It seems the Legislature was so intent on pandering to the public that it forgot all else.
To suggest that “unions should agree to this minor change without demanding concessions in return’’ is patently absurd. Why do you suppose the word bargaining is part of the phrase “collective bargaining’’?
William Grealish
Boston
© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.
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