Pension Concessions Request Puts MPS Union in an Unhappy Place
The Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, the union for Milwaukee Public Schools teachers, had two lines of defense against making concessions as the financial squeeze on MPS tightened.
The first was that, due to langauge in the bill backed by Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators, if the MTEA agreed to any changes in its contract, which goes through June 2013, the entire contract would be wiped out. The second was that the union had already made concessions when it settled in September 2010 and just wasn’t going to make any more.
The first line of defense stands to be erased in the light of changes made by the legislature’s joint finance committee that would allow the MPS contract to be changed without bringing down the roof.
And the Milwaukee School Board, as described ina Journal Sentinel story, put the question squarely to the union last week of whether it is going to stick by the second response. The board asked that the union to agree to have teachers pay 5.8% of their salaries toward their pensions. Although that is technically the way the system works now (with MPS paying a matching amount), MPS and many other school districts have paid both shares of the pension payments for many years.