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By Boston Herald editorial staff
Friday, September 2, 2005
There is no disputing that corrections officers have a dangerous and mostly thankless job to do.
But when certain union goons resort to bullying their boss because they're dissatisfied with her management, they lose any public sympathy they might earn when they walk through the locked prison doors.
We take Department of Correction Commissioner Kathleen M. Dennehy at her word when she says she has been harassed by some union members who have slashed her tires, made personal threats and followed her around with a giant inflatable rat.
Dennehy is one of those rare public officials who is widely respected on both sides of the aisle and has few detractors - the single exception, perhaps, being the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union.
Talk about thankless jobs - Dennehy has been charged with implementing the recommendations of the Harshbarger commission, formed after the prison murder of defrocked priest John J. Geoghan - whose report MCOFU dubbed ``anti-union.''
From the day she took over, Dennehy met with resistance from the union, which has issued repeated calls for her termination.
Dennehy is soft-spoken but tough. The harassment, she said, comes with the territory when you're trying to bring discipline and order to a department that lacked it.
Union leaders deny they have threatened Dennehy and issued this petulant response: ``She needs to grow up,'' president Steve Kenneway told the Herald.
This from a man whose union members are using a giant toy rat to try and intimidate her. And she needs to grow up?
Friday, September 2, 2005
There is no disputing that corrections officers have a dangerous and mostly thankless job to do.
But when certain union goons resort to bullying their boss because they're dissatisfied with her management, they lose any public sympathy they might earn when they walk through the locked prison doors.
We take Department of Correction Commissioner Kathleen M. Dennehy at her word when she says she has been harassed by some union members who have slashed her tires, made personal threats and followed her around with a giant inflatable rat.
Dennehy is one of those rare public officials who is widely respected on both sides of the aisle and has few detractors - the single exception, perhaps, being the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union.
Talk about thankless jobs - Dennehy has been charged with implementing the recommendations of the Harshbarger commission, formed after the prison murder of defrocked priest John J. Geoghan - whose report MCOFU dubbed ``anti-union.''
From the day she took over, Dennehy met with resistance from the union, which has issued repeated calls for her termination.
Dennehy is soft-spoken but tough. The harassment, she said, comes with the territory when you're trying to bring discipline and order to a department that lacked it.
Union leaders deny they have threatened Dennehy and issued this petulant response: ``She needs to grow up,'' president Steve Kenneway told the Herald.
This from a man whose union members are using a giant toy rat to try and intimidate her. And she needs to grow up?
