Kneecaps

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Topper
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Kneecaps

Post by Topper »

As soon as the teachers began Phase 1 of their labour action they should have been fired.

Refusal to accept or correspond in writing with their superiors should have lead to their immediate dismissal.

I applaud the government for clawing back wages for the time lost due to the teachers actions. The government has repeatedly put parents and students first in their response to the teachers job actions. While making the hours of work portion of the BCTF's Phase 1 a lockout, government ensured that before, during and after school volunteer work by the teachers would be covered by WorkSafe BC. In response to the rotating strikes and the full scale strike, the Government has gone to the LRB to ask that final exam supervision and marking as well as report cards be deemed an essential service so that students and families can get on with their lives.

The BCTF continues to use children and families as pawns in their quest to increase their salaries while lightening their work load. More money for less work is their mantra.

The BCTF also continues on their protests against provincial exam standards that can be used to assess school district performance and possibly teacher performance. They are looking to guarantee their positions without any performance base.

Last night I heard a teacher expounding on her poor downtrodden state and her hope that the strike vote would spur the government to.....

"return to good old fashioned kneecappings" I interjected.

She thought I was joking.

This dispute is not about class size and composition. That is an issue that is before the courts and expected to be heard in the fall. No Matter what the BC Appeals Court finds, further appeals are likely. A court settlement of the issue is so far off it is not worth writing into a labour contract. Precisely why the Province has established a fund so that special needs issues can be addressed as they occur locally.

What this labour action is about is simply wages. Well compensated teachers who enjoy full year benefits and salary for less than 10 months work still wanting a bigger slice of our tax dollars.

Then there is Jim Iker, the head of the BCTF. In 1996 when the government dropped from 79 to 57 school districts and Jim's Burn's Lake district was combined with Nechako there was no similar contraction of BCTF executive even though the combined Nechacko Burns Lake district made positions redundant. Jim continued to collected a full BCTF executive salary heading his Burns Lake office pocketing his union member dues while representing less than half a district. Nice credible guy he his.

I have no problem with a long protracted labour dispute, the BCTF is already broke and can not afford to pay the folks on the picket lines while the government is saving millions of our tax dollars per day. BCTF support erodes everyday they keep children out of school and have families struggling to find child care alternatives.
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by Strangelove »

I'd be interested in the "thoughts" of Todd 'Special Needs' Bersnoozi on this. :mrgreen:
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by SKYO »

Topper wrote:As soon as the teachers began Phase 1 of their labour action they should have been fired.
lol best first sentence ever!
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by Rumsfeld »

My buddy's 14 year-old has never heard of Nazi Germany but he knows the specs of every Apple product on the market and can quote Duck Dynasty episodes verbatim.

Awesome job teachers.
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by Listercat »

100% Topper!!

Everytime I see an interview with Iker I want to grab the little puke by the throat. He sounds like a prerecorded dummy with his "come to the table and bring funding"
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt "
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by ukcanuck »

Topper wrote:As soon as the teachers began Phase 1 of their labour action they should have been fired.
Yes Topper, it is about money, it's always about money don't you think?

The money that teachers deserve because they are not that well compensated when you consider that they work on average a sixty hour work per week (20 hours a week class time, 20 hours a week preparation time for those classes and 20 hours a week to mark work produced from that class time)

(BTW teachers get paid for ten months a year, not twelve)

But also perhaps more importantly, the money that the government refuses to spend on inclusion in classrooms.

Since the availability of MRI brain mapping, about 20 years now, science has absolutely proved that learning disabilities exist and that a significant cross section of society must cope with learning differences and learning intelligences.

This means that in public schools, which every child has a right to access, classrooms of thirty children or more will have potentially thirty different issues that must be dealt with in order for everyone to learn.

This a huge problem not only for the teachers, but the families and children that you point out are being held hostage.
(Although I would argue are equally being used as pawns by Fassbender and Clark)

Teachers and administrators and parents alike are buried under a mountain of workload trying to deal with each individual student problem that are as varied as the list of the disabilities I've included below. (Taken from Wikipedia and nowhere near comprehensive)

The biggest issue by far though if you actually speak to people who are dealing with this is that control of schools and control of classrooms and therefore diagnosis of learning differences has been systematically removed from education professionals (teachers and their principals) and given over to accountants who are only concerned with the bottom line and holding as low as possible to reflect the will of
(Yet once again) the financial elite.

The people that bankroll political parties and place unqualified puppets like virtually every premier and education minister in the history of modern education in BC.

So yes it's about money,
but even if the teacher ever did get a ten percent raise, that is merely the minor issue for the great unwashed to haggle over and lose the plot with.

It's the money that it will take to provide an equal education for everyone that is the real problem that the government is trying to avoid.



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Skintag Necklace
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by Skintag Necklace »

Nice rant union canuck. Sure why don't we seperate all the kids with a hint of a learning disability and put them into individual classrooms with their own indivdual teachers. Where does all the money come from ? We are taxed up the ass as it is and you want to give these slugs a 10 % raise and have classrooms of 15 kids.

Wake the fuck up.
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by ukcanuck »

Skintag Necklace wrote:Nice rant union canuck. Sure why don't we seperate all the kids with a hint of a learning disability and put them into individual classrooms with their own indivdual teachers. Where does all the money come from ? We are taxed up the ass as it is and you want to give these slugs a 10 % raise and have classrooms of 15 kids.

Wake the fuck up.

Lol why do I get the feeling the only tax you pay is the GST on your pacific blue and player's lights, there chin wag?

Taxed too much to care about a decent education for everyone? Perhaps you aren't grasping the point. Those people who are left out of the system, who turn 18 unable to read or right, unable to land or hold a job become the welfare cases, criminals and drug and alcohol dependant drags on taxpayer's wallets

Every dime spent on education is an investment in producing more future taxpayers...

I get that your life is so fucked up miserable that it's a stretch for you to feel even a slight amount of compassion for anyone else but try to see what enlightened society figured out a long time ago.

A just education equals a just society.
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by isle_nuck »

Topper wrote: What this labour action is about is simply wages. Well compensated teachers who enjoy full year benefits and salary for less than 10 months work still wanting a bigger slice of our tax dollars.
A question for you: How much do you think I make a year?

So that you're not guessing blind or ready to spit out an average you heard from someone, here's a little bit about my education and experience.

I graduated in 2008 from a university in BC with a B.Ed and a minor in Math. I took a year off to travel immediately after I graduated and did odd jobs around the world to support that. In 2009/10 I spent a full year of teaching to the equivalent of a BC curriculum in a foreign country (I wasn't teaching ESL in South Korea or anything like that). I spent two years teaching in a rural area of the province. For the last year I have taught in a small urban center at an alternative school.

I'm not going to debate/argue with you about anything else in your rant. Some of what you said I agree with, some of what you said I disagree with. I just want to know how much you (or anyone else) think I make.

I'll give you a hint: it doesn't start with an 8.
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by Aaronp18 »

isle_nuck wrote: I just want to know how much you (or anyone else) think I make.

I'll give you a hint: it doesn't start with an 8.
The salary breakdowns can be found online.

My guess is somewhere around $50,000 per year.

The BC average is $71,485. Which when I think about the some of the ass clowns I had for teachers is a fucking joke.

You want to be paid that well there needs to be some accountability. Yknow like the rest of the world, you do a good job and you're a good teacher you should be compensated for it. If you aren't why should you be paid that much money?

Just because you've worked longer than the teacher in the classroom next to you should mean you are paid more.

I worked in a union and I cannot stand them. I was asked to work slower because the guy who normally does the job I was asked to do didn't accomplish as much as I did by lunch in the whole day! :roll:
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by BurningBeard »

isle_nuck wrote:
Topper wrote: What this labour action is about is simply wages. Well compensated teachers who enjoy full year benefits and salary for less than 10 months work still wanting a bigger slice of our tax dollars.
A question for you: How much do you think I make a year?
I would guess between 45,000 and 52,000 a year.

A question for you: How much did you think you were going to make? Were you aware that this was the wage you'd end up with, or was it a surprise to you?

You know what pisses me off about the strike? Not the fact that there is a labour dispute and both parties are negotiating over salary. It's the fact that they lie to my face and say the dispute is over class composition and size. They were $40 million apart on salary at one point, do you think they're sitting down and arguing over reducing max class size by a student or two?
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by Skintag Necklace »

Unions do have a place in todays world for sure. They always have and they always will.Anyone who earns a decent wage in the trades sector owes some of their benefits/wages to unions. The key is not letting the unions have too much power and I think in BC the Liberal Govt does a pretty good job of this. When the NDP govern the province however all bets are off. They pander to the unions and give into every single demand instead of negotiating with them.

I believe the teachers should be compensated as well as they are in other parts of the country. There have been reports that they are not but I am not sure who to believe as I ahven't been following this very closely despite ahving children of my own in school. I am not hamstrung by closures next week as they are old enough to care for themselves while the wife and I are at work. And unlike yourself UKcanuck I DO pay taxes in this province and quite a nice fucking chunk of change at that. You can sit over there and throw rocks from your dump of a country. You probably have anawful set of chicklets, halitosis, b.o. and a boorish accent. Some of us actually live here and have to deal with the lousy school system and rotten teachers. You preach your commie bullshit and then insult everyone from Limeyland. Really rich. Probably thinks anyone making 80 K a year should gladly give back 60 % of their wages to the govt.
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by Topper »

BurningBeard wrote:A question for you: How much did you think you were going to make? Were you aware that this was the wage you'd end up with, or was it a surprise to you?
Nailed it BB

I hear teachers whine about pay increases and wanting to treated like professionals.

I'll tell you what. I am a self employed professional. My rate hasn't increased since 2005, my billable hours has dropped to 1/3rd of what it was in 2008. I know my industry is cyclical. This is the 5th downturn of the industry in my career. It will recover.

The BCTF is refusing to acknowledge decreasing school populations and increasing teacher graduation from our universities.

Supply and demand kiddies. The over supply of teachers suppresses their wages and can only bring about the much needed change to a merit based employment and wage scale.
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by isle_nuck »

Aaronp18 wrote: The salary breakdowns can be found online.

My guess is somewhere around $50,000 per year.

The BC average is $71,485. Which when I think about the some of the ass clowns I had for teachers is a fucking joke.
They can be. Which is why I find it hilarious when people think I make $80 000 to start my career. (You may laugh, but it's unfortunately true).

Last year between my teaching jobs and my two other jobs (Summer camp leader and pizza boy) I grossed $41K and took home $36K. I am currently finishing my fourth year of teaching.

And yes, I agree, some of my colleagues are ass clowns. There are many more who aren't though. Unfortunately it's the ass clowns who make the rest of us look bad. Although that is certainly true in all professions.
BurningBeard wrote: A question for you: How much did you think you were going to make? Were you aware that this was the wage you'd end up with, or was it a surprise to you?
To be honest, I had a vague idea but I didn't know the exact numbers. I knew I could have a comfortable lifestyle and maybe if I invested right I could have a couple nice toys too. It really wasn't about the money for me; it truly was to help people. I joke with my girlfriend that I could use the math side of my degree to do something more lucrative, but I know I'd end up in the HR department of whatever company I worked for training people.

However, what I didn't expect was to be delivering pizzas six years after graduating university. As I mentioned above I have a bunch of different experiences behind me and I teach a subject that is hard to find in a teacher. Just now am I starting to make headway into my field. I'm fine with having to pay my dues, but no matter how hard I bust my ass, I'm still standing at the same point in the line behind the guy who leaves at 3pm and will never consider going to a rural district. I may benefit down the road from my experiences, but now when I'm trying to get started and at the closest point to my training, I'm spinning my wheels.
Aaronp18 wrote: You want to be paid that well there needs to be some accountability. Yknow like the rest of the world, you do a good job and you're a good teacher you should be compensated for it. If you aren't why should you be paid that much money?

Just because you've worked longer than the teacher in the classroom next to you should mean you are paid more.
I'm on the fence on this one. In Finland where the education system is apparently one of the best in the world, there is no evaluation. But as we've both said, there are ass clowns in teaching and they need to be either re-trained or booted. My rhetorical question is how do you evaluate them? Everything says that standardized testing is one of the worst ways to evaluate the students, so that would then theoretically be one of the worst ways to evaluate the teachers.

Every three years (once we have full time employment) we are evaluated by the principal of the school. I've yet to go through the process, but from what I've pieced together, they come and see three lessons throughout the year and we have to produce a detailed lesson plan for each of those classes. Afterward there's a review between the two parties and whatever was observed goes into the employee file. I'd guess if the teacher was absolutely horrible there'd be some sort of follow up, but I've yet to hear of one.

If someone can come up with a meaningful evaluation that can provide me with feedback so I can improve, but also hold my feet to the fire if I'm dropping the ball, bring it on. But if they're just going to look at test scores or have a silly little hoop jumping sit in, I'd rather the money go to better use.


Topper wrote: I hear teachers whine about pay increases and wanting to treated like professionals.

I'll tell you what. I am a self employed professional. My rate hasn't increased since 2005, my billable hours has dropped to 1/3rd of what it was in 2008. I know my industry is cyclical. This is the 5th downturn of the industry in my career. It will recover.

The BCTF is refusing to acknowledge decreasing school populations and increasing teacher graduation from our universities.

Supply and demand kiddies. The over supply of teachers suppresses their wages and can only bring about the much needed change to a merit based employment and wage scale.
I have no problem with the points you are making in here. Your opinions are very valid and as I said earlier, I agree with some of your points. But, a few things (and I'll try to keep the whining to a minimum. I have some very whiny colleagues that I often can't stand):

Everyone wants to be treated like professionals; who doesn't? It is never fun getting called greedy by our premier or the media while they try to minimize our profession.

That premier has often stated that she is wanting to create jobs in our province. Here is a great opportunity. Reduce class sizes and bring in more specialist teachers.

People smarter than I can better answer the supply and demand part of your argument. I'm going to try and point out a few things my own ham-fisted way. The government opened up more slots for teachers in universities. We of course filled those spots. Now they're throwing the flooded market back in our faces during negotiations. It stings a little. I don't know what you do, but I'm sure in your profession if your market was flooded, you could bust your hump and stand out. I'm stuck in a queue. Apparently there was supposed to be a bit of a baby bump that would be hitting kindergarten classes in the last couple years, but I don't know if that was the reason they opened more teacher spots or not.

Continuing on this theme, if you stand out in your market, flooded or not, more work will be available to you (theoretically - again, I don't know what you do). You might be able to put in a few longer days, work a couple extra weekends, but you will be able to get to the clients who want to put you to work. You might lose a few clients because of your backlog, but you still come out ahead. I can't do that. And unlike some other unions, I don't even have the option of overtime. (Yes, I can get a second or third job, but I'd rather be practicing my profession)

I realize that the BCTF is asking for what amounts to at least a 10% wage increase. Everyone, not just teachers, would love that. But it's an insane number. I hope it's just a negotiation ploy. A number of teachers I've talked to have said that they would be willing to take the approximately 7% over 6 years the government is offering if the class size limits are restored to what they were in 2002.

And now we get to the crux of the argument. I have no idea why we are striking now. The 2002 class size limits (that we took in lieu of pay increases - at least according to the union) that were stripped illegally are the big thing in the this negotiation. The government isn't budging on that right now, which makes total sense. If they win their appeal they've got us over a barrel and it's done. Game over for Iker and the BCTF. Last I heard the appeal isn't going to be read until November. So, why would the government give us a wage increase and the class composition now?

Furthermore with the Me Too clauses built into all the other public sector contracts any wage demands higher than those percentages is a waste of time and paper.

Anyway, at the end of the day for me, I just want to be back in a classroom. Extra money is always nice, but I just like would to know that I'm going to have a job in September. I want a chance to prove that I'm as good a teacher as I think I am. And I would like to do it before I'm a bitter old ass clown who doesn't want to be there anymore. I don't think that's too much to ask.
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Re: Kneecaps

Post by ukcanuck »

Topper wrote:
BurningBeard wrote:A question for you: How much did you think you were going to make? Were you aware that this was the wage you'd end up with, or was it a surprise to you?
Nailed it BB
Whoops nope, missed it by a country mile.
Did I expect to be able to buy a house, raise a family and put 2.5 kids through university over the course as a career teacher?
Yes
Did I expect that my wages would remain the same for the entirety of my career? NO

Did expect that wages would increase with the cost of living and inflation since it's a public sector job YES.
Topper wrote: I hear teachers whine about pay increases and wanting to be treated like professionals.

I'll tell you what. I am a self employed professional. My rate hasn't increased since 2005, my billable hours has dropped to 1/3rd of what it was in 2008. I know my industry is cyclical. This is the 5th downturn of the industry in my career. It will recover.

The BCTF is refusing to acknowledge decreasing school populations and increasing teacher graduation from our universities.

Supply and demand kiddies. The over supply of teachers suppresses their wages and can only bring about the much needed change to a merit based employment and wage scale.
Yeah and you are refusing to acknowledge that education is not a for-profit business.

It's not at the whim of market forces because like health care, education is a public trust. A requirement for an enlightened society.

Ever hear of the "Keynesian compromise?"

Teachers, Nurses, Doctors and other professions that require university degrees can't sell their services to the highest bidder and still provide those same services for the poor. Therefor the government has a responsibility towards those professionals who are in their employ to provide a reasonable living wage.

No real increases in decades to reflect those in the private sector does not fulfil the government's responsibility.

Wage cuts through no response to inflation and leaving teachers no choice but to collect bargain is not looking after that public trust.

Ripping up negotiated contracts and imposing unilateral ones and ripping those up when not suitable (trampling all over teacher's civil rights in the process) is not looking after the public trust either.

As for the "much needed change to a merit based employment and wage scale," you mention. By what expertise do you base your assertion?
Are you in schools and classrooms on a regular basis? Are you involved in teacher assessments at some level that allows you to claim that there is a much needed reordering of employment and wages?
Or are you making assumptions based on personal experience as a student yourself or are you depending entirely on anecdotal evidence?

If you have an issue with a particular teacher and if there are pedantic teachers out there that need to be replaced, you can go to the BC regulation branch and search their data base for every mistake, misdemeanour and censure by the employer including calling in sick on a "personal" day...

Do they have a data base for dickhead right wing mining professionals, because if they do I know someone who could go on that list...
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