The Hartland-Lakeside, WI School District collective bargaining contract required it to purchase health insurance from a company called WEA Trust.

“WEA” stands for Wisconsin Education Association, and union officials used collective bargaining agreements to steer profitable business its way.

WEA Trust was charging significantly higher rates than the school district could find on the open market.

That’s where Wisconsin’s new budget law came in. The law, bitterly opposed by organized labor in the state and across the nation, limits the collective bargaining powers of some public employees. And it just happens that the Hartland-Lakeside teachers’ collective bargaining agreement expired on June 30. So now, freed from the expensive WEA Trust deal, the school district has changed insurers.

“It’s going to save us about $690,000 in 2011-2012,” says Schilling. Insurance costs that had been about $2.5 million a year will now be around $1.8 million. What union leaders said would be a catastrophe will in fact be a boon to teachers and students.

Hartland-Lakeside isn’t the only school district that is pulling free from collective bargaining agreements that mandated WEA Trust coverage. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports the Pewaukee School District, not far from Hartland-Lakeside, will save $378,000 by next year by leaving WEA Trust. The Menomonee Falls School District, farther north, will reportedly save $1.3 million. Facing state cutbacks, the districts can’t afford to overpay for union-affiliated coverage.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

Don’t throw your support at Unions just because you THINK you know them. While you are watching for the Koch bogey man, you are missing the real institutionalized evil right under your nose.