Blatantly wrong

In response to Mr. Bennett’s letter of Friday, Oct. 17, 2008, I see that Mr. Bennett is still trying to steal the bargaining rights from the teacher’s union—ACT! Anyone interested in answering the question of who has the right to select/elect a teacher’s representative should get a copy of ACT documents from the Office of the Attorney General and read the part about collective bargaining!

ACT documents state that ”ACT is the exclusive bargaining agent for teachers.” This right is limited to the teachers who are members of ACT to meet independently of PSS or the governor and elect a candidate for representative to the school board. (By approving ACT documents, the CNMI government has already granted ACT the bargaining rights and ACT is a perpetual entity and has no ending date.) Then the governor has the right to recommend or not recommend that candidate to the school board. Next, PSS board has the right to accept or reject that candidate. This method gives each entity a fair chance to be a part of the process because each must approve the selection.

Mr. Bennett has tried to steal this right from all three by forming a little group of teachers with the express purpose of getting himself elected, then resigning from his teacher’s group, and then demanding all kinds of rights from PSS board for Mr. Bennett—not for teachers!

I would like to make two suggestions: Tell Mr. Bennett to swim back to the mainland and then the three entities named above work together and as Larry the Cable Guy sez, “Git er done.”

I came to Saipan thinking that if I didn’t like it I would leave it. Instead of staying two years, I stayed four and a half years and I have been back to visit twice. I always said and wrote that the students were the best that I had ever taught; that is why I stayed so long. Leila and I have five children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. I resigned in 2002 to return home to be with our extended family. If we didn’t have this family to return to, we would have stayed on Saipan or Guam and lived out our lives. When we die we want to be cremated and have our ashes sprinkled off island near the two islands—Saipan and Guam—that we came to love so much. Yes, we live on the mainland but guess where our hearts are!