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    Richard CardenasAndy Cush
    6/30/16 11:53am

    Ok, I’m from Texas and consider myself a liberal but maybe my life down here in bizarro-world has me out of touch.

    Is it just really so damn hard to just fire people in other states? It’s just a job! There are other jobs. People sometimes need to be fired. It’s part of life. Just fire them.

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      ThreeOneFiveRichard Cardenas
      6/30/16 11:56am

      Unions.

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      southerngothickRichard Cardenas
      6/30/16 12:21pm

      Yep. My state is right-to-work; sounds great until you know what it means.

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    HypnoCatAndy Cush
    6/30/16 12:17pm

    but instead asked to sit in an empty room for eight hours a day, still receiving full pay and benefits.

    Sounds like the American dream to me.

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      Farewell, My LeBroncubineHypnoCat
      6/30/16 1:29pm

      I once worked for a Very Large Company in a department that was sprung up around trying to sell a new technology product. They had put hundreds of millions into development and marketing of the product which turned out to be an abject failure.

      The company in question announced that they were abandoning the product but were hopeful of selling the IP at the heart of it. They announced layoffs of all of us in that group, to be carried out in 3 states. For whatever reason, I was in the final group. In reality, the day the closing of the business was announced, everything pretty much stopped. So for 6 months I came to work to do nothing.

      To make a long story short, it kind of drove me mad. By the end I was a bit of a crazy person.

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      NicoHypnoCat
      6/30/16 1:57pm

      As someone with a job that requires very little actual work... it's not always as great as it sounds. I sometimes read a book a day for weeks straight before my brain gets so strung out that I actually come here and talk to you weirdoes ;)

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    SoapBoxcarWillieAndy Cush
    6/30/16 1:47pm

    These are the kind of things that give unions a bad name, and why they’re reviled by so many in the private sector. It’s hard to complain about a union that bargains for fair wages and benefits for its workers, and safe working conditions (within reason, and not as a ruse to drastically increase their membership and achieve other political goals). But protecting those bad apples from termination and discipline goes too far, and reveals the more cynical political nature of many public sector unions. If you’re a “good apple” that doesn’t do anything about the “bad apples”, then guess what, you’re a “bad apple” too. There are plenty of people in Rikers who didn’t commit the crime they are in jail for, but were convicted of being an accessory (before or after the fact) and held to be complicit in another’s misdeeds. Why would we hold the guards at that same prison to a much lower standard?

    Remember, Rikers is not a steel plant or an auto plant. It’s not a business at all. When we imprison people (who may or may not be innocent of the crime(s) they were charged with and/or convicted of) we are responsible for their safety. A 6-month prison sentence should not turn into a death sentence, or result in serious bodily injury, whether at the hands of a guard or another inmate that the guards fail to stop.

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      Mangia M.SoapBoxcarWillie
      6/30/16 2:24pm

      Rikers’ policy of taking these allegations of guard violence seriously is a good thing and shows, in this instance, why unions are a good thing, too. Most prisons around the country ignore and coverup guard-on-inmate violence. Pulling a guard out of the prison while he’s being investigated for such violent allegations is eminently reasonable. It’s also saving the taxpayer money in the long run. If that guard killed a prisoner and his family contacted a law office, that costs taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, not to mention innocent life wasted for no reason.

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      superindianslugMangia M.
      7/01/16 1:02am

      They’re kind of taking it seriously. If your investigation into incidents that take place in a place that, I assume, has lots of cameras, takes years to complete, you’re must not be trying to hard. If the discipline is years worth of doing nothing, than you just need to fire them.

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    dothedewAndy Cush
    6/30/16 12:12pm

    Assuming they can watch movies on their phones/tablets, sitting in that room at full pay sure sounds better than guarding violent prisoners.

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      The_Mockingbirddothedew
      6/30/16 12:41pm

      Oh yes, in Rubber Rooms you can read, use a computer, etc, as long as you aren't disrupting anyone— you just have to be there for the hours specified. Some rubber room residents have gotten college and graduate degrees while in them, because of all the free time.

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      dothedewThe_Mockingbird
      6/30/16 12:42pm

      Seems like actually having to guard the prisoners should be the punishment then!

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    Hollow_LogAndy Cush
    6/30/16 11:56am

    “whoa, there’s a rubber room?” -Joyce “Tille” Mitchell

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      Murry ChangHollow_Log
      6/30/16 1:30pm

      +1 Big Dicked Inmate

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    phutnickAndy Cush
    6/30/16 11:54am

    Is this not a DIRECT result of Gawker’s beloved unions?

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      Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mphutnick
      6/30/16 11:59am

      Yup. Same reason they can’t fire Jordan Sargent.

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      rubydog1Just because I'm paranoid doesn't m
      6/30/16 12:16pm

      I assumed that Sargent was kept on because he satisfied some obscure Affirmative Action quota for “people who have never eaten a pineapple.”

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    yousayclamato, joeAndy Cush
    6/30/16 12:26pm

    Rubber room = condom-inium

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      Mangia M.Andy Cush
      6/30/16 2:20pm

      The fact that Rikers uses rubber rooms to take alleged violent officers off-duty while they investigate them *saves* taxpayers money. They are preventing more violence against prisoners, that prisoners can later sue prisons for tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. How a liberal publication is decrying Rikers legitimate attempts to ensure saftey at its prisons is really head scratching.

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        OutsiderAndy Cush
        6/30/16 6:59pm

        “...while they await disciplinary or criminal verdicts for alleged infractions...”

        So...we fire them/lay them off before they’re found guilty of anything?

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          Howard W. Campbell Jr.Andy Cush
          6/30/16 1:17pm

          *sigh* No, you bozos, cops do not deserve the same union protections as everyone else. I know it’s easy for us lefties to take a look at the word “union” and want to reflexively defend everything every union ever does, but you have to look at what these unions actually are, and what they actually do.

          Municipal police departments were started as a way to break up strikers. Police are the hired guns of the system. That’s all they are. They do not require, nor deserve the same solidarity and protection from The System as the rest of us. They ARE The System. Without them, the rich wouldn’t be able to fuck us, because we would just kill our oppressors. They betray their fellow workers every day. They do not deserve solidarity. Do not stand with them, because they do not stand with you.

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