Union may file a greivance against an Eagle Scout for taking their jobs* WITH AUDIO

[Lisa loves Pooh]

[/COLOR]
I'm not a member of a union but I can tell you what life is like now without unions around: poverty pay, no benefits, and more and more companies are opting out of paying sick time or vacation time. These are 40 hours week jobs in professional environments where you only get paid for the time you work.
Not to make this an anti-union bash, but from your comment you think that people should be paid for time that they do not work?!?

People often forget that benefits are just that..benefits. They are in place to attract workers. Sadly, in a market with high unemployment, they can afford to trim benefits to monitor their costs. It stinks---but benefts are not a right for workers.

While I prefer to work for companies that offer such benefits, it doesn't make the company evil if they opt to not offer them. I can choose not to work there and then be at the mercy of the market and hope that something better comes along.

 

[It'sWDW4me]

Quoted directly from the BSA's "Eagle Project Workbook" (full workbook can be found at http://www.minsitrails.com/BoyScouts/Youth/Eagle.aspx). The boldface is my doing:

Limitations
 Routine labor (a job or service normally rendered) should not be considered.
 Projects involving council property or other BSA activities are not acceptable.
 Projects may not be performed for businesses or an individual.
 Projects may not be of a commercial nature.
 Projects may not be a fund-raiser. Fund-raising is permitted only for securing materials needed to carry out the project.
 Donors to projects must be made aware of what entity is benefiting from the project, and that it clearly is not the Boy Scouts of America.
 Any funds raised for a project and not used for the purchase of project materials must be returned to the donors.
 No minimum number of hours is required.
 The project is an individual matter; therefore, two Eagle Scout candidates may not receive credit for working on the same project.

There is no possible conflict of interest here. The scout did absolutely nothing that anyone from the union would have been paid to do. Now, if any of the union members would have spent 250 hours to conceive, plan, coordinate volunteers (the scout's leadership abilities are also being tested -he is not allowed to complete the project by himself), and procur material donations WITHOUT BEING PAID FOR ANY OF IT.... well, then they may have an issue.

Any members of this union who would do all of this of their own volition, please come forward. Anyone? Anyone at all?

 

[shrubber]

Selective editing by the OP...I guess OP was conducting an experiment to see how many disers read the linked article (not too many of us!)

I posted the link and the first three lines of the story, that's selective editing?

loon

 

[CowboyCO]

Like you, I also read the article instead of taking the post at face value and jumping all over whomever the OP thinks the bad guy is.

And if the article is from an obviously swayed website, I Google to get the real story.

I cannot lambaste the union here. They're not going after the Eagle Scout, they're following their own procedure in filing a grievance with the city because the city laid them off and allowed volunteers to do what they used to get paid to do.

I'm not a member of a union but I can tell you what life is like now without unions around: poverty pay, no benefits, and more and more companies are opting out of paying sick time or vacation time. These are 40 hours week jobs in professional environments where you only get paid for the time you work.

I'm hearing more from friends and relatives about how employers are quoting Michigan law by stating to their employees that they don't even have to give their employees breaks; that the employee should feel grateful that they get a 15 minute break in the morning and afternoon.

Yes, break times are now considered a "perk".

http://www.michigan.gov/dleg/0,1607,7-154-27673_32352-117201--,00.html

That is what unions do for us whether we are a member of a union or not and that's why I'm not going to blast the union for their actions here. People don't realize that when we don't have unions to set the standard of living, employers can (and will) take advantage of their workforce. At least, that's my experience here in Michigan. YMMV.

Please. Poverty? No Benefits? These are GOVERNMENT jobs, not the private sector. Above-average pay and strong benefits accompany government jobs, which is why the average government jobs pays $70K a year and the the average private company job pays around $40K.

The union filed a grievance against a Boy Scout doing a public service project to earn his Eagle rank. Maybe they should go hit up the kid for union membership dues so he can be "allowed" to volunteer hundreds of hours of his time.

The Union is way out of line. The city didn't pay for anything, and didn't hire out the project. It wasn't their project - it was the boy's.

 

[Carly_Roach]

Like you, I also read the article instead of taking the post at face value and jumping all over whomever the OP thinks the bad guy is.

And if the article is from an obviously swayed website, I Google to get the real story.
This is the local paper, not a Glenn Beck website
I never said it was. I read just the article and Googled nothing. I'm sorry that wasn't made clear. My point was that I didn't take the OP's word at face value and read the article for myself before posting.
I cannot lambaste the union here. They're not going after the Eagle Scout, they're following their own procedure in filing a grievance with the city because the city laid them off and allowed volunteers to do what they used to get paid to do.
From the article, "We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails," Balzano told the council." Sounds like the union has an issue with the Scout, no?

No, it doesn't. It sounds like the union is going to do an investigation. Something an intelligent person or body of people would do before making a formal complaint. All they've done now is file a grievance. They may still drop the whole thing.

As I've said before, the union's complaint is with the city. This Boy Scout doing their job sets up a precident that if the union accepts the Boy Scout's work without filing a grievance, they're accepting alternative methods of the city having the work done by others rather than the 39 union members who were laid off.

Quoted directly from the BSA's "Eagle Project Workbook" (full workbook can be found at http://www.minsitrails.com/BoyScouts/Youth/Eagle.aspx). The boldface is my doing:

Limitations
 Routine labor (a job or service normally rendered) should not be considered.
 Projects involving council property or other BSA activities are not acceptable.
 Projects may not be performed for businesses or an individual.
 Projects may not be of a commercial nature.
 Projects may not be a fund-raiser. Fund-raising is permitted only for securing materials needed to carry out the project.
 Donors to projects must be made aware of what entity is benefiting from the project, and that it clearly is not the Boy Scouts of America.
 Any funds raised for a project and not used for the purchase of project materials must be returned to the donors.
 No minimum number of hours is required.
 The project is an individual matter; therefore, two Eagle Scout candidates may not receive credit for working on the same project.

There is no possible conflict of interest here. The scout did absolutely nothing that anyone from the union would have been paid to do. Now, if any of the union members would have spent 250 hours to conceive, plan, coordinate volunteers (the scout's leadership abilities are also being tested -he is not allowed to complete the project by himself), and procur material donations WITHOUT BEING PAID FOR ANY OF IT.... well, then they may have an issue.

Any members of this union who would do all of this of their own volition, please come forward. Anyone? Anyone at all?

I find this totally offensive. You're insinuating that union members don't volunteer unless they're getting paid which is an out and out falsehood. Union members are people and people volunteer - yes, even union members.

In the case under discussion, volunteers are doing the job that union members used to get paid to do. 39 people can no longer feed their families because of layoffs in PA, one of the hardest hit states in this recession. While I'm not saying the Boy Scout was wrong - he's going for his Eagle Scout after all - I'm not going to condemn the union members for fighting for their rights to feed their families.

If the choice is between a boy who wants to make Eagle Scout (not a survival necessity) or 39 men who likely have Boy Scouts of their own and are fighting to keep food on the table to feed those Boy Scouts, I'm going to have to give leeway to the men who have to provide for their families.

 

[sparklynails23]

Whoever from the city, county, or parks department approved the project, should have run it by the union. They were stupid not to. On a different subject, that project seems way too simplistic for an Eagle Scout project. The requirements are becoming more watered-down every year.

 

[CowboyCO]

I posted the link and the first three lines of the story, that's selective editing?

loon

Actually -- AP style dictates that you put the most important elements of the story in the lead paragraph and then less important further down. Since newspaper editors have space restrictions, they cut from the bottom up, without re-writing the piece.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

I find this totally offensive. You're insinuating that union members don't volunteer unless they're getting paid which is an out and out falsehood. Union members are people and people volunteer - yes, even union members.

In the case under discussion, volunteers are doing the job that union members used to get paid to do. 39 people can no longer feed their families because of layoffs in PA, one of the hardest hit states in this recession. While I'm not saying the Boy Scout was wrong - he's going for his Eagle Scout after all - I'm not going to condemn the union members for fighting for their rights to feed their families.

If the choice is between a boy who wants to make Eagle Scout (not a survival necessity) or 39 men who likely have Boy Scouts of their own and are fighting to keep food on the table to feed those Boy Scouts, I'm going to have to give leeway to the men who have to provide for their families.

So are you suggesting that the city already had plans for this project and opted to do layoffs and let the Eagle Scout organize it instead?

I think what people are suggesting is that is not how Eagle Scout Projects work.

As it stands, there are no laws against volunteering that I am aware of.


When I see evidence that the project was a planned project by the city with city funds and they decided to let an Eagle Scout do it instead, then I will might be able to see your side.

 

[CowboyCO]

Whoever from the city, county, or parks department approved the project, should have run it by the union. They were stupid not to. On a different subject, that project seems way too simplistic for an Eagle Scout project. The requirements are becoming more watered-down every year.

Who runs the city? Elected officials or the union? As for the appropriateness of the project, Scouts are required to seek approval for the Eagle project to ensure it meets the high standard to obtain the Eagle rank.

 

[It'sWDW4me]

I find this totally offensive. You're insinuating that union members don't volunteer unless they're getting paid which is an out and out falsehood. Union members are people and people volunteer - yes, even union members.

In the case under discussion, volunteers are doing the job that union members used to get paid to do. 39 people can no longer feed their families because of layoffs in PA, one of the hardest hit states in this recession. While I'm not saying the Boy Scout was wrong - he's going for his Eagle Scout after all - I'm not going to condemn the union members for fighting for their rights to feed their families.

If the choice is between a boy who wants to make Eagle Scout (not a survival necessity) or 39 men who likely have Boy Scouts of their own and are fighting to keep food on the table to feed those Boy Scouts, I'm going to have to give leeway to the men who have to provide for their families.

Obviously you didn't notice the limitations that I had in bold:

Routine labor (a job or service normally rendered) should not be considered.
Projects may not be of a commercial nature.

This was a project that would not have been done routinely by any union member and, considering the current economy, not likely one that the city would have commissioned, either. Nobody would have been paid to do what this boy did so no food was taken out of the mouths of any union worker's family.

 

[CowboyCO]

On a different subject, that project seems way too simplistic for an Eagle Scout project. The requirements are becoming more watered-down every year.

So you think creating a walking and biking path is easy? I've volunteered on many trail reconstruction projects and it is back-breaking, hard manual labor. We will usually have many people (10-20) working on trail projects and it takes hundreds of man-hours to do a project like this.

My nephew built and installed nesting boxes for waterfowl in a local state park and then made and installed informational botanic signs along the trails of the state park to identify flora and fauna along the path for his Eagle project. He spent months designing the project, getting approval, and then doing the actual work.

I think creating a walking and bike path along a nature corridor is exactly what the Eagle projects are all about!

 

[SAHDad]

Whoever from the city, county, or parks department approved the project, should have run it by the union. They were stupid not to. On a different subject, that project seems way too simplistic for an Eagle Scout project. The requirements are becoming more watered-down every year.

He wasn't clearing a completed path, he was apparently blazing a new trail to connect two existing trails. So, he has to plan the route, mark it, clear it, account for drainage, clean up any debris or litter along the route, cart out all of the trees, weeds, etc that were removed in order to clear the way, and so forth. Depending on the topography, it could be a lot of work to clear 1000 feet of new trail.

I loved this quote:

But given the city's decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said "there's to be no volunteers." No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.

Yes, it stinks that people have lost jobs. But hey, I thought there was a big recent push for people to help volunteer in their communities. Apparently, you can only do volunteer work that has been cleared by the appropriate unions.

(I am kind of surprised the SEIU or UFCW has not gone after Food Banks, because, after all, those volunteers are busy handing out food for free, and those are jobs taken away from union people.)

 

[Geoff_M]

Let me kind of sum this up from the information presented in the story as well as my personal knowledge of how such projects come about and are executed:

1) It is technically correct that the union isn't considering filing a grievance against the Scout... they're thinking about filing one against the city. However, the union official made the statement that they're "looking into" the Scout for one reason or another. It's pretty clear that they're upset that the Scout cleared the trail.

2) The project was the brainchild of the Scout and doesn't appear to have been a plan already on the parks department's drawing board. As such, there's no reason to think that the trail would have been cleared, by paid employees or otherwise, if the Scout hadn't stepped forward and offered to provide the leadership and resources to make his idea a reality.

3) While the beneficiary of an Eagle Scout project isn't prohibited from providing supplies or the budget to carry the project out, it seems pretty likely that the city didn't have extra money laying around in their budget waiting for a kid to come forward with an idea of how to help them spend it. In most Eagle Scout projects, funds and materials used in the project are mostly or fully the responsibility of the Scout to procure. Rarely does a beneficiary come up and say "Hey, we'll give you everything you need!" Local suppliers are usually contacted to see if they will donate supplies or give discounts, and while a project cannot be a "fund-raiser", funds may be raised by the Scout in order to carry out the main project.

4) There's no reason to believe that the project would have been carried out any differently if the city hadn't laid off employees. I'm sure local Scouts also did similar projects for the city prior to their current budget shortfalls and I'm sure that they'll continue after the financial crisis passes. It's unlikely that this project was accepted by the city as a means to get around having to employ workers to do improvement projects on the city's drawing board.

The bottom line is that there's zero evidence, either in the article or likely to surface after it, that the execution of this project took food out of the mouths of the former city employee's families. The employment status of the workers would have been totally unaffected by the existence of this project.

 

[Geoff_M]

Whoever from the city, county, or parks department approved the project, should have run it by the union. They were stupid not to. On a different subject, that project seems way too simplistic for an Eagle Scout project. The requirements are becoming more watered-down every year.

Sorry, but I've sat on District Eagle Boards off and on over 20 years now and I've given the "thumbs up" to projects of this type many a time. I recall projects that created a walking trail at a church, trail work at our local nature center, etc. You're also missing the entire point of an Eagle Scout project requirement... it isn't designed to require you to complete some significant physical project, it's to allow a Scout to demonstrate leadership toward others in taking an idea and carrying it out. The actual project is only the means, not the end.

This may also bank your noodle, but we once passed a Scout whose project failed miserably. Why? His project was to collect used winter coats, have them dry cleaned, and then give them to a shelter. He planned the whole thing beautify... got a local dry cleaner to donate their services, lined up people to go door to door, etc. The only problem was that about two weeks before his project ANOTHER group came through the same area of town and did the same thing. He ended up with only a handful of coats. But he met the requirements, and passed. In their final Eagle Board of Reviews, we always ask the candidate about what didn't go according to plans, and how did they react to mitigate the problem. Nothing ever goes 100% according to plans, and being able to improvise and think on your feet is a key element of leadership.

 

[Carly_Roach]

So you think creating a walking and biking path is easy? I've volunteered on many trail reconstruction projects and it is back-breaking, hard manual labor. We will usually have many people (10-20) working on trail projects and it takes hundreds of man-hours to do a project like this.

I'm glad you picked up on this. I was going to say something but I had other points to make.

One of the things the UAW Job Bank workers did around here was to create walking, biking and hiking paths on donated park land. It WAS hard work and I see what a beautiful job they did every time I walk in Hawk's Meadows.

Whenever I saw people on this board dunning the laid-off auto workers with the Job Bank last year, I remembered that hard work of clearing and building paths as just one of the projects they did to earn their paychecks while they were laid off.

 

[shrubber]

I'm glad you picked up on this. I was going to say something but I had other points to make.

One of the things the UAW Job Bank workers did around here was to create walking, biking and hiking paths on donated park land. It WAS hard work and I see what a beautiful job they did every time I walk in Hawk's Meadows.

Whenever I saw people on this board dunning the laid-off auto workers with the Job Bank last year, I remembered that hard work of clearing and building paths as just one of the projects they did to earn their paychecks while they were laid off.

I thought the UAW was dropping the Job Bank program under allegations of corruption in Congress, no?

 

[maddmike]

The JOBS Bank has gone away but it was one of the most misunderstood programs in the auto industry. A lot was made out of it by people who didn't know the entire story of the JOBS Bank or those who chose not to tell the whole story. Truth of the matter is most auto manufacturers have a a program similar to the JOBS Bank but call it something different. The non-union automakers don't get beat up for it. I remember an article about a year ago when some laid off workers (protected in a program like the JOBS Bank) from a Toyota or Hyundia plant built some playground equipment in a park. It was the greatest thing in the world and made the National news. The UAW people who have been doing the same thing and more were still considered lazy no good trolls. Go figure. It's all part of someones plan to ruin this country by lowering the pay scale and living conditions of the middle class.

 

[Carly_Roach]

I thought the UAW was dropping the Job Bank program under allegations of corruption in Congress, no?

I don't know anything about that. But it's likely that GM dropped it because they declared bankruptcy and the Job Bank was just one of the things they wanted to get rid of along with pensions, health care and other items that would affect the worker but not the top brass.

Allegating corruption (from a company that sold the hybrid technology to Toyota because GM wanted to build SUV's that made them a $20+K profit on every unit instead of fuel-efficient cars that only made them a $7K profit on each unit) was just a convenient way of making the choice to drop the Job Bank PC.

 

[Disney1fan2002]

I don't see where the grievance is?

It is not like the city wen out and hired the boy to do the job. The city laid of 39 workers because they probably don't have the money to pay them. A boy comes along and volunteers to take care of something that has been neglected for years it seems (possibly due to funding?). If the city paid the kid to do the job, I could see the complaint. The city had no money to keep the worker's on the payroll, and no money was sent out for this job to be done.

 

[shrubber]

precisely,
one kid does the work of dozens of SEIU workers...for free, and the union gets upset.

( good thing his Eagle project wasn't registering voters )