Nor is union representation about representing their members. This on the Milwaukee Teachers Union:

The average pay for a Milwaukee school teacher is $56,000, which is hardly excessive. Benefits are another matter. According to a new study by the MacIver Institute, a state think tank, the cost of health and pension benefits now exceeds $40,000 a year per teacher—bringing total compensation to $100,500.

The current health plan costs taxpayers $26,844 per family, compared to the typical $14,500 cost for a private employer family plan. The plan does not require teachers to pay any premiums toward the cost of the health plan—a situation that is all but extinct in private employment. In the spring, the school board offered a new health plan that would reduce costs to $17,172 per family. The plan would have saved money by requiring co-pays.

…

shifting teachers to the plan offered by the school board could have saved $47.2 million. This would have prevented, according to the report, the lay offs of “approximately 480 teachers”—more than the number that ultimately lost their jobs. But when union officials were presented the option, they chose to allow their members to be dismissed.

Oh, and the point of allowing the firings was that drawing a line in the sand would force DC to step in and provide the funds to prevent the firings. Two questions here: first, what is the federal budgetary impact of every school district playing the same game – which I believe to be a rational strategy? Second, seriously?

Oh, and it gets better. In case you had any delusions that what happens in public schools has anything to do with reading, writing and arithmetic, how about this:

The union’s strategy in recent weeks has been to stage rallies demanding a federal bailout, and it used hundreds of school kids at those rallies as political props.

Perhaps we should add an R to the three Rs. The 4Rs would be: a little reading, a little writing, a little arithmetic and a helluva lot of rent seeking. By the way, my school district is among the highest taxed in the nation – and at least they are in good fiscal health. Where is the justice in taking funds from our people here in Pittsford and redistributing them back to Milwaukee? We didn’t sign up for that.