Even Vancouver media personality & pundit, David Berner, who generally considers himself a man of the Left, can’t believe the insanity, greed, & selfishness coming out of the mouths of the leaders of the public school teachers in British Columbia.
Even Vancouver media personality & pundit, David Berner, who generally considers himself a man of the Left, can’t believe the insanity, greed, & selfishness coming out of the mouths of the leaders of the public school teachers in British Columbia.
Fire.Them.All.
It is time to kill all these unions. The fat cats at the top of the union make millions and the workers git the shaft.When I see a gov. worker I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. [poor them]
The BCTF is asking for 10 days bereavement leave for teachers on the death of a friend.
So, how many days of bereavement leave should they receive for the loss of a job?
Two words: VOUCHER SYSTEM.
Now, will any politician have the courage to do this? NO.
The teachers have become part of the governing elite,and to expect a government to de-fang them is like asking said government to cut off it’s LEFT arm.
Some of their demands are so out of touch with reality,22% raises,bereavement leave for the death of a “friend”!
Have individual contracts with each teacher rather than a union. Those shiftless, lazy union money-grabbers have helped ruin education.
It’s worse in Ontario.
Dalton McGuinty and the Liberal Party are tools of the teacher’s union.
The record tax increases and the green rip-off are needed to pay their patrons.
But think of the children! It’s all for the children! Who will think of the children? Won’t someone think of the children?
Cause that’s what it’s all about. Right? Phew, thank god. Cause if it wasn’t all for the children then these demands would be outrageous and the teachers would be laughed out of the room and ostracized. Well, thank the lord that’s settled. Now, back to our Casey Anthony coverage!
Ten days bereavement for a friend? I guess municipal gov’ts throughout BC will now have to keep updated records of everybody’s friends? Will teacher’s be required to submit a list of their friends and updated it in some morbid exercise in union due diligence every month or so? Can you take a friend off the list and put them back on? Can your favorite celebrity be considered as a friend.
If I were a teacher in BC, all MY friends would be in their 80’s and 90’s.
True story.
As a former PSAC member (forced) we were allowed 10 days bereavement for the death of a close family member. One of the staff (single female) applied for the 10 days because her pet cat died. It was denied. The union grieved it and ultimately she was granted the 10 day leave. Your tax dollars at work folks!!
Observer –Having worked in both Ontario and B.C., it is worse in B.C. It is a cumulative effect of all the unions in B.C. I would love to see someone do a Ronald Regan on some of these government unions.
The only real way to end this is to de-centeralise Education while getting rid of a fat over fed administration.
Evaluating teachers on an individual bases for a start.
Than getting rid of the Marxists in the Universities that produce these human hogs with the attendant attitudes.
The largest cost showing on my property tax bill is schools. I have heard the old folks talking about the days that when students graduated grade 12 they could actually read, write and do basic math without a calculator and school taxes were very reasonable. They have even mentioned days gone by when teachers had some control over their class and students showed respect for them. There were teachers that enjoyed teaching and social engineering was unheard of. I guess these poor old folks are just suffering a bit of dementia. After all, how could they possibly have gone from enjoying teaching to unlimited stress leave in a few generations ?
Is the teaching profession coming to a point where it will require a full time ‘backup’ teacher just to fill in for the ‘regular’ teacher’s entrenched perks?
Two teachers for every position…each covering for the other’s paid time out?
Methinks this sort of entitlementality could well possibly lead to a mass social uprising by the private sector.
In Wisconsin, where there was a big fight to remove teachers union powers and force teachers to pay MORE of their health care premiums and SOME of their pension premiums, the net result is that they have saved a LOT of money which has enabled the school board to hire more teachers.
One thing that surfaced is that the teachers union set up their own health care insurance plan and forced teachers to have to belong AT VERY INFLATED PRICES. Not so much anymore.
And in Kentucky(or some other southern state,can’t remember which one)) the govt curtailed the powers of the union not so much for the money but in an effort to wrest control of education from the teachers union.
Hopefully we will see some of that here.
Never heard of him and I’ve lived here sixteen years. Of course he’s never heard of me either.
I’ve heard of the teachers though, nasty piece of work there. Commies mostly.
Two sick days a month! I assume they include July and August.
I was wondering when this was going to show up in a discussion. What is missing about the ten days bereavement leave is that they were also asking for two days travel allowance in addition to the ten days. What I’d like to know is, who is the bigger fool, the BCTF in making these demands or the poor long suffering taxpayer that thinks the BCTF is giving their kids an education by hiring the ‘best and the brightest’ as educators? Damn another oxymoronic question.
Two words: VOUCHER SYSTEM.
I like that.(2 thumbs up)
Here is a video that concers greed.
Milton Friedman expressed a sharp observation in the sense “none of us are greedy, it’s the other felow”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
Anyway, what the teachers want is nothing not even a millimeter short of greed.
Pure, unadulterated, a prime example of greed.
Of course it is those that are paying and say they had enough that the teachers call greedy.
The irony of all this is that the BCTF mafiosae fancy themselves to be “professionals”. Professionals my ass. I heard on Mothercorp this morning that they don’t even attach records of reprimands, suspensions or even firings to the credentials of their members.
Bloody teachers haven’t just been at war with the guvmnt, they are at war with parents too. Most of them 20ish, no kids, it seemed like we were constantly at odds.
I says “what is this LE all over the paper?”
Teacher says “it’s a Learning Experience, we don’t mark wrong as wrong.” I thank God, my grandchildren will not be in the public school system!!
dmorris and g:
Vouchers are wildrose policy as is RTW and pay for performance teacher compensation. So in fact a provincial government in Canada could well have the policies you desire in progress within a year.
Many, many years ago, when David had a radio show, the topic was teachers demands. I called him and told him I had heard that 94% of the education budget was wages. I don’t know where I read that number, now, but I believe it was accurate. That is a massive number, for a massive budget. It’s no wonder parents and children have to go door to door selling chocolate bars etc.Shame-full.
dmorris and Revnant Dream, exactly.
It is way past time to put a halter on the public unions of all sorts before they turn Canada into something like Greece.
Voucher system is a great idea.
The County of Shropshire in England is firing all its workers on September 30th and offering to rehire them the next day with an average wage cut of 5.4%. There are reductions in other benefits as well. Let’s see if Christy Clark has the gumption to do something similar with the teachers.
Professionals don’t unionize.
Instead doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants and actuaries belong to professional associations (the college of physicians and surgeons, the bar, and so forth). These organizations exist to ensure a range of recognized standards is maintained or exceeded. If the standards are not met, then the member could be expelled from the professional organization and thus disallowed from working in that profession. These standards include not only quality of work but professional ethics. The professional association thus works indirectly with businesses by providing them some assurance that the members of these professions will produce work of professional quality and abide by other professional standards.
In contrast, a union takes an adversarial role with businesses (and in this case the government). Rather than existing to ensure a minimum standard of work and conduct, a union exists to maximize the dues it receives from its members year-to-year. Two ways of doing this are to get more members and to get them paid more (if the union dues are a percentage of wages, for instance).
Unions have nothing to do with professionalism. It is time to stop calling teachers in unions “professionals”, or at least to start using the scare quotes when referring to teaching as a “profession”.
Government workers should not be allowed to strike.
The reasoning is simple. Theoretically, the reason a job in the federal government exists is to serve some vital national interest; a provincial government job exists to serve a vital interest of the province. Therefore, to fulfill the vital national or provincial interest that job must be performed. To go on strike is to not only not perform the job but to try to prevent others from doing it in one’s stead. This is an attempt to actively thwart the vital national or provincial interest.
If the job is not of vital national (or provincial) interest, then one might question the necessity of the existence of that job, and whether it might better be performed by a subcontractor.
Where to begin?
Where I work, the waiting lists for surgery are bad enough. If the professionals, i.e. the surgeons and anesthesiologists each started calling in sick two days per month the system would collapse. It’s rare that a member of our department calls in sick. It’s a rare month that two members of our entire department call in sick, let alone two days each. If anything we’ve had to be “reminded” during flu outbreaks to really think twice about coming in to work if we’re showing symptoms and we’ve a list with a vulnerable patient on it. Two days per person per month banked up!!?? Banked up for what — the hockey playoffs??
Why should teachers be unionized in the first place? Are there inherently unsafe working conditions in schools that need to be addressed — unguarded machinery, excessive work hours, unsanitary conditions? The only existential threats come from ill-behaved students who should be sorted out through stricter discipline, or at the extreme the criminal justice system. The teachers should be contract workers and as such could negotiate the disciplinary standards expected for them and their students at their hiring. The administration should be able to set some performance standards. It’s time to introduce some accountability throughout the system.
Ed,
Professional Associations also exist to artificially restrict the numbers in a profession, thereby increasing the amount of money each can make. Better than unions but any compulsory membership organization is just wrong. Freedom of Association and all that.
I’m a teacher in Washington state, and yesterday on the radio (Canadian) I heard an ad by the BCTF going on and on about how they were striking for the children. It was disgusting. I am taking a cut in pay next year due to the economy and am not striking, not calling in sick, just going back to school and teaching my kids. I despise these unions, yet they get about $500 a year from me.
The good news is these turds won’t get much because the school budgets are already in shambles in part because of the carbon trading program BC has put in place. These teachers are the exact people who have been preaching the climate change hogwash and now they get to eat their own dog food.
Calvin, since you despise the union but pay it anyway, one can only assume that your membership is a condition of employment. Is this correct? If so, then it’s a lovely little racket your union has going on.
I’m doubtful of a “voucher system”.
That means the gubment taking the money, then giving you chits to spend.
With that will come all the usual regulation.
I don’t think a voucher system would materially improve education despite it superficial appearance of increased freedom.
Education, like banking and money, health care, needs to be de-nationalized. Privatized. Period. That means reducing taxes by the full amount of educational spending and allowing the public to buy the educational service of their choice. Imagine the explosion of creative solutions that would begin springing up on the very day of the announcement.
I look at vouchers in a similar way as the red-herring debate about the best tax system (progressive income, flat income, consumption only, etc) whereas the real issue is the LEVEL of taxation not its methodology.