Quick preface: while some of us don’t hesitate to criticize the Providence Journal, I will say they get credit for running this Mark Patinkin column on the front page of the Sunday paper.

Right to organize. Contracts that often permit union business to be done on the taxpayer time. Just last week, a blatantly pro-union, anti-management, grossly erroneous decision by a state agency that will give striking (that’s STRIKING, RIDLT, not locked out) Verizon workers unemployment benefits.

Like this state isn’t already pro-union enough, with all of the corresponding damage that is done to our tax bills and the state’s business climate, our tax dollars are also going to train union bosses??? From Mark Patinkin’s column on the front page of yesterday’s ProJo.

For decades, taxpayers have been giving big bucks to an outfit whose main mission is training union leaders. This year, Rhode Island taxpayers are handing them $191,444. They’ve received more than $600,000 from us since 2012 — and more grants going back 35 years.

It’s called the Institute for Labor Studies and Research, and its grants have come from the state’s Office of Postsecondary Education.

I would echo Representative Patricia Morgan, quoted in the article; no value is given to the state by these ill-spent tax dollars.

By the way, the tax status of this non-profit probably should be reviewed as, by its own admission, it appears to be violating federal tax law.

They even offer classes on how to file a grievance, appeal a denied disability pension and lobby on union issues. That last one’s odd since nonprofits aren’t supposed to be political, but ILSR is so blatant that one of its courses teaches “collecting money for political campaigns.”