Since the summer I’ve been thinking a lot about the diminished status of public employees and their unions. This Endgame column, published in mid-November in the December issue of Milwaukee Magazine, is the first piece I wrote on the troubled prospects for organized labor.
The column begins:
Too bad a ball-peen hammer wasn’t handy. If so, leaders of the embattled Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association might have walloped themselves over the head. Instead, they did something even more self-destructive, suing Milwaukee Public Schools for Viagra coverage of its members.
Union president Mike Langyel gamely defends the suit, saying Viagra is used to treat a bona fide medical problem. But even liberal supporters winced at the timing.
Here was a financially strapped school system struggling with an anticipated layoff of almost 500 teachers, and the clueless union was demanding insurance coverage of a sexual aid that could cost taxpayers more than $700,000 a year.
To read more, go here.
Stories by Marc Eisen 