In the end, the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association must have decided that its legal fight to reinstate Viagra coverage in the union’s health insurance plan didn’t fit with Big Labor’s new “We shall overcome” rallying cry.
Try as it might, the MTEA cannot erase this glaring example of union greed that was made possible through the collective bargaining process.
News reports indicate that on March 1, the union, the Milwaukee school board and the state labor commission agreed to dismiss the “Viagra” lawsuit. Just last summer, a MTEA spokesperson defended the lawsuit as an “issue of discrimination, of equal rights for all our members.”
It is interesting to note that the MTEA is willing to shirk its fight against so-called “discrimination” simply because the lawsuit has become a public relations nightmare for the union.
But the “Viagra” lawsuit was always about more than just fictitious “rights” for male union members. As reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last August, “A consultant for the School Board has estimated that reinstating the drug benefit would cost $786,000 per year – the cost to keep perhaps a dozen first-year teachers employed.”
That is big money for the cash-strapped Milwaukee school district.
Gov. Walker and education reformers understand that a typical, collectively-bargained teachers contract is riddled with such silly and wasteful provisions that cost taxpayers millions of dollars annually. Scrapping this lawsuit does nothing to diminish the need for reining in the collective bargaining privileges for public sector workers.
The “Viagra” lawsuit and the equally outrageous WEA Trust racket that Education Action Group reported on last fall serve as stark reminders of what’s at stake for Wisconsin taxpayers.
