More teacher strikes

easyrider said:
The rich...the business who fiddle tax....loads of places.
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Successive Governments have all failed with that. The highly paid accountants find a way round it as soon as new measures are brought in.

Plus you start taxing business and the rich too much they tend to move abroad. Then you have even less money for the teachers.

Don't get me wrong I would like to see everyone get good pay whether they are a teacher, nurse or even toilet cleaner.

But the fact remains that many have been struggling for years with little to no pay increase. All the time the cost of living is rocketing, look at food that has risen like 30%.

That's why people like myself don't support strikes for pay as the problem for teachers is no different to the rest of us.
 
AndyCroft1982 said:
I was referring to this comment :) i made a comment that if private sector workers have not been getting pay rises why should public sector workers. I wasnt crying about it lol
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Private sector workers are expected to get an above-inflation pay rise on average this year.

To follow your logic, if private sector workers are getting above inflation pay rises, why shouldn't public sector workers?
 
Ok let me put a little scenario up for you to think about.... those of you who think teachers should be treated like any other job.


You work on a production line making a product... lets just use a silly example and say a small toy tank made of wood with metal wheels and rubber bands as tank tracks.

You get paid only for a toy tank that meets certain pre- determined criteria.. any tanks not up to this standard counts as a strike against you.

You have been doing the job for a few years and can make a toy tank in you're sleep now and have no strikes against you and everything is great.

Then one morning you go to work and the contents of the parts bins you get the raw materials from seem different... the company has decided to change suppliers and you now get the materials from "Crapola Inc"!!

You use the same trusted and tried method but find that the wood is now splintering, the metal wheels are bending and the rubber bands keep snapping! with extra time and effort you can still make a perfect tank but you have to put more and more time and effort into it. In the past few days you have only made half the number of perfect tanks you usually make!

You complain to management that they are using cheaper materials and its now impossible to achieve the same levels of productivity as before! However you are told that the materials are fine, and that it must be YOU who are no longer working as hard and that you need to improve or face penalties!

The workers from across the road at "Privatized Inc" find out about the lower productivity and insult you on the bus home calling you lazy and a shirker.

You resolve to buckle down and get better at spotting and using inferior materials and slowly over time you do improve.. things go ok for a while.

One day the management start putting less and less wheels in the parts bins but more and more tank tracks... this effects the productivity because at times you run out of wheels. Again you are accused of being lazy when this happens and denied a wage increase due to the lower number of tanks being made.

Eventually you start getting strikes because the tanks do not pass the inspection! but you are convinced they do!..... turns out the criteria have changed but no one told you!

You are now getting stressed to high heaven and on top of that you are now expected to sort all the boxes in the warehouse out after the shift for no extra money and they want to put you on a lower hour contract because of the performance issues.





Yes this is a silly example but the kind of thing i am talking about. Through no fault of their own teachers can find themselves under the hammer due to unruly kids... teachers are not baby sitters and it is not upto them to bring children up to be attentive and well behaved. That is what parents are for... yet teachers get all the insults and are first in line for criticism in the media.

Now in the factory example it is clear where the issues came from but in teaching the lines are very muddied... yes it can be teachers but its far more likely to be the change in children, the new requirments of paperwork and the cuts to budget... but all teachers hear is "no its you being lazy... stop moaning you have it so good..... holidays... low hours... lazy.... moaning.... "

Now dont get me wrong i think bad teachers should be sacked, the problem is how do you determine really bad teachers. I would imagine they gang up and protect each other just as any workers would do on a factory floor... i think the real issue form most of them is sheer work load and the constant changing of goalposts rather than pay and pensions. Of course pensions are an issue but if teachers had less paperwork and more class time i think many would be happy.
 
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AndyCroft1982 said:
Seems to me the only people crying are the teachers going on strike, boohoo i work so hard boohoo i want more money boohoo im going to spend a day on strike because they are making changes to my kushty job. oh and waahaaah lol grow up
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Sounds like a primary school teacher failed your tearaway child.

Sounds like a case of place the blame to me.






See we can all make wild assumptions
 
Tunney said:
Private sector workers are expected to get an above-inflation pay rise on average this year.

To follow your logic, if private sector workers are getting above inflation pay rises, why shouldn't public sector workers?
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Now that I absolutely agree with.

I am however suspicious of the data. The till staff in a supermarket may only get a 1% increase when the management may give themselves a 10-15% increase.

Are these pay rise figures calculated on a mean average or a distorted. There is going to be a lot of bull printed over the next 18 months with a general election looming. The coalition are going to all want us to believe everything is picking up, personally I have not felt it.
 
1. Yes, I know teachers who basically never stop working - marking, lesson planning, setting up the classroom, doing all the paper work, parents day, training days, meetings. Teachers do an incredible amount of hours.

2. Teachers do one of the most important jobs within society in educating our youth, dealing with all the problems of those students and adapting to it - it's not a case of plonking down the textbook and saying "Learn" they have to manage increasingly large diverse classes of students, a group of which will probably be messing about and disrespectful every lesson. Class sizes are The school holidays off are spent working for teachers, it's not much of a holiday if you're catching up with the previous terms work and preparing for the next. And why should they be denied a good pension and job security after all that?
That was historically one of the good things about public sector - a job for life and a good pension. And it made up for the **** wages compared to private sector, attracted talented people.

3. Being active in a union is an important part of regulating the job market and ensuring a fair deal for employees. If employees are getting screwed and no one is going to take any notice otherwise then you're damn right striking is the right thing to do. To not be in a union is to say you don't care about your rights.

In short - you cut pay in real terms, cut pensions, you reduce job security, you increase workloads, you cease to defend against moron parents, over standardise the curriculum and make it almost impossible to provide quality education.

And you expect what? What did you expect? People to roll over and take it. Mark my words this will not be the last of the teachers strikes and who can blame them?
 
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pitchfork said:
1. Yes, I know teachers who basically never stop working - marking, lesson planning, setting up the classroom, doing all the paper work, parents day, training days, meetings. Teachers do an incredible amount of hours.

2. Teachers do one of the most important jobs within society in educating our youth, dealing with all the problems of those students and adapting to it - it's not a case of plonking down the textbook and saying "Learn" they have to manage increasingly large diverse classes of students, a group of which will probably be messing about and disrespectful every lesson. Class sizes are The school holidays off are spent working for teachers, it's not much of a holiday if you're catching up with the previous terms work and preparing for the next. And why should they be denied a good pension and job security after all that?
That was historically one of the good things about public sector - a job for life and a good pension. And it made up for the **** wages compared to private sector, attracted talented people.

3. Being active in a union is an important part of regulating the job market and ensuring a fair deal for employees. If employees are getting screwed and no one is going to take any notice otherwise then you're damn right striking is the right thing to do. To not be in a union is to say you don't care about your rights.

In short - you cut pay in real terms, cut pensions, you reduce job security, you increase workloads, you cease to defend against moron parents, over standardise the curriculum and make it almost impossible to provide quality education.

And you expect what? What did you expect? People to roll over and take it. Mark my words this will not be the last of the teachers strikes and who can blame them?
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SO what exactly are they striking over as no one has actually said. WHat is wrong with the package they have? It is a lot better than most working peoples so should they go on strike as well?
 
Top tip of teachers

If you dont like it, move jobs, like the rest of us.
Teachers have moaned as far as I can remember, but they are still teaching, so it can't be all that bad.
 
AtreuS said:
Yes this is a silly example but the kind of thing i am talking about. Through no fault of their own teachers can find themselves under the hammer due to unruly kids... teachers are not baby sitters and it is not upto them to bring children up to be attentive and well behaved. That is what parents are for... yet teachers get all the insults and are first in line for criticism in the media.
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This is no different to the private sector. One of my current clients needs a very high level of handholding so that the job gets done, doesn't understand the concept of dependancies and expects/demands us to do work beyond the contract scope. Management care, but there isn't really anything that they can do, and we are still expected to get the job done, on time, on budget, with high quality.

Seems to me to be a pretty similar situation as having a class of bad kids.


In your example of the building the toy, what would be the best course of action:
Complain/strike until you get paid more.
Complain, articulate arguments and get the supply changed to something sensible.
Get a better job.
 
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AndyCroft1982 said:
SO what exactly are they striking over as no one has actually said.
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That's the issue...people who are moaning about teachers moaning haven't a clue what they are actually striking about...and yet feel qualified to make points on the matter.


Either understand what the situation is and find out or shut up.
 
Judgeneo said:
In your example of the building the toy, what would be the best course of action:
Complain/strike until you get paid more.
Complain, articulate arguments and get the supply changed to something sensible.
Get a better job.
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best plan is to complain and articulate... they do and get ignored so they strike.

Thanks for agreeing with me and supporting the strikes :D
 
eatcustard said:
Top tip of teachers

If you dont like it, move jobs, like the rest of us.
Teachers have moaned as far as I can remember, but they are still teaching, so it can't be all that bad.
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I don't remember strikes when I was at school in the 80's.

We had 30+ to classes, 1 teacher and no assistants.

The only thing we did have was good discipline. Something that has been eroded away over the last decade.

That I do have sympathy for with teachers.
 
AtreuS said:
best plan is to complain and articulate... they do and get ignored so they strike.

Thanks for agreeing with me and supporting the strikes :D
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:p

I'm not saying the strikes are necessarily a bad thing, but what are the demands? Just that they hate Gove? Their pay is reasonable for their workload (teachers in the family).

I've heard a hell of a lot of complaining that gove is an idiot, his reforms are regressive etc... This satisfies the complain tick box, but I haven't seen any coherrent articulation. Without which, the strikes are ultimately pointless.
 
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