One of my friends posted a message about the ongoing Chicago teachers' strike. Just HOW underpaid are our teachers, or are they?
I did a simple search for the median salary in the United States of America, and compared it to the median salary for public school teachers in the United States of America. The median salary for a public school teacher is $50,663. The median salary in the United States of America is $26,364. Hmmmm.... let's do some quick math, here. A teacher works 9 months out of the year. Many can, and do, work jobs besides their teaching, increasing their income. If they don't do other work, they get a three month vacation every single year. During their working time, I'll assume that the quantity of days off, half-days, sick time, etcetera, is equal to their non-teaching counterparts (I personally resent the fact that teachers are given personal planning or training days. When I was in the business world, training for career advancement was done on my own time, not my employers' time. That's why I went to school at night and weekends to get my degree and certifications.) Let's also assume that their benefit package is equivalent to their non-teaching counterparts. These two assumptions are strictly for the sake of mathematics.
So... teachers get $50,663 for nine months worth of work. If we assume that they can only get a minimum wage job for the other three months of work, that amounts to close to $55,000 per year... plus benefits! I can't get worked up about a "poor, underpaid" teacher who can't be fired due to ridiculous rules such as tenure. Why do we canonize teachers? I truly believe that there are excellent teachers, but I don't believe that they are any better or worse than any other profession.
I can comprehend how when we had a completely unskilled labor force, unscrupulous people took advantage of immigrants and placed them in horrible situations. However, today's world is MUCH different than the days of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. It's time to repeal the National Labor Relations Act and the Taft-Hartley Act. There should be NO required membership in a Union. Unions are a wonderful way for employees to pool their resources for a beneficial health insurance plan or a pension plan. However, unions should be paid for by their members, not by employers. Work rules should be established by employers, not unions. If an employee is incompetent, it should be an employer's right to fire that employee. If it turns out that the firing was "wrongful termination," then that's for a court to decide, not a labor union, (which through strikes and other, shall we say, less eloquent methods, can and do intimidate employers).
An employer will get whatever value he is willing to pay, and an employee will get whatever compensation he is willing to accept. If a business owner wants to pay $10 per hour, he will get an employee worth $10 per hour. If he wants to pay $100 per hour, he will get an employee worth $100 per hour. Unfortunately, when unions can victimize a community, as the people and students of the City of Chicago are being victimized now, unions show themselves to be the very greedy, selfish, hoarders for which they attack others. Yet, their hypocrisy isn't called. It's called a "work action." Actually, it's a "non-work" action, and the City of Chicago should be able to fire those people who don't report to work, and permanently replace them with people who will report to work. Notice I didn't word that as "do the job," because public schools in this nation are NOT doing their jobs. However, I don't completely lay the blame for that upon the teachers. The failure in performance is due to the entire psyche of public schools. That's why I am so in favor of school vouchers to enable competition between schools be they public, private, or parochial.
For myself, I'm voting YES on amendment 8 in Florida, for that exact reason. Maybe, by giving parents a realistic choice, we will be taking the first step to free ourselves from the horrible bonds of unionism in public education.
No comments:
Post a Comment