Dick Morris has picked up on a theme Education Action Group has been trumpeting for months: public employee union contracts, including school employee contracts, are unsustainable and have several states on the verge of fiscal collapse.
Recently on Fox News, Morris suggested California, Michigan, Illinois, New York, and Connecticut are the top five most likely to default, given the severity of their situation and the unlikelihood of the Feds or bond holders coming to the rescue.
“Education Action Group has been way ahead of the curve on this,” Morris told me. “EAG has been showing the major spending problems, stemming from outrageous contracts, for quite some time.”
Buffalo Public Schools revealed recently that it spent $9 million last year alone on elective surgery for employees. Coverage for such an extravagance, by its very nature taking funds away from the education of children, was due to the collective bargaining agreement.
In Milwaukee, the school district pays nearly $24,000 per employee for health insurance because such lavish benefits are demanded by the union.
In Cincinnati, the collective bargaining agreement stipulates 15 sick days per year, so not only is the school district paying employees when they’re not working, but the district must also cover the cost of a substitute teacher. The result? Cincinnati Public Schools shelled out $7.5 million on sick leave last year.
Public schools have a spending problem and the vast majority is attributed to labor contracts. Aggressive tactics by union negotiators, and the inaction of weak-kneed school board members more worried about getting re-elected and being liked by constituents, are exacerbating the problem.
Morris’ theory is right. In the next few months, we could see unions rioting in the streets, as we’ve recently witnessed in Greece. When states begin talking about bankrupting and shredding union contracts, unions will no one to blame but themselves. But the question remains: will Americans deal with the problem and save our country, or will we capitulate to the aggressive tactics of public employee unions?
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