The new Boston Fire Commissioner is facing some tough issues in negotiations with the union: the costs of overtime, mandatory drug testing, and, most notably, bogus disability claims (for example, the firefighter claiming permanent disability while competing as a professional bodybuilder.) (Boston Globe, August 1, 2008) According to the Globe report, bogus disability claims can be quite profitable:
"Firefighters who have gone on disability collect their entire salary, tax free, while they wait for the Retirement Board to decide whether they can ever go back to work...Some [cases] have languished for 18 months or more...The longer the board takes to act on your case, the more money you pocket."
Negotiations with the union have come to a standstill. which has come as a surprise to [the commissioner] who grew up in a union household and assumed that, given that background, the union would be willing partners in reform. Not.
In the Power Lab, there are two systems experiences: the first is a multiple-day society composed of the Elite who own or control all of the society's resources, the Middles who manage the Elite's institutions, and the Immigrants who enter the society with little more than the clothes on their back. Most often, the Immigrants very quickly become a tightly bonded WE, with members avidly supporting and sharing with one another. The second exercise is an organization in which the previously tightly bonded Immigrants now find themselves in different roles; some as the Tops, others as Middles, and others as Customers; and, in a matter of minutes, they are clashing with one another - swearing is not uncommon. What ever happened to all the brotherhood and sisterhood?
So I think the commissioner now gets it: Even if your father was Karl Marx and your uncle Samuel Gompers, so long as you are Top and they are Bottom, you'll always be THEM.
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