SFB: It’s hard to tell 100 percent for sure, but one thing’s for certain, which we noted at the time: The original clip cut out a few key seconds. Here’s the raw clip (fight starts around 1:30).
EDIT: HuffPo talked to others at the scene. Here’s what they said:
Ken Spitzley, a state agriculture department employee, told HuffPost that he walked to the protest at the state Capitol during a break from work and that he witnessed Crowder getting in protesters’ faces.
“He was just after everybody,” said the 56-year-old Spitzley, a procurement technician whose workplace is represented by the United Auto Workers. “There was no question he was there just to start a fight, to start some kind of trouble.”
Crowder denies goading the protesters.
I think the Republican strategy in doing this so quickly is that they don’t want what Wisconsin had, dragging on for so many days. This is a blitzkrieg, and Republicans hope it’s going to be over and done with tomorrow.“Inside Michigan Politics” editor Bill Ballenger • Discussing the Republican strategy behind passing the “right to work” law in Michigan — which looks like it may get passed on Tuesday, in a fight over unions similar to the one that took place in Wisconsin nearly two years ago. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder may or may not sign the bill into law, though Democrats are not convinced he will side with them. While citizens could band together fight the law at the polls in 2014, if the law were to pass, it would go into effect at least until then.
Former Major League Baseball Players’ Association chief Marvin Miller died today, aged 95. A union organizer by nature, Miller became the head of the MLBPA all the way back in 1966, despite never having been involved with baseball as a sport or business before. Over the course of his subsequent 16-year leadership, he won major victories for the players’ union, perhaps none more significant than the abolishment of the reserve clause in 1975. In place for a staggering 94 years, the clause stripped players of autonomy in terms of where they played, forcing them to re-up with the same team that employed them the previous year, or stop playing altogether. Nowadays, thanks in large part to Miller, players get to sign where they please — “free agency,” as it’s called. source
Maybe the gap in trust between management and the union had simply grown too wide. The last CEO, Brian Driscoll, had seen a big salary increase. He was abruptly replaced by [Gregory F.] Rayburn earlier this year, who was the sixth head of the company in the last decade. That kind of turnover is not typically a good environment for labor relations, in which a history of past successes between leaders and unions can be drawn upon for future goodwill.
Or more likely, the union workers kept at the strike because the last time the company had threatened liquidation, it didn’t follow through. During its last stint in Chapter 11, the company said “a vote against its last, best, final offer by either of its two largest unions would prompt an immediate liquidation,” the Journal reports. “But when the bakers union gave Hostess just that trigger, Hostess instead decided to take its case back to the court.” When leaders do that, it’s harder for the people who work for them to take the threats seriously the next time around.
This Fortune story offers some more details on how it went down.
After two days of marathon negotiations — and mounting frustration throughout the league — the NFL and the officials’ union announced at midnight Thursday that a tentative eight-year agreement had been reached to end a lockout that began in June.
The deal came on the heels of Seattle’s chaotic last-second win over Green Bay on Monday night in which the replacement officials struggled. Commissioner Roger Goodell, who was at the bargaining table Tuesday and Wednesday, said the regular officials would work the Browns-Ravens game at Baltimore on Thursday night.
“We are glad to be getting back on the field for this week’s games,” NFL Referees Association president Scott Green said.
What took them so long?
I believe that we simply can’t have a setting where the teachers’ unions are able to contribute tens of millions of dollars to the campaigns of politicians and then those politicians, when elected, stand across from them at the bargaining table, supposedly to represent the interest of the kids.Mitt Romney • Calling for a ban on political contributions by public teachers’ unions, which he further denounced as an “extraordinary conflict of interest.” If implemented this would, of course, come at nearly the full detriment of the Democratic Party, a fact Romney acknowledged only jokingly: “I don’t mean to be terribly partisan, but I kind of am. In the case of the Democratic Party, the largest contributors to the Democratic Party are the teachers unions.” source
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I am so thrilled that people are going back. Everyone is looking forward to seeing their kids tomorrow.Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teacher’s Union • Announcing the end of the strike which captured national attention for the past week, and which will mark the return of some 350,000 Chicago-area students to their regular public school schedules. The vote to end the strike was held following agreement on a new three-year contract. Central to the standoff were arguments over teacher evaluations and firings — Mayor Rahm Emanuel sided with advocates for merit-based (tethered to test scores) evaluations of educators, but in the end had to drastically weaken those plans to come to terms with the union. The CTU isn’t exactly giddy abut the deal, either, with Lewis calling it “…not a good deal… but the deal we got.” In other words, everybody sounds to be feeling, at best, mildly unhappy with the bargain, if relieved at the resolution. source
This is the man behind the “Rahm Emanuel likes Nickelback” sign at the Chicago Teachers’ Union strike. Mike Konkoleski is a tenth grade math teacher.
Expecting a denial from Rahm’s camp about this one, too.
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