cur-mud-geon:
anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
I read of the settlement between MATC and the American Federation of Teachers Local 212 in the morning Journal Sentinel. As I reread that article, I began to better understand the “disconnect” between the MATC leadership and the taxpayers that support that institution.
Bobbie Webber, MATC Board Chair, is quoted as saying, “I think it is huge. Clearly it shows we are moving in a direction to address some of the fiduciary issues. We’re in an arena where there’s a shared liability.”
I must agree that it seems this is a very significant settlement, but it still has a long way to go before it gets into the neighborhood of where the taxpayers supporting MATC have been for years.
This is indicative, to me at least, of the systemic issues that continue to exist at MATC. Bloated compensation and bloated benefits budgets appear to begin to explain the tax rate differences between the three systems involved in the current discussions with our village and school officials.
If we look at the private sector, we see that, in virtually every instance, there has long been a sharing of premium costs and not just a co-pay on an office visit and on prescriptions. The “huge” breakthrough now has the union members paying a whopping 4.4% of the total costs. The private sector averages are 20% or better. And, that is for the employees who even have health insurance provided by their employer.
We’re not privy to what those co-pays were compared to what was just approved. We’re told that “nobody on either side got everything they wanted”. That’s expected in a contract re-negotiation. But who started where, compared to who ended where? That would be at least as informative, if not more so.
The old canard (that held that public sector employees deserved better benefits due to the differences in pay rates) lost much of its impact years ago. Especially so, when one looks at the compensation levels inside MATC even today after this “huge” breakthrough.
We need to push the move toward a different technical college taxing district in spite of the fact that our Superintendent is now a member of the MATC board.
