As freakshow mentioned, shouldn't you view this as a benefit instead? Say, if teacher makes 50K annually, but only work for 9-10 months, their per-hour wage is effectively higher (20%+ more).

I'm not too familiar with the employment benefits of teachers, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought teachers have a relatively safe career once they're settled in. I work in the private sector (software), and layoffs are common, even for sr. engineers (10+).

^^ I don't necessarily view this as a benefit, and I think it would vary depending on the person. For some, it'll be good because they are free to pursue other things they might want to do, whether it is paid or not. For others (esp those who aren't quite as good in managing their finances), this could be the leanest months precisely during the time when everyone is more prone to spending.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there is any difficulty a teacher faces that ONLY teachers have to deal with.

Teachers can and do take time off during the school year, but I think most of them choose to take their vacations during the standard vacation periods because it's easier. They also aren't the only ones who have to work vacations around a schedule, lots of people working in accounting have a hard time taking time off at certain times of the month, etc.

As you mentioned, this would vary depending on the person, regardless of career choice. However, the fact is, teachers are paid higher per-hour (and arguably higher than many other careers), albeit with less workable hours.

Exactly, I work 9+ hours everyday plus additional whenever I have to hit a closing date it's part of the job I knew that coming in. Same goes for my vacation, I've had to postpone planned vacations because closing dates got pushed up on me and collided with my time off. It's happened to everyone I work with as well. Last year one of my coworkers was in the Shuswaps he had to work on his project during the day for 3 days well his family is at the beach, drive back for 1 day to close it and drive back and finish his vacation with his family. Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining but it's hard for me to feel bad for the Teachers when they use it an excuse as why they're so hard done by. People deal with shit like that all the time, they aren't that special.

Its also damn near impossible to land a TOC job. Especially in the lower mainland. Your wife and your friends must've been teachers for awhile because the scarcity of jobs in the lower mainland has been around for a few years now.

This is going to make Canadian kids DUMB! Japan already made this mistake and they had to fix their education system
They should just learn from Japan this is not going to end well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yutori_education :suspicious:
http://asiasociety.org/education/lea...ucation-reform
http://www.hyogo-u.ac.jp/files/wj_lecture_20050100.pdf

Love the race to the bottom attitude some people have. As a society, we should be supporting better wages, better working conditions, and better services, IMO. Seems some people won't be happy until we all have sweatshop conditions, sweatshop wages, and still have shit for social services.

I don't even know where to begin applauding. Everything with this letter from a grade 7 teach is just so right, but I will just highlight a couple of points that I thought was especially spot on.

Again, I will ask everyone to consider themselves as voters as they read this. If you voted for the BC Liberals in the last election, you are partially responsible for this as well. Please keep that in mind. (For the record, I have voted for BC Liberals in 2005 and 2009, but gave my vote to the NDP instead last year.)

Letter from B.C. teacher to Christy Clark goes viral

Just to fuel the debate furthur, and admitedly I searched a bit for information but I am kind of looking for someone to aware me here, cause I couldn't find much.

I remember hearing a long time ago, how after a teacher retires after 25 years of teaching, they were more or less entitled to their entire salary as a pension.

If this still holds true then, making 60k a year isn't bad considering that after you retire after only 25 years you will still make 60k. There are many people who work for 40 years now and don't end up making their entire salary as a pension after they retire.

Looking at the BCTF stats on their pension fund it looks to be in pretty good health compared to other systems such as CPP and even some private funds.

On top of all this I know a few accountants and others who work in finance and a lot of them claim that teachers are some of the most reckless people with their money. This is of course just hearsay, and obviously is not representative of all teachers, but if you think about it, it kind of makes sense, you have 2 months off during the summer, instead of getting a job during that period I can imagine a lot of teachers just burning through cash on vacations and activities.

Also when I hear about all this "Pre-planning" and late nights marking and all that shit, thats just procrastination by teachers, kids are only in school for 6 hours a day, any real adult works 9+ hours in a day, so wtf. They should have plenty of time to mark crappy assignments and tests.

Not to mention once a teacher has their course plan and stuff built rarely do they alter it much from year to year, maybe a few new point here, or a couple tweaks there, but they more or less use the exact same format for YEARS.

Realistically I don't believe teachers have a very tasking job. Does that mean I think what we pay them is fair? Meh, I have no idea. Havnt looked into it much, but when people start telling me how hard a teachers life is, I just laugh, cause it ain't.

The thing is, thats because an education in anything doesn't GUARANTEE you a full time job in any field. The world is changing, bachelor degrees are a dime a dozen, and if you try and enter a field that has less jobs than qualified candidates, thats your own fault. Someone with an arts institute diploma in culinary arts can't just walk into a restaurant and have a 90k a year exec chef job at a hotel, so why would anyone think that their education degree is any different. The teachers are not immune to a poor canadian economy. I agree it sucks, but if they don't like it, find a new field.

I hope it ends quickly. The kids suffer from this. I was in gr 12 during a 4 week teacher strike in Alberta, and I can assure you it made the last year of my schooling a lot more difficult than it needed to be.

meme405, the pension thing you wrote about is absolutely not true. Currently, even the best paid public pension very roughly works something along the following lines:

retirement pay = (avg salary from the best 5 years) x (years of service, capped at 35 years max) x 2%

Essentially, the most a public pension will pay is 70% of your avg salary from your best (ie. highest paying) 5 years, but if you tap into your pension early (ie. before 65), there are deductions to your pension payout so you won't get 70%. For most people, that means you really have to be doing 35 years' worth of time and hold of on drawing into your pension until you are 65 to get back that much. I have a feeling that the vast majority of public pension earners don't even break the 30 year mark when it comes to pension contribution, and most people will probably want to retire before 65. Also, the years of service calculation depends on the actual amount of time that you worked, not the duration of time you are in the system. Say, if you only teach at 50% workload (probably not atypical for new teachers who are only substituting when they first start?), you only accumulate 1/2 year's worth of service towards your pension calculation.

The exception to the rule, IIRC, are police and firefighters. They earn 3% instead of 2% because of their occupational hazard, but I think their max pension payout is still capped at 70% of their avg salary from their best 5 years.

For teachers, let's say he gets right into the system after ugrad and 1 year's worth of B.Ed. He is 23 when he first starts. Let's say he was working only 50% at first, but is really lucky and finds a full time gig after 2 years. If he works for the next 30 years and retires, he would have accumulated 31 years worth of service, and make 62% of his avg salary from his highest-earning 5 years -- but only if he waits until he is 65. Currently, I think the most a regular teacher earns is somewhere between the low to mid $70k? So roughly speaking, this hypothetical teacher we looked at will be taking ~$45k/yr of pension home after working 30+ years.

So meme405, does that seem like a reasonable amount to you?

First, full disclosure as my wife's sorta in education field (teaching children with autism), so, I might be a bit biased. But I think BC govt should get their shit together.

Education is not a luxury, but one of the most basic thing govt can provide to make our overall society a better place, which is in the interest of every resident. By cutting corners to our future generations' education, we are basically stealing what they deserved.

Our parents provided us the opportunity to be educated and they paid their share to have a better future for the society. I believe it's our responsibility to at least give that much back to our children.

When hard times come, we should cut on luxuries such as park maintenance, money losing but non-vital ferry routes, sponsorship and/or bonuses/subsidies to crown corps. Are residents going to be affected? sure. But that's the way it is. We can reestablish those luxuries once we have more money, but something gotta give.

First of all, your math is a little bit crazy.. BEd@23, FT @ 25, Retire @55? Most people HOPE to retire at 65 and have enough money in the bank. So If he retires at 65, he's at 40 years of service.

So yes, yes it does seem MORE than reasonable. You'll be paid 50K a year TILL YOU DIE for doing nothing. Am I reading that wrong? You know what a software developer gets after they retire? CPP. gl hf.

Conveniently, you have neglected to mention how much software developers get while they are working. I know a lot that are in the $85k+ to sub-$100k range, and I know a few who are up to the $140k range. With such a front-loaded salary stream, the extra money that could be earned from investment and compound interest will easily outpace the steady stream earnings from a pension. If someone didn't do their homework on their own retirement planning, should I feel any sympathy towards their demise when they get old?

FYI, the BC average life expectancy is currently 82 years old.

I'm not saying that being a teacher is financially way better or way worse, but that their pension certainly sounds very 'reasonable'.
And FYI, you can't bring up the financial planning argument if you say that the summer is the 'leanest' time for teachers. They can choose to have their salary over 12 months, OR they can use a little bit of financial planning.

Just curious why so many think it's acceptable to have people working in contrary of the employment standards act with respect to working hours, without proper compensation...

I do it too, but:
A) I am management
B) I make a lot more money than the average teacher
C) I make up for it by taking additional time off for the additional hours worked (My boss expects and ensures I do this). If I really wanted, I could be paid out for the extra time but the time off is more valuable to me.

From what I understand, teachers are not management, nor is there a method for them to be compensated for after hours work.

Rather than commenting that "everyone does it, suck it up", should we not be pushing to bring up the working standards for EVERYONE?

I am fortunate to work for an employer that treats their employees well.

Why shouldn't we be pushing all other employers have to elevate their game to the same level rather than setting an expectation that 9+ hour work days without compensation is "Normal"?

Thanks for the explanation Traum, without looking at your calculations and stuff as that wasn't really my point I understand much more.

I guess it does sound pretty fair.

I guess my problem with all of that has nothing to do with teachers whatsoever, it just has to do with societies romantic notion of retirement. The retirement age of 65 is altogether too low.

In the words of daniel tosh:

"65 was an age that was set when people died at 66, or 66 and a half. The problem today is that people LIVE FOREVER, and the economy can't afford it... You want me to fix the economy? Cause I can, you need to be prepared to work reallly, really hard, and then eventually die".

Unless you are willing to work hard, and sacrifice, why should you be entitled to higher pay?

The teachers currently make a middle of the road salary for what I would consider middle of the road effort.

It's fine to work 8.5 hours a day and get paid 8 hour of that, but don't expect someone to come along and offer you 150k a year for that type of bullshit effort.

Money doesn't grow on trees, nobody is going to pay some lazy fuck 100k a year for menial effort.

maybe you don't know anyone that's a teacher, but the road to becoming a teacher is difficult enough (university degree), then if you want to become a teacher you're on call for x-amount of years getting phone calls at 5am saying "come into work". That's a terrible life but people live it because they want the job. Then after getting a job teaching x-amount of classes their pay isn't even guaranteed because its dependent upon enrollment, and since they have little or no seniority they can be laid off just as quick as they were hired. Ontop of that, there's tons of teachers that are at school at 7am and don't leave until 4 or 5pm everyday -- they don't get paid for that, same thing with the teachers doing extra-curricular activities and volunteering their time so kids can play sports or whatever

Oh, and to max out their pay scale they have to get a masters degree, which isn't cheap either.

I have family who are teachers / are trying to become teachers and even the full-time teachers still maintain a second job at 20-30 hours a week because they know how unstable their job can be. So, I don't think they are putting in a middle of the road effort -- working 2 jobs, commuting between the jobs, being out of the house 16+ hours a day .. doesn't sound like its fun or easy

Back OT:
Christy Clark is screwing teachers pretty damn hard -- before she got her current position as the Premier of BC she was Education Minister and as education minister she used her power to force teachers back to work + prevent collective bargaining ... this whole thing just seems like she's got her own personal motives against teachers and now that's she's premier she has more power against them. Oh yeah, she increased funding to private schools too!

So who died and made you an expert on factors which constitute a teacher's performance?

Do you work in education and have any qualifications to support your statement?

Or do you just think your opinion is valid simply because you're a taxpayer?

One additional thing that I have just thought of:

With the BC avg life expectancy being 82, and the no pension reduction age being 65, the average pension payout amounts to ~17 years. That means 17 years at $45k/yr, for a total of $765k. If we spread this sum back over the 31 years worth of our hypothetical teacher's career, effectively, that means his total pension payout amounts to an annual $24.6k bonus during his regular working years, bringing their max annual salary to roughly $95k to sub-$100k.

To me, paying our longest serving public school teachers this much seem generally reasonable.

Thats why I said "what I consider".

Look I have explained it before, I also have my bachelors degree, on top of that I do many courses a year to maintain my designations as a soon to be PMP, RICS, with CWB and the trades services.

I have struggled just as much as any teacher has to get where I am, the difference is I still work 80 hours a week, and I in turn am paid handsomely for that effort.

Look I am not trying to downplay the benefits of having appropriately paid education workers, nor am I downplaying the work they do. What I am saying is that in my opinion I do not believe they deserve 100k a year.

Please keep telling me how hard it is to get a university degree...
I wouldn't know about that, I just get up at 5am and go to work...

And you think my job would be secure if I wasn't such an asset to the company I work for? Hell even though I am such an asset, if the work dries up i'm on the fucking curb.

Refer to my response above, you think maintaining my trades and professional designations is cheap? On top of that, a masters degree could propel me even further as well, so realistically a moot point.


Before people give me fails understand this: I am not against the teachers here. I'm just saying some people need to re-evaluate their expectations for remuneration. 100k a year for a teacher is simply not going to happen.

So basically your opinion means shit.

Good attitude, I sincerely hope you are not in an education role.