DENVER—Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s strained ties with the labor community erupted into an all-out feud at the Democratic National Convention today, with D.C.’s main labor organizing group threatening to picket the mayor at future national appearances.

A flier provided to the D.C. delegation at breakfast here today decries Fenty as a “budget-shattering, union-busting, promise-breaking political boss,” calling Hizzoner out for his administration’s bungling of the summer jobs program, for schools opening “in turmoil,” and for routinely snubbing the D.C. Council and, yes, unions.

The campaign seems to be in no small part prompted by anti-union comments made by Fenty at a school reform event here in Denver on Sunday. “The American Federation of Teachers, which I don’t think does anything for the people of the District of Columbia, is weighing in against it,” Fenty said, as reported in the American Prospect. “And the only thing I can think of is that the heads of the union, they want to keep their jobs.”

Fenty, the flier reads, “has become the national poster child for reforming urban schools and streamlining city government. But the image-conscious Fenty is not the reform whiz kid. Far from it.”

Joslyn Williams—head of the Metro Washington Council AFL-CIO, which issued the flier—was here at the breakfast this morning. Fenty was not, and has yet to appear at any official delegation events.

Nathan Saunders, general vice president of the Washington Teachers’ Union, is also here in Denver, and he says the comments Sunday were not the proximate reason for the tussle, but was prompted by his “constant behavior toward public employees.”

“This is not just the WTU,” he says. “This is every public employee union in the District of Columbia.”

Saunders says there will be no picketing of Fenty here in Denver, saying the focus will remain on Barack Obama, but, “He’s going to be unwelcome in every city he goes to this day going forward.”

UPDATE, 11:35 P.M.:: Williams confirms there’s no immediate plans to picket Fenty here in Denver—“what we’re doing is informing folks,” he says.

“The plan is to find out where he’s going to be” while campaigning for Barack Obama across the country, Williams says, and send “truth squads” of picketers to follow him.

The Fenty administration’s moves, Williams says, are “not consistent with what Barack Obama and the Democratic platform has stated.”

At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown says he is surprised by the union tactics. “I’ve never seen an anti-mayor campaign during a Democratic convention,” he says. “And I’ve been to three!”

He continued, “I’m a little concerned that we’re here supporting Democratic ideals and Barack Obama, and we have anti-Fenty literature….I’m disappointed it’s come to this.”

Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. echoed Brown: “It’s unfortunate that to get attention, in some ways, it had to come to this.”

LL is told Fenty will be attending the voting-rights protest at the Denver Mint, scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Eastern. More to come.

UPDATE, 1:40 P.M.: Williams estimates he’ll be distributing some 30,000 fliers here in Denver, at the Pepsi Center and elsewhere—take that figure for what it’s worth. Fenty says of the unions’ move: “I think that’s 100 percent consistent with the 1st Amendment.”

This morning, thousands of D.C. Public Schools teachers gathered at the Washington Convention Center for a second annual “welcome back” event, ahead of the first day of school Monday. The teachers took the opportunity to tell DCPS and Washington Teachers’ Union leaders just how they felt about proposed contract reforms.

The most dramatic moments occurred when WTU President George Parker took the podium to address his members. Parker began by addressing the contract negotiations, acknowledging it has been a tough, protracted process. “When you go from point A to point B, you gotta go through some stuff,” Parker said. “Sometimes that stuff is messy.”

He moved on to decry incomplete or inaccurate media reports (”yesterday, in the Washington City Paper,” he said, “I learned that me and Randi Weingarten are in a fight”), before, in a surprise move, asking teachers to take an informal vote on whether a two-tier contract should be offered to the membership for a ratification vote.

Teachers raised their hands. “I think this poll would be as effective as any other,” Parker said. The poll revealed a definite split, with perhaps a few hundred more hands voting not to bring the new contract for a vote, with some of those teachers shouting in the process.

Given the split, Parker told the crowd he would schedule a general membership meeting for next week, allowing teachers to weigh in on the two-tier contract. “I hope you appreciate the challenge that we have,” he said. “It is practically an impossible task.”

Parker urged teachers to support the final decision, whatever it will be. “We must not split ourselves as a union,” he said.

Meanwhile, schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee was seated next to Parker, not looking happy at all watching thousands of teachers jeer the centerpiece of her school reform package.

Earlier, things had taken on a more celebratory tone, with Rhee running an educational sweepstakes of sorts. Teachers, administrators, and staff at several schools were awarded well over $1 million in bonuses for being among the highest achieving on the yearly DC-CAS tests, funded in part by . Principals earned a $10,000 bonus, assistant principals won $9,000, teachers won $8,000, with instructional support personnel taking home $4,000 and all other employees $2,000. The schools all received lottery-style “big checks.”

After the checks were handed out came another surprise. Earlier, teachers had been asked to sign an attendance card, which was collected by staffers—prompting some grumbling from the rank and file about Big Brotherish tactics. Then Rhee announced that the cards were for a drawing to win…a new car!—a Hyundai donated by Eastern Motors.

The winner, Larry Trower from Taft Elementary, took the stage The Price Is Right—style, as dozens of his colleagues broke into the Eastern Motors theme song.

Yesterday, teachers in the D.C. Public Schools were to report to work for the new school year. Many, however, didn’t know where they were supposed to report.

That’s because, as of yesterday, dozens of teachers had yet to be placed.

According to the current contract, teachers are supposed to be informed whether there will be “excessed”—that is, moved off the roster of their current school—by the end of the school year. The school system is supposed to find them a new placement by July 31.

By July 31 this year, however, an estimated 700 teachers had been excessed and had yet to be placed. As of yesterday, 68 had still not been given placements.

Mafara Hobson, a DCPS spokesperson, says the delays have to do with an unusually large amount of flux in the teaching corps, due to the fact that 23 schools were closed and 27 more were placed into “restructuring” status under No Child Left Behind, which means drastic changes to such schools’ instructional staffs.

Under an agreement with the Washington Teachers’ Union, Hobson says, the deadline was moved back to Aug. 15. But as of that day—last Friday—219 teachers had still yet to be placed, according to DCPS; 530 had been sent placements last Tuesday and Wednesday, just ahead of the new deadline.

WTU President George Parker says there was no such agreement on his part, but that DCPS informed the union in mid-July that there was no way to have all the excessed teachers placed by the July 31 deadline. “We did not agree to a moveback of the deadline,” he says. “DCPS informed us that they would not be able to meet the deadline.”

Parker says that every excessed teacher will be placed in a new job, thanks to an agreement negotiated before the end of the school year. Rather than push back the deadline, he says, “they should have just increased their capacity.”

Earlier this week, the teachers still waiting for placements poured into the human resources department at DCPS headquarters on North Capitol Street trying to get their new assignments, says WTU General Vice President Nathan Saunders. Overflow rooms were set up to handle the activity, and the entire union field staff was on the scene to assist teachers, he says.

“I’ve never seen it this bad,” Saunders says, calling it a “wonton wanton violation of the collective bargaining agreement.”

Furthermore, Saunders says, teachers he’s dealt with were still being excessed well into the summer and as late as this week. “They don’t have their equipment; they don’t know where they’re going, they don’t know where to get their stuff.”

Hobson said this afternoon that HR employees were working with the remaining 68 teachers to find them their guaranteed placements. “It’s a rolling process,” she says.

This morning, about 300 members of the area’s hotel employees union gathered in the halls of the John A. Wilson Building to lobby councilmembers on the long-percolating noise bill.

The bill, which aims to put a decibel ceiling on noncommercial speech, has caught labor ire due to concerns that it would curb union protests. (Not all unions are against the bill; local chapters of the Service Employees International Union support it.) It will be up for final vote on tomorrow’s council meeting agenda.

In the union’s sights were two councilmembers who supported a compromise measure that limited noncommercial speech to 80 decibels or 10 decibels above ambient levels: At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown, who introducted the compromise, and Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander. The union’s preferred solution is through a set of amendments put forth last month by Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans that would, among other things, exempt areas containing hotels according to zoning definitions. Those amendments failed at the bill’s first reading last month, but are likely to be introduced again tomorrow.

Union reps took out ads on local radio stations and protested at at least one political event: Alexander’s State of Ward 7 Speech last week.

They’ve bagged at least one of their quarries: Brown, standing in the halls among the red-shirted union folks, told LL that he planned to vote for Evans’ pro-union amendments at tomorrow’s final vote. Alexander, according to top aide J.R. Meyers, “hasn’t made a decision as of yet.”

Brown said that his original amendment, was meant to address nighttime street noise in the Penn Quarter area and that he didn’t realize at the time that this bill would not help solve those problems. “You gotta understand,” he says, “this was during the budget.”

Brown says he’s “disappointed” with the unions when it comes to their media campaign, which invoked Martin Luther King Jr. in an attempt to sway minds against his and Alexander’s original positions. His change of heart on noise, he says, was due to new facts he’s learned since the initial vote. “It really helped me understand why we have two readings,” he said.

Nathan A. Saunders, general vice president of the Washington Teachers’ Union, today filed suit in federal court against leaders of his union and city administrators, alleging that he was “systematically punished and retaliated against” for speaking out on labor issues.

The lawsuit is the most explosive manifestation to date of a feud that had simmered quietly in the past year. WTU President George Parker (pictured) and Saunders were both elected in 2005 at the top of the first slate to be chosen since the 2002 Barbara Bullock scandal sent the WTU into receivership. With mayoral takeover of the D.C. Public Schools and the selection of Michelle Rhee as chancellor, friction grew between the two labor leaders, as Parker showed a willingness to work with Fenty and Rhee on possible contract reforms. Saunders, during that time, has stuck to a tough line on protecting teachers’ contractual rights.

Named in the lawsuit are Parker, WTU Chief of Staff Clay White, Al Squires and Edward J. McElroy of the American Federation of Teachers (the WTU’s parent organization), four members of the WTU executive board, and three unnamed DCPS employees. The various defendants are charged with offenses including fraud, racketeering, and breach of fiduciary duties. In the complaint, Saunders says he has been exposed to “direct intimidation and retaliation impacting employment benefits, rights and privileges” for speaking out on labor issues, including Rhee’s attempts to reclassify central-office employees as “at-will.”

“They tried to shut me up,” Saunders tells LL.

In his complaint, Saunders alleges that at a December meeting of the WTU executive board, a member attempted to pass a resolution allowing only Parker to speak for the organization; the motion failed, according to the complaint. Despite that, Parker issued a memo on “Media Policy & Guidelines” outlining that the only official WTU position can come through the union’s communications staff. Saunders’ suit also tells of a phone call that he overheard between Parker and Squires where they discuss ways to silence him by tampering with DCPS personnel records.

This isn’t the first time Saunders has sued his own union. Back in 2002, Saunders came to prominence by filing suit against Bullock, the WTU leadership, and the AFT alleging financial mismanagement, which resulted in a settlement.

The backdrop of all this are the ongoing negotiations over a new teachers’ contract; the last contract expired last October. Rhee, in the past, has advocated overhauling the processes by which teachers are reassigned to schools.

Reached by phone, Parker declined to comment. “I’m not aware of the lawsuit,” he said. “I don’t know what the content is so I have no comment”; for similar reasons, DCPS spokesperson Mafara Hobson also declined to comment.

UPDATE, 4:35 P.M.: Another interesting allegation from Saunders’ complaint: That Parker and White “embezzled, stole, or unlawfully and willfully converted WTU money and funds to their own use or the use of others.” There are related charges of fraud and money laundering. Specifically, Saunders alleges a “diversion of WTU funds, though an out of state company, to a family member over a protracted period of time,” as well as an “undecipherable $10,000 finder’s fee” attached to a rental contract.

Photo of Parker by Darrow Montgomery

Happy New Year, working women! Tomorrow, celebrate Equal Pay Day, the date representing how far into the year a woman must work in order to earn as much as a man earned the previous year. Here’s wishing you many more productive 16-month fiscal years in the future.

The National Committee on Pay Equity places the current wage gap at 33% 23%—for every dollar an American man earns, a woman will earn 77 cents. The gap is closing. But unnmarried women advocacy group (and internal punctuation activists) Women’s Voices. Women Vote has some more detailed statistics on the salary gap between unmarried women and married men. According to their data, in 2006, unmarried women earned 56 cents to a married man’s dollar, while married women earned 62 cents to their husbands’ buck.

Also interesting to note is that unmarried men haven’t got shit on married men, either. Those ubiquitous “Marriage Works” ads ain’t lying: In 2006, an unmarried man earned 64 cents to a married man’s dollar.

So what are the unmarried, the female, and particularly, the unmarried female to do? According to an economist friend of mine, just “work in higher paying industries and not have children.” And if you’ve been hesitating to settle on a husband, now might be the time to do it! Alternately, NCPE has some tips for wage and salary negotiations.

Right now, a whole bunch of union leaders are lined up in front of the council dais to smack down on the plan from Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee to make hundreds of employees at D.C. Public Schools headquarters “at will”—i.e., that they can be fired at any time for any reason management sees fit.

Call it the first big roadblock for the Fenty/Rhee juggernaut since the mayoral takover of the school system last spring. Several councilmembers have already expressed skepticism of the administration’s plan.

Most of the labor leaders—which include representatives of the Washington Teachers’ Union, the Metro Washington Council of the AFL/CIO, and locals of the Teamsters and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees—put forth a slippery-slope argument. None of the affected employees are unionized, but the concern among the union honchos is that their members are next.

Josh Williams of the local AFL/CIO council adapted the famous line of Lutheran minister Martin Niemöller about the Holocaust: “They came for the management workers, and we were silent. They came for the nonunion workers, and we were silent. Then they came for the unionized workers and we were on our own.”

A particularly interesting case in the WTU, whose members’ contract expired recently and is soon to begin negotiations with Rhee on a new employment agreement. President George Parker and General VP Nathan A. Saunders both testified against the legislation, citing a meeting Tuesday where more than 200 WTU members voted “overwhelmingly” to oppose the central-office firings. Last month, Saunders sent a letter to union leadership urging them to fight the “at-will” bill.

But there’s plenty of support out there, too: A previous panel at the hearing, composed of parents from Ross Elementary School in Dupont Circle, each strongly endorsed passing the Fenty/Rhee legislation.

Also of note: Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray took a pretty big smack himself at Fenty. Gray noted on the dais that mayoral aides wanted him to attempt passing the bill as emergency legislation at next Tuesday’s council meeting. (Emergency legislation goes into immediate effect after a single council vote.) When he refused, Gray says, mayoral staffers approached other councilmembers, trying to get someone else to introduce an emergency bill. No one bit, apparently.

Doing emergency legislation, he says, “would have been an incredibly disingenuous way of dealing with an issue of serious importance.”