Northwest Indiana Discussion

Compensation -- hourly wages plus bonuses, paid time off and overtime -- amount to an average of around $40 per hour. Straight pay -- no bonus, no overtime -- tops out around $30 per hour for long-time UAW members and around $20 for UAW members hired since 2008. Newly hired auto workers start at $14 as of 2008; before that, new hires started with hourly pay of about twice that.

North Carolina teacher who berated
student over Obama
criticism to keep job
Fox News

The North Carolina high school teacher whose rant against a student who questioned President Obama went viral will keep her job.

The Salisbury Post reports that Tanya Dixon-Neely was suspended without pay, but that she will return to school next year. As a condition of her return, she reportedly will be required to start what was described as a "monitored growth plan."

Superintendent Judy Grissom said in a statement that the teacher fell short of the school system's standards, but expressed a desire to move on from the incident.

"While I remain deeply concerned about the performance documented in the recording of Ms. Dixon-Neely's classroom, I have concluded that she should have a chance to improve her teaching skills," Grissom reportedly said.

In the original video, which went viral last month, student Hunter Rogers elicited a heated response from the teacher when he criticized Obama. The argument started when the classroom began discussing news reports that Mitt Romney bullied a fellow student when he was in high school. At the time, The Washington Post had recently published a lengthy article alleging that Romney, as a teenager, had cut off another student's hair.

"Didn't Obama bully somebody though?" Rogers asked when the report was brought up, referring to an incident Obama described in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father."

The teacher, in the video, said she didn't know whether Obama bullied anyone -- but the argument quickly escalated, as the teacher yelled at the student, telling him "there is no comparison."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06 ... z1yMsSeWBG

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama made history in his 2008 election victory as the first black U.S. president, but he risks achieving another, less welcome, first if he wins again in November.

Obama is on course to become the candidate with the lowest support from white male working class voters to win a U.S. election if he triumphs over Republican Mitt Romney on November 6.

Polls show support for Obama from white males without college degrees at under 30 percent, well below the 39 percent he had when he defeated Republican John McCain four years ago. While he has overwhelming support from Hispanics and blacks and does well among women, the Democratic president needs to shore up his backing among those men.

Richard Trumka, the most powerful U.S. union leader and an important bridge between the White House and blue-collar America, sees two solutions to Obama's problems: mount labor's largest voter outreach effort ever, and keep up the attacks on Romney's business record.

A quarter of AFL-CIO members did not vote for Obama in 2008.

"Some of this I think was pure racism," said Trumka. "Some of them would be gun owners, some of them would be right-wing. Some of them would be ... died-in-the-wool Republicans."

Democrats acknowledge that Obama is unlikely to capture the white male vote, but say he can be re-elected if he minimizes the damage because of his huge edge with black and Hispanic voters.

Advocating for the working man doesn’t pay too poorly, it seems. Here’s a list of the annual salaries and benefits earned by the nation’s top labor officials, according to the Labor Department. This data is based on 2011 filings:

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka – $293,750.

National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel – $460,060

Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry – $290,334.

American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees President Gerald McEntee – $512,489.

International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James P. Hoffa , Jr. – $372,489.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten – $493,859.

International Association of Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger – $323,811.

Today in labor history, September 3, 2012: Today is Labor Day. In 1894, after sending in the Army and U.S. Marshals to break the Pullman strike, President Grover Cleveland’s popularity was in the toilet. In the immediate wake of the strike, legislation designating a federal Labor Day holiday was rushed unanimously through Congress and arrived on Cleveland’s desk for his signature.