Vodkapundit - The Ten Million Dollar Man?

The Ten Million Dollar Man?

Posted by Stephen Green · 27 February 2005

We'll get to Ward Churchill in a moment, but a story first.

Twenty years ago, my Grandfather Green had a problem with the Teamsters.

Preston M. Green owned a small steel service plant, Southwest Steel, and one of the shop guys was trouble. He refused to work. He showed up drunk. He started fights. Grandpa had been trying to get rid of the guy for months, if not years. If you've ever seen a steel shear or a pickling plant in action, you understand why you don't want drunks or fights anywhere near them.

Then the guy showed up drunk again one day - with a pistol.

Now, this wasn't Preston's first run-in with a Teamster. He'd been through strikes, he'd been through slowdowns, he'd been through every kind of union trouble you can imagine. Grandpa, however, wasn't anti-union. As he told me years ago, "The way management used to run roughshod over the workers way back when, it was criminal. Unions were necessary."

But this guy... this drunk, gun-waving guy... well, he was too much.

After the gun incident, the shop foreman went to Preston's office and said, "You have to get rid of him."

"I can't," Grandpa replied. "All your goddamn rules have my hands tied. He's your problem."

And that was a fact. The company couldn't fire him, because he was a Teamster. The Teamsters couldn't get rid of him, because, well, he was a Teamster.

That childhood story came to mind reading this:

University of Colorado officials are considering offering Ward Churchill an early retirement package that could end an increasingly uncomfortable standoff with the controversial professor.
Two people familiar with internal CU discussions said the still-undetermined offer is in the idea stage. The discussions come just a week before a three-person panel is scheduled to deliver a report on Churchill's fitness for tenure.

David Lane, Churchill's attorney, said he has not been contacted about a buyout offer.

But, he said, while his primary focus is on protecting Churchill's constitutional right to speak out, he would be willing to listen to a university proposal.

"If they offer $10 million, I would think about it. If they offer him $10, I wouldn't," Lane said.

Things have gotten so bad on campus, that UC can't get rid of a known liar and plagiarist - not without a ten million dollar settlement, that is. Things have gotten so bad in the courts, that a ten million dollar buyout might be cheaper than a court fight. Things have gotten so bad, that a liar and plagiarist holds all the cards; he can keep his stature, pay, and influence, or he can get a seven figure check.

Tenure has become the Teamsters of acadamia. Even when acadamia doesn't want the guy around any longer, they still have no easy way to get rid of him.

Ward Churchill is now a brother-in-arms with the drunk, gun-waving idiot in a steel plant. A major university finds itself in the same position as a hated "robber-baron." Ward might be flattered by the comparison, but I doubt the University of Colorado would be.

But they have no one to blame but themselves.

Comments

If they offer $10 million, I would think about it. If they offer him $10...

and to paraphrase another Churchill, who said as the punchline of a very funny joke " now that weve established what you are, we are now just haggling over the matter of price".

Posted by: Frank Martin at February 27, 2005 11:53 PM

The solution for the drunk gun-waver would have been simple for his fellow Teamsters. A little antifreeze in his hooch and , "Oh, look. He finally drunk himself to death. What a pity."

Posted by: Cybrludite at February 28, 2005 03:49 AM

In the 1990s I wrote and published a short story, "Grisham's World", in which lawyers had completely taken over America by 2004.

Reading about the university's "settlement" with "Chief Forked Tongue" Churchill, I realize the story has come true.

In my story, the lawyer problem was solved by sending all lawyers to Vietnam (fooling them into thinking they could sue the Vietnamese for the "war trauma"). The Vietnamese quickly defeated the invasion and... terminated the lawyers.

Of course this was just satire. In the real world, no one will stop lawyers from taking over America... and then the world!
;-P

-A.R.Yngve
http://aryngve.blogspot.com

Posted by: A.R.Yngve at February 28, 2005 05:00 AM

Since you're a Colorado taxpayer, you'll eventually pay part of the settlement to Ward Churchill.

I'm surprised you're not unhappier about that.

Posted by: Fredrik Nyman at February 28, 2005 06:25 AM

Great post!!

Posted by: nerdwallet at February 28, 2005 06:41 AM

I agree Stephen. I posted some thoughts on the same issue this morning...I'll have to remember to check here before writing about Colorado!

Posted by: Mr. Bingley at February 28, 2005 07:00 AM

One of the steel service centers I used to buy alloy barstock from in Chicago had a delivery driver with a drinking problem. We're talking 40 foot flatbed loaded with 20 foot long round bars here. The guy declined treatment and the union backed him up. Management finally set outside salesman to trailing him and calling the cops when he got back in the truck after drinking his lunch. Once he lost his CDL the union agreed to let him be fired.

Posted by: triticale at February 28, 2005 07:09 AM

Yes and no. Presumably the drunk was qualified to do the work at Grandfather Green's shop--at least when sober. Churchill, on the other hand, was offered tenure despite the fact that he was unqualified for tenure in the first place!
Had he gone through the normal review process, he wouldn't have had a snowball's chance of getting tenure.
CU and Churchill deserve one another.

Posted by: Rachel at February 28, 2005 07:10 AM

Another union story in the same vein. Remember the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill in Alaska. That captain was a drunk but because of union rules, Exxon couldn't get rid of him, so he slammed his boat into the dock, spilled a gazillion gallons of oil in the water, killed a lot of wildlife and cost Exxon stock holders a bundle to clean up.

There are many stories like these, but the case at CU is not comparable. Ward Churchill could be summarily fired for any number of reasons, but it won't happen because CU is afraid a naive jury will be sweet talked into giving him a ludicrous award for no good legal reason.

Our lives are being governed by union thugs more interested in consolidating their own power than in public safety and craven university officials more interested in CYA than educating students.

C'est la vie

Posted by: erp at February 28, 2005 08:05 AM

We're taking about the University of Colorado here. This is a school that doesn't seem to think strip shows for incoming freshmen or rape is a big deal. What's one dishonest professor?

When a school's administration is rotten, do you really expect them to clean up after the profs?

Posted by: Mike M at February 28, 2005 08:32 AM

I'm still waiting for the end of the story about Grandfather Green!

Posted by: bkw at February 28, 2005 10:28 AM

erp forgets the can't-make-this-stuff-up sequel, which was when Exxon said after the spill that they wouldn't hire anybody with a history of drug or alcohol problems to skipper another barge - you know, exactly the lesson the $5 billion in punitives was supposed to teach them - and the EEOC sued them for disability discrimination for discriminating against people with substance abuse problems.

Another recent fave: Charles Graner, the Abu Ghraib ringleader, he had a nasty history as a stateside prison guard, but the state prison authorities' effort to fire him got overturned by an arbitrator.

Posted by: Crank at February 28, 2005 11:01 AM