On the teacher's strike (2)
Taylor Swanson
According to the B.C. Teachers' Federation, the average teacher earns $60,581. The average teacher gets 10-12 weeks vacation. The average teacher spends 30 hours a week in the classroom (plus whatever time they spend outside of school marking). The average teacher gets health, dental, and life insurance. Do I have any sympathy for the average teacher? No.
Teachers enter the workforce at a salary of $35,000 with benefits for less than 10 months of work and, depending on whether they are a category three, four, or five teacher, their pay will continue to raise, with experience, to over $65,000.
The best part of the whole deal is that if you happen to be a category three teacher, the school board will allow you to take time off work and they will pay for your education so that you can come back to work and make more money.
To those teachers who think that this money is not enough, I suggest finding a summer job - perhaps tutoring or teaching summer school - and then comparing your supplemented salary to salaries of others. The average person gets 4-6 weeks vacation and it is absurd to compare wages with people that have to work a month or two more than you.
It is nearly as absurd as teachers suggesting that this strike is not about salaries, but about class sizes. Please tell me that none of you have fallen for this. If Gordon Campbell gave teachers a five per cent increase tomorrow, teachers would be back in school - end of story.
The whole class size issue is really an irrelevant issue that teachers try to use as a facade to cover their greed. I think we can all agree that our mental capacities have not changed much from Grade 12 to 1st-year university. If having 30 kids in a class is not conducive to receiving a proper education, then me and the 300 other kids in my 1st-year science classes are getting screwed out of a lot of money.
And what would the teachers suggest - we split classes of 28 into two classes of 14? Now we need another classroom. How much is it going to cost for a portable, or an addition on the school? We also need another teacher, so tack on another $60,000 salary.
The teachers need to stop breaking the law and go back to work because if they really cared at all about the kids, they would not be depriving them of the time needed to properly finish the curriculum. They also need to stop whining because they make a very good salary for less than 10 months' work.
As a member of a very powerful union (Steelworkers, formerly IWA) I have first-hand knowledge to back up my statement that unions have become way too powerful. They no longer protect competitive wages and fair working environments - they inflate wages and protect the insolence and stupidity of their members.