The fact that once broke school systems in Wisconsin now have money and at least in one, appears to have hired more teachers due to the changes made shows that Walker did the right thing. Last year some time, I posted how one school system was on the verge of going to a different health care system for their teachers over the one the union offered and was previously only available to the teachers, when suddenly, the union found that they could offer it cheaper than they previously could. Imagine that.
MI Report Chronicles Success of Wisconsin Budget Reforms has the How Wisconsin's School Districts are Saving Money as a Result
of 2011's Act 10 Legislation which includes savings on health care as stated in the article:
When tracked against the Wisconsin Association of School Boards' listing of health insurance providers, it appears that many of the districts that are taking action to either change their current insurance or plan were under contract with the same company – WEA Trust. Nine of the 12 identified districts (information for Menasha Joint School District was unavailable at the time of publication) were WEA Trust customers as recently at the 2009-10 school year. WPS, Security, and Medica were the other three providers in the group.
linked article
.Notice that WEA Trust is from the unions in the state. WEAC, the Wisconsin teacher's union is also laying off 40% of staff according to Bargaining changes cast uncertainty on union's future due to feeling the effects of the new rule. Seems to me that the union was bigger than it needed to be and living off the backs of those that they were supposed to be backing.
The Washington Examiner, in the Wisconsin schools buck union to cut health costs has this to say:
That's where Wisconsin's new budget law came in. The law, bitterly opposed by organized labor in the state and across the nation, limits the collective bargaining powers of some public employees. And it just happens that the Hartland-Lakeside teachers' collective bargaining agreement expired on June 30. So now, freed from the expensive WEA Trust deal, the school district has changed insurers.
"It's going to save us about $690,000 in 2011-2012," says Schilling. Insurance costs that had been about $2.5 million a year will now be around $1.8 million. What union leaders said would be a catastrophe will in fact be a boon to teachers and students.
But the effect of weakening collective bargaining goes beyond money. It also has the potential to reshape the adversarial culture that often afflicts public education. In Hartland-Lakeside, there's been no war between union-busting bureaucrats on one side and impassioned teachers on the other; Schilling speaks with great collegiality toward the teachers and says with pride that they've been able to work together on big issues. But there has been a deep division between the school district and top union executives.
In the health insurance talks, for example, Schilling last year began telling teachers about different insurance plans, some of which, like United HealthCare's, required a higher deductible. "We involved them, and they overwhelmingly endorsed the change to United HealthCare," he says. But even with the teachers on board, when school officials presented a change-in-coverage proposal to union officials, it was immediately rejected. The costly WEA Trust deal stayed in place.
linked Washington Examiner Article
Those measures by Walker has been a boon for most school systems. Some are still struggling, but eventually, they will get the hang of it or they will screw themselves over. While I don't pay taxes in Wisconsin, I have plenty of kin who do and why should they have to pay for all of the benefits that teachers receive when they do not get such even through the unions that they may belong to?
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