WEAC's WEA Trust scam at stake in collective bargaining reform
The union uses its bargaining rights to drum up business for its pet insurance company. MUSKEGON, Mich. – Much of the current controversy in Wisconsin involves the impending loss of most collective bargaining privileges for state employees, including public school teachers.
The fact is that the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the largest teachers union in the state, has grossly abused that privilege for decades, resulting in the unnecessary siphoning of millions of dollars from Wisconsin public schools.
Under current Wisconsin law, the identity of the insurance company that provides health coverage to school employees is a matter of collective bargaining in each school district.
In the majority of districts around the state, WEAC negotiators have used that law to pressure local school boards into purchasing coverage from WEA Trust, an insurance company established by and closely associated with the union.
WEA Trust offers very comprehensive health coverage, at a very high cost to schools. Most of the districts with the most expensive health premiums in the state are clients of WEA Trust. Most of the districts with the lowest premiums do business with other insurance carriers.
A few dozen districts have managed to dump WEA Trust insurance over the past few years, despite the protests of teachers and their union. Officials from many of those districts say they managed to save at least six figures their first year with a different carrier, and maintained steady rates in subsequent years, while still offering quality health coverage to employees.
Officials from other districts say they’re also eager to dump WEA Trust coverage, but need their employees’ anonymous claim histories from WEA Trust to share with other bidders. Several say they have never requested that information because they were told WEA Trust would punish them by pulling them out of local insurance pools, resulting in skyrocketing premiums.
Today many Wisconsin school boards consider themselves stuck with expensive WEA Trust health coverage, until state law is altered to take the identify of the insurance carrier off the collective bargaining table. Gov. Scott Walker’s current legislative proposal would do just that, giving school boards the opportunity to freely shop for insurance and save millions of tax dollars for instructional purposes.
In fact, Gov. Walker recently cited WEA Trust as the #1 reason for collective bargaining reform.
Last year Education Action Group published a short, easy-to-read report on this topic, titled “A Crucial Challenge for Wisconsin Schools: Escaping the Shackles of WEA Trust Insurance.” A copy of that report can be accessed by clicking here. The governor’s campaign highlighted the report as evidence of the need for reform.
“The union is saying this fight is about collective bargaining and the rights of its members,” said Kyle Olson, CEO of Education Action Group. “In reality, WEA Trust, under the umbrella of WEAC, stands to lose millions if the reform is passed, as our report points out.
“The union’s money and power stream would be hampered and it owes it to taxpayers and teachers to come clean about that.”
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mlive.com
Education Action Group leader blasted in Huffington Post for "fib" he calls "regrettable"
Published: Friday, March 26, 2010, 9:00 PM Updated: Friday, March 26, 2010, 10:38 PM
Dave Murray | The Grand Rapids Press By Dave Murray | The Grand Rapids Press
The Education Action Group’s Kyle Olson is used to firing sharp criticism at teachers unions, but he was lambasted by a Huffington Post columnist for a “fib” that Olson calls “regrettable.”
The leader of the Muskegon-based activist group also contributes to Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government news Web site, and went to New York to interview sociologist Frances Fox Piven her about her book “Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America.”
Piven and late husband Richard Cloward are famous for their 1966 article in The Nation that proposed organizing the poor to pressure the federal government.
Peter Dreier, whom Olson has criticized for his links to ACORN, wrote on the Huffington Post that Olson lied to Piven in order to get her to consent to the interview.
“Olson manipulated his way into Piven's home hoping to entrap her into saying something outrageous that he could use to further his own career,” Dreier wrote. “Clearly he aspired to be the next James O'Keefe, who became a right-wing celebrity for his anti-ACORN videos, but whose recent arrest in New Orleans for breaking into Sen. Mary Landrieu's office has destroyed his own credibility.”
“Olson has branched out beyond the conservative GOP mainstream. He's joined the lunatic fringe, using his camera and computer to sniff out the left-wing Marxist conspiracy.”
Dreier quotes Piven as saying Olson “interviewed me under false pretenses. If I'd known he was a right-wing operative, I wouldn't have let him into my apartment. I might have talked to him in my office or over the phone.”
OLSON.JPGPress file photoKyle Olson
Olson said Dreier, an Occidental College politics professor, doesn’t have all his facts in order, but was correct about how he approached Piven.
“I told her in an e-mail that I was taking a social justice class,” Olson told me. “I told her a fib. It’s regrettable and it won’t happen again. My integrity is something I value, and this was something regrettable.”
Olson is a frequent contributor to the Big Government site. http://biggovernment.com/author/kolson/ and his interview with Piven appears there in three parts.
But he’s well-known in the Grand Rapids area for his group’s involvement with in local school district politics, attacking the teachers union during recent contract talks and mailing campaign literature accusing several school board candidates of being puppets of the union.
Olson's worked to gain a national profile, editing the ACORN Cracked Web site, taking the Education Action Group's agenda to other states, working on a documentary about public education in the Great Lakes area and appearing as a pundit on talk radio and television programs.
How rich!. “exposing right wing lies”! The New DemoNazi Party and their pseudoliberal demonic fascist collaborating More Equal Animals lie constantly as a matter of policy, tactics, and strategy. Do you think comrade Piven would have let her truth out if she’d known? Would ACORN, Planned Parenthood, or NPR have been truthful if they didn’t think they were talking to fellow Koolaiders? I know the deal. I was an Alinsky DemoNazi until my autogenous transrectal craniectomy. Peace, Love, and Liberty.
I note “exposing right wing lies” comment was not related to the facts of the story.
Of course they neglected to mention the occasions where authors more sympathetic to their views use the same approach to get a story.
Were the facts of the story wrong??
where are the facts to this story? there are no numbers no quotes they constantly use comments like “some say” “many are interested”
and the only link they provide is to a report from the governors office, a governor who was recorded on tape explaining how he wanted to break the union?
and this article has no listed author?
there is nothing in here that can be trusted as fact to use for you to from an opinion.
drawing some conlcusions from this i bet the trust was established so that if all the local unions pooled their members, the rates would be lower so being part of it was an advantage for a long time, and i also bet that unions frequently negotiated lower salary increases (our increases are typically at or below COLA, and well below the increases provided in private industry personally mine are typically half of my friends) so that they could have this “excellent coverage” now this person, and this governor are basically saying i want the teachers to be underpaid, and to have awful healthcare because i don’t want to pay for quality teachers.
and then they probably justify this point with comments like “if they were so smart they would do something else and make more money” “aren’t they doing it for the children anyway” “they only work eight months of the year” etc….
why would anyone want to do this job again?