I can see why the government wants to continue to negotiate class size and composition. They’ve lost twice in court and know that they can’t get it done any other way. My question is “why did they pull back on an earlier offer? That is not going to do anything to solve this issue.
I guess the kids get the rest of the year off and maybe a big chunk of next year too.

well, Im done with this. Eff’m all. Ive got one that graduated now and one that will get private school for next year. BCTF can stand out on the curb and rot. Have a nice summer.

“My question is “why did they pull back on an earlier offer?”

My question also.
———————————

You forgot to add the govt interceptor. They are after all at least 50% of the equation.

GO TEACHERS!!!

Teachers asking for 8 over 5 years is certainly within reason. Not sure how much the signing bonus was.

Watch the video and see just how the govt has been negotiating with teachers. Trouble makers they are!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-teachers-strike-latest-offer-blasted-by-union-members-1.2677243?cmp=rss

Intercepter what is the private school class size? Any special needs in that class? Keep us updated.

Signing bonus put forward by BCTF was $5,000.00 – according to CBC website. Only a one time hit of $350 million and then, assuming average teacher’s payroll is 3.5 billion a year – average 58 mill over next 5 years for total cost of 640 mill over 5 years. If current salary is 3.5 billion, 640 mill over 3.5 billion is 18.28% over 3.65% a year.

Nice thing about signing bonuses is a teacher planning on retiring in a year or two, get’s to keep it, whereas if you push more to the % raise it benefits younger teacher’s coming in, and hurts older teachers leaving in the next 5 years.

Funny how BC teachers are paid twice as much as in other advanced socialist countries. The end result? Crowded classrooms.
Sweden spends the same percentage of GPD that we do and they get universal childcare for the same money.
How? Lower wages, happier kids, no unemployed young teachers.
Time for a paradigm shift.

I will keep you updated seamut. I will start researching and see how this plays out. Probably end up back in public school and all for naught – just frustrated knee jerk reaction lol. We shall see.

How are people still mad at teachers and not the government?

The BCTF has dropped their wage demands from 15.9% over 4 years to 8% over 5 years while the government is coming in with an offer lower than their original offer. Who is barganing in bad faith here.

The inflation rate in BC is about 2%, meaning teachers are asking for a wage increase that is LESS THAN INFLATION.

I think our teachers are worth more than this and our kids deserve more than this.

I support the BCTF fully in this. Christy Clark and her lackey Fassbender should be ashamed.

Shuffle: “How are people still mad at teachers and not the government?”

Easily. The teachers demands are ludicrous and will cause a ‘me too’ effect with the other public sector unions after the deal is done.

End result? Billions of dollars extra required to pay the wages, perks, and benefits, BCTF and public sector unions, all downloaded onto the taxpayer.

We’re trying to create our own Greece in BC it seems.

And you know what? I have no problem with paying good teachers a good wage ($100K).

The problem is that there’s no mechanism to hold bad teachers reponsible or assess their performance, and they end up getting the same pay as the good teachers.

Shufflekick – you did notice the $5,000.00 signing bonus they asked for – which is about another 2% a year – assuming average teacher salary of 50K. It’s reported on CBC. They are asking for a wage increase that’s at least 1.6% over inflation. It could be much higher depending on the number of teachers who got the bonus and then retired shortly thereafter. I fully support the teachers too. Hard job, getting worst, just need to know- whose budget I cut to pay for it, whose taxes do I raise, or how much do I borrow – and don’t talk about Christy Clark getting a big raise, the total MLA salary is about twenty million a year, so that’s not going to get us there. It’s bad optics for sure, but it’s not the problem.

Posted by: JohnnyBelt on June 16 2014 1:16 PM

Shuffle: “How are people still mad at teachers and not the government?”

Easily. The teachers demands are ludicrous and will cause a ‘me too’ effect with the other public sector unions after the deal is done.

The Demands are ludicrous??? How is asking for the amount of inflation “ludicrous”. The teachers are asking for the bare minimum and the gov’t is responding by lowering there original offer. Sounds like one party is willing to bargain and one isn’t. The teachers have to stand up for themselves because no one else is going to.

Looks to me that Assburner and Crispy aren’t about to abide by two court rulings and seem bent on pushing the teachers to a full strike. I would be surprised if the majority supported the Fibs on this one. If the teachers get legislated back to work all they have to do is appeal it and carry on as usual. The appeal approach seems to work for the government.

Ah yes, JB. The “me too” clause. “If I give you a potato chip, I will have to give everyone a potato chip”. I remember that commercial.

I don’t understand why the government uses money as the answer to attracting the “best and the brightest” but doesn’t use the same philosophy when it comes to educating our kids. If we are only second to PEI when it comes to funding, how can we get good teachers to come here? If I was looking for a teaching job, I would stay as far away from BC as I could.

The Liberals did not spend much time at the Legislature last year. They have given themselves a 12000.00 cash bonus for “miscellaneous personal costs”. There have been assertions in the press that some of the Liberals receiving these public taxpayer funded monies are buying boats and second homes with extra income. Also, the Liberals have voted themselves a 43% increase in salaries and benefits since 2005. ALSO, the taxpayer is paying ex-MLA’s who were voted out or quit for health reasons FULL MLA salary and benwfits for 18 months after they leave politics. A transition phase of 6 months would be teasonable but I think 18 months is too much. The MLA’s should have their paycheques reduced by at least 59% based on their time spent at the Legislature in the recent past.

Agreed taxpayerteacher, bad optics. But in terms of dollars and cents, MLA salaries make up next to nothing in terms of the Provincial Budget. Education on the other hand…

For the sake of argument, you could reduce MLA salaries by 59% as you suggest and give that money to the teachers. That would amount to about a 0.05% wage increase for the 40,000+ BCTF teachers. Would teachers be satisfied then? My guess is no.

So JB the issue for teachers is that there are so many kids that their needs to be 40,000 teachers to do the job? In some way that is a reason why you can’t pay them….because there are 40,000 of them. Maybe we should stop goofy people from having kids. That’ll settle the teacher issue.

The only question, PGGuy is what services need to be cut or what taxes need to be increased to pay for this deal? The money always has to come from somewhere.

How much of a tax increase are you volunteering for?

And this isn’t about optics. It’s about using an argument to pay yourself with my money and then using a different and lesser argument for paying the workers. They are certainly displaying the need for unions in this dispute. Anyone who thinks the BCTF should be pulled apart needs to have a closer look at the bargaining process in this province.
We are racing to the bottom.

I volunteer for any tax increases that give me or my family something in return. I don’t get any return from fat MLA pensions, big travel for MLA’s to China for photo ops, new big stadiums in Vancouver, Olympic venues 500 miles away etc. If I get a “piece of the action” when it comes to tax dollars, then I will pay them. Paying the people that educate my kids (paying now for my own education back then), hospital improvements, more Doctors in my part of the world all can take my tax money with no complaints. Padding a bunch of fat cat businessmen with more money taking care of BC Government projects that I don’t see, use, hear of or want is a waste of the dollars I already gave them. Maybe it’s time we go out on our own. Can’t wait to see how much of the 7.5 Billion for Lower Mainland transit comes from the wallets of the working folks north of Hope.

Shufflekick, the BCTF is NOT asking for 8% over 5 years!!!

The teachers are asking for a $5,000.00 signing bonus, in addition to their wage increases. They are also asking for a Cost of Living additional salary increase!!

The BCTF also wants the “Shortening” of the teacher salary grid from 10 steps to 8 steps by removing the first two steps on the grid.

This is just the start of what they want!!

Read the summary of the BCTF offer and the BCPSEA offer at this link:

http://www.bcpsea.bc.ca/documents/publications/00-DS-Backgrounder-What's%20Really%20on%20the%20Table-Bargaining%20Proposals%20June%2016%202014.pdf

And yet we have no money for the education system. Fund the system to average Canadian standards and I’ll stop talking. Just make us average. That’s all. We don’t need to be number one(although we used to be). We just need to be in the middle somewhere. Not one up from PEI.

@PGguy1234, if you think that we are racing to the bottom, perhaps you haven’t already considered that many of us are already there!!

Wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all to bring our Public Sector workers down a notch or two so that they can keep the rest of us in the basement company!!

You said that you are in the basement. Who put you there? Public sector unions? I’m not in the basement yet. I blame my education for that. Thanks to my teachers for getting me through school and into a great career. Damn Teachers ;)

PGguy 1234 makes this comment “Maybe we should stop goofy people from having kids.” – and he’s probably closer to the solution than we he realizes.

A woman, can be pregnant, at this moment, can drink all she wants, smoke all she wants, do all the crack, meth, whatever she wants, and there’s nothing we can do to stop her – it was tried, and the Supreme Court of Canada ruled fetuses have no rights until born – a sentiment BCTF shares.

So, this same woman, impregnated by a likely just as thoughtless man, requires us to feed her, requires us to educate her FAS child, and if we don’t like it, tough poop, and she gets paid by the kid, so why would she even stop.

When we say special needs kids – there really are two groups – kids who are special needs because of genetic misfortune, and kids who are special needs because their parents are idiots – misfortune.

Both kids are as equally in need, but one group you’d think we’d be able to do something about.

That said, I will gladly pay more taxes to fund TA’s for special needs kids, which should make the teacher’s job easier, increasing their job satisfaction – but I’m not prepared to pay more taxes to pay more salaries to the one group in society who generally are taken care of from cradle to grave rarely missing a pay cheque, and getting a pension second only to a politician.

PGguy1234, many of us keep trying to get out of the basement, but we have no benefits, no pension, no paid sick days, etc BUT we keep having to pay more and more taxes to pay for the wage and benefit demands of our Public Sector workers!

You did check out “So What’s Really on the Table?” from the link that I provided, didn’t you??

Yes. I also think people need to look at both sides. During these negotiations, both sides will translate the facts into their own spin. I think it’s ridiculous that the BCPSEA is in this negotiation. What the hell are our elected officials doing? I heard the lead negotiator bills the government at $250.00 per hour for his time. At that rate, I wouldn’t need a pension and I certainly wouldn’t be in any great hurry to get a deal done. Why did CC get involved with the truck drivers and the port issues? Why not the same personal touch with the teachers?

Superdave, you state that teachers are asking for the bare minimum!

Seriously, you’re joking, right????

The teachers, through the BCTF, NEVER ask for the minimum!!

Go to the link that I provided! Read it!! Read ALL of it!! Don’t just take a moment to have a cursory glance at only what you think is important!!

The BCTF wage proposal includes a signing bonus and general wage adjustments:

– July 1, 2013: $5,000 signing bonus
– July 1, 2014: 3.5%
– July 1, 2015: 1.5%
– July 1, 2016: 1.5%
– July 1, 2017: 1.5%

The BCTF proposal also includes an additional increase equal to the difference between the actual GDP and the forecasted GDP to take effect on the first pay day after February 1 in the collective agreement year.

The BCTF is also seeking:

– “Shortening” of the teacher salary grid from 10 steps to 8 steps by removing the first two steps on the grid
– Restoration of three salary grid categories removed during the salary harmonization process in 2006
– Increases to all allowances by a set percentage.

The list go freaking on and on and on….

– increased prep time
– increased benefits
– maternity leave top up
– parental leave top up

and so on and so on and so on!!!

UN-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE!!!

Someone has to be at the top and someone has to be at the bottom. That’s how an “average” is formed. One up from the bottom is still “in the middle” ;)

Not surprising that the link Hartguy provided does not have all the details. Consider the source, it comes from BCPSEA. The document only compares things they wish to compare. The worst one (there are many others though) I hope finally shows you the government has no interest in following the law. :

The BCPSEA wants to have the right to terminate the contract if they lose the court cases (AGAIN) in October.

JB, you/re on a roll, keep up the good comments.

I guess you should of stayed in school and become a teacher hey Hart Guy?

Don’t complain about others benefits that they fought for or are fighting for, go fight for some of your own. If being in business for yourself isn’t what you thought it was cracked up to be maybe it’s time to try something else!

As a business owner I’m pretty sure Hart Guy “fights for some of his own” every day. The difference is he doesn’t use kids as pawns and increase burden on the taxpayer to do it.

I’m not sending the kids back if they solve this silly dispute, this year. I can teach the elementary kids more in a week, than a full month at school.

Well, I havent heard about what Hart Guy is saying. If that were true, it is not anywhere near what other professionals make and in view of zero wage increases in the past four years and going to five now…that is modest. One of my kid’s gets RRSP top up every year paid by company along with a cash bonus every year;
; increases of 10% every year; and should the kid have children….each child’s university education is fully paid by the company. The kid has a defined benefit pension also . I would say in comparison….teachers as educated professional with the same financial investment in training are receiving modest salaries.

One of the benefits of having your own business is you only need to work half days. Another benefit is you get to pick which 12 hours you work each day.

TPT: “One of my kid’s gets RRSP top up every year paid by company along with a cash bonus every year; ; increases of 10% every year; and should the kid have children….each child’s university education is fully paid by the company. The kid has a defined benefit pension also”

I’m not sure what this has to do with what the BCTF is negotiating for, other than reeking of entitlement.

Hart Guy states;“…if you think that we are racing to the bottom, perhaps you haven’t already considered that many of us are already there!! Wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all to bring our Public Sector workers down a notch or two so that they can keep the rest of us in the basement company!!”

We get it Hart Guy Misery Loves Company! Can’t get out of the basement, drag everyone else down to your miserable level of existence as well, right?

Hart Guy states; “…many of us keep trying to get out of the basement, but we have no benefits, no pension, no paid sick days, etc…”

Wow; no benefits, no pension, no paid sick days, etc… some very good reasons to unionize, but alas why would a union basher like yourself want better work conditions, pay and benefits for himself and his co-workers, rather get rid of all the unions and THEN CONTINUE to complain about no benefits, no pension, no paid sick days! You are a walking talking contradiction on this news blog aren’t you Hart Guy! We all see the hypocrite you are!

One on the things they are asking for is massage therapy to a maximum of $3.000.00 a year. If all the teachers took advantage of these back rubs it is a $120 million dollar hole in the public purse every year.

Yea the bctf is being realistic. NOT.

Costs going forward for the bctf current demands.

[urlhttp://www.bcpsea.bc.ca/documents/teacher%20bargaining/Bargaining%20Bulletin/00-Backgrounder-BCTF%20Proposals-Costing-June%2016%202014.pdf[/url]

Why not “pop ’round” to Cole’s books and buy the book, “Homeschooling for Dummies.” If there isn’t a book on that topic yet maybe someone should write one.

http://www.bcpsea.bc.ca/documents/teacher%20bargaining/Bargaining%20Bulletin/00-Backgrounder-BCTF%20Proposals-Costing-June%2016%202014.pdf

Teachers are professionals. They work from 820 to 220 with 1 hour of breaks in between. That is 5 hours. They are home at 3 most of the time, and they do some homework marking etc.
The average teacher would be hard pressed to show 8 hours a day for actual work. There are exceptions, but there are plenty who don’t do 3 hours extra.
Next they get july and August off including part of september, and part of June. Plus 2 weeks at Christmas, 2 weeks at spring break, plus every stat holiday, plus 10 paid sick days plus 5 pro D days. All this brings the work year down to about 39 weeks. If we assume 35 hours a week times 39 weeks we get 1365 hours a year. The average teacher in BC makes 73,500 plus benefits worth 18,000. That makes for 91,500 in compensation to work about 1/2 the time the average professional works. So if the average professional made 183,000 they would have a case. As it stand teachers have a gravy job compared to nurses, doctors, police officers, or really pretty much anyone. The issue isn’t how much pay they should get extra, it’s how much we should take away. Pay cut and class size cut now.

See you in October teachers!! Enjoy the picketline!!

Nice try replacing the previous offer of 16% over 4 years, with 8% over 5 years + $5000 dollar signing bonus. Then add every hidden cost under the books to scratch and claw concessions out of the government. It is becoming very clear that the teachers are doing this all for the kids. NOT!!!

I wonder how all these demands will eventually be paid for. Our greedy society will eventually be our downfall.

Hey Peeps/BeingHuman, slam Hart Guy if you must, but if it wasn’t for private sector/small business, who would pay for the BCTF and the legions of public servants?

Lets keep in mind that it was the people of BC who voted in Christy and her crew, with a majority Government.

People were aware of the Liberals position on teachers, class sizes, etc; Soooooo, you voted them in, so let them do their job.

Don’t we elect Governments to do the will of the people????

Cupricity has it right. When you look at the big picture, you are pretty hard pressed to feel sorry for school teachers.

interceptor

Please send your other child to private school!!! But i would like you to pay the full cost. Do people commenting on this site realize private schools are subsidized by us taxpayers? Total BULLSH$$?

The best thing about this strike is the compensation benefits of BCTF members are clearly being exposed. The public are slowly learning of these benefits and the sympathy for these teachers will start to crumble.

The public can educate themselves easily on the internet and just how well compensated these teachers are. There will be much fewer folks honking in support going forward.

The public support for these teachers will not to evaporate soon.

ervboy

You do realize that private schools get the same per student funding that public schools get no more no less BUT in addition the public schools have their buildings built and maintained on the public dime.

Define subsidizing private schools? This is a red herring to start with as the vast majority of kids go to public school. But to give half the money to a private school and then to make a big deal about it is nothing
but dodging the issue. A parent that sends their kid to private school is only getting half of their taxes for their kid.
The truth is we wouldn’t need private schools if teachers were paid appropriately because we would have enough teachers/kid to do an excellent job. The BCTF is a cancer eating away at good socialism.
Teachers, if you don’t like your pay, do what the rest of us do. Find a job that will pay you more.
The ones with a degree in arts history or gender studies may find themselves happy with a 30 percent pay cut.
Good night.

Comment Posted by: JohnnyBelt on June 16 2014 1:19 PM
And you know what? I have no problem with paying good teachers a good wage ($100K).

The problem is that there’s no mechanism to hold bad teachers reponsible or assess their performance, and they end up getting the same pay as the good teachers.

——————————————————

well, that is simply not true. there is a process, in contract, that puts the onus on the employer. it is not particularly difficult, onerous, or troublesome if it is done correctly. if teachers are not being evaluated (i heard in this district that it was upwards of 43 years between evaluations on average), it is a direct result of the employer not upholding their end of the contract to which they are a party. to their credit, the district has, this very year, begun doing evaluations again.

the thing about teachers (and union members in general) is that the union does not do the hiring – the district does. if the district hires an individual who may not be best suited for the teaching profession, the union ultimately has to defend this hire, not the employer. you often hear people complain about the bctf and those lousy teachers, but you should always ask yourself who hired them in the first place, and what role should they play in teacher evaluation and assessment?

Thanks.

billy: ” to their credit, the district has, this very year, begun doing evaluations again. “

If there is some sort of evaluation process, how come nobody ever gets fired? Is pay dependant on performance? What happens to teachers who are so-called ‘bad performers’? Are the evaluation results public?

I would like to hear more of your insight.

cupricity did you drop your soother on the ground again??? homeschooling for dummies jb, hart guy, hockeynut, would never agree to that just open the door and kick the rugrats out to the professional babysitting service I can just imagine some of these posters homeschooling. as for business owners did you not realize owning a business entails long hours. you are probably buying goods from sweat shops and jacking up prices clever little shit you are then you bitch about teachers getting raises to afford your crazy prices. GO TEACHERS GO!!!!!

ice: “GO TEACHERS GO!!!!!”

You might as well just say, “Screw the taxpayer!”. It’s pretty much the same thing.

Canada’s CEO Elite 100 Pay Pack 2010:
Average CEO compensation: $8.38 million
Total compensation of the Elite 100: $838 million
Value of unvested share grants: $549 million
Value of in-the-money options outstanding: $2 billion
CEO accumulated pension value: $559 million

Over the past decade, CEO compensation went from 85 times that of an average worker to 225 times that of an average worker!

Maybe we should be increasing corporate and business taxes and putting that revenue into our public education and health care systems. There are other options to raising our individual tax rates! If these corporations can afford to pay their CEOs that much compensation and benefits, maybe it is justifiable that we look at increasing their taxes?

Instead our Lib-Con government brags about corporate / business tax in BC being the lowest in the G7 countries! So who is scratching who’s back here?

If you are a hockey player at the bottom of the salary scale what do you do? Play harder!

If you are a have not worker at the bottom of the wage scale with no benefits what do you do? Whine harder!

Whining won’t get you benefits or a raise but hard work will and/or a better business plan.

Hart Guy: You have substantial tax writeoffs from your housing costs and property taxes to the operation and financing of your vehicles. You,by having a business, reduce your tax exposure to a huge degree. Your rrsp window could be anywhere near 20,000.00 per year thus reducing further your tax exposure. You obviously want teachers at slave wages for whatever axe you have to grind re teachers. If you can read and understand this….thank a teacher. Also, a very weak position shown by Cameron and Fassbender was the proposal to open up the collective agreement they are bargaining now, if they lose their third and final appeal on Sept. 14 re teacher bargaining. By doing this they know they will lose this appeal. Its surreal how a university dropout (three time dropout) who was voted out in Kitsalano, but buys her way back in via the West Kelowna mla stepdown, that Clark is back wreaking havoc in BC. My focus is to vote her out.

ah peeps, good old tired class warfar BS argument. Look forward to a long bitter strike. Will the worker bees be on the picket line this summer. Really hope so. Maybe in between chanting, they can ponder how their strike fund just ain’t there. Perhaps these funds went to “idle no more” or a symposium on boycotting Isreal or funding the Quebec student activists, or……..wherever it went I’m sure it was for a higher purpose than a silly strikefund for members.

It would be nice to see one innovative idea out of the BCTF that could save the government some money.

All I hear is the need for salary, pension, and benefit increases. As well they need smaller class sizes.

Hasn’t any of the recent computer technology (new software programs, word processing programs) allowed teachers to expand class sizes a bit. Isn’t lesson planning, and exam preparation more streamlined for teachers now. Teachers must be able teach more students efficiently with all this new technology??

To me this is the most disappointing aspect of this strike. Doesn’t the union and teachers have a responsibility to try and create efficiencies for the government. It seems the only answer the BCTF has throughout this dispute is to increase funding.

Look what I’ve missed!! Sorry, but the phone rang earlier and I had to go!! That’s the way it is in private business!

Regarding my earlier link, Smooth commented that we need to consider the source, the BCPSEA. Hey Smooth, in case you haven’t noticed yet, I have on occasion posted information from the BCTF! You keep on believing that twit Jim Iker! I heard his comments earlier this evening regarding the weekend bargaining. What a pathetic little loser he is! No sooner does he spout his absolute crap to his little lemming members, we then hear from Peter Cameron, the Government’s Lead Negotiator, who completely lambastes Iker for Iker’s BS comments! Iker, what a joke!

So, who’s Peter Cameron you ask?? Gee, only one of Big Labour’s most prominent and accomplished negotiators, now working for the Government and the BCPSEA!! I’ll take his comments as far more realistic and truthful than poor little Jimmie Iker any day!

So Smooth, you keep listening to the crap that the BCTF tells you and I’ll keep looking for the REAL details!!

….and then NoWay tells me not to complain about others benefits that they fought for or are fighting for, go fight for some of your own.

NoWay, I have every right to complain about the benefits AND wages that our holier than thou teachers are whining for. After all, I am a taxpayer which means that I’m one of the poor saps that gets stuck paying taxes to support the wages and benefits of our public sector workers!

Perhaps NoWay is one of those left wing bleeding hearts who thinks that the Government goes out back behind the Legislative Buildings to pluck money off of the branches of the money tree??

Hate to break it to you NoWay, but there is no money tree, there’s just you and me!!

taxpayerteacher, once again and as always you are saying this and saying that, but not really saying anything at all!!

taxpayerteacher states “One of my kid’s gets RRSP top up every year paid by company along with a cash bonus every year; increases of 10% every year; and should the kid have children….each child’s university education is fully paid by the company. The kid has a defined benefit pension also . “

taxpayerteacher, I’ll ignore your poor sentence structure and bad punctuation and instead I’ll ask you where your “kid” works?? I’ll then check with that company to verify your statements regarding your “kid’s” RRSP, cash bonus, 10% increase every year, fully funded university education and defined benefit plan!

Gee, taxpayerteacher, if your “kid” has it so good, some might ask you why you don’t get a job there as well? Oops, wait, it’s usually you lefties suggesting that I get a new job!!

But really taxpayerteacher, if your “kid” has it so good and you are such a intelligent person, why haven’t you had enough brains yet to quit your crappy teaching job and go work with your “kid”!

Again, where does your “kid” work? Maybe I’d like to get a job there!!

peeps, beinghuman, whatever or whoever you are tonight, I have only a few comments for you as I really do need to hit the hay, 6:00 a.m. comes really early.

First, I have no fixed salary, no pension, no sick days, etc, but I am far from the bottom and I have a rather good level of existence if I do say so myself. I work my butt off for it! I’m not some loser standing there with my hand out, demanding more, more, more! Is that what you do Peeps, “Please Sir, may I have some more???”

Second and lastly for this evening Peeps, when you speak of hypocrites, you need not look any farther than your own mirror. I and others have asked and I will now ask you once again in the hopes that you might actually grow a pair and answer the question:

Why did you disappear only to reappear under your new “BeingHuman” moniker??

Call me a hyporcrite Peeps? Hardly!! Take a long hard look in the mirror, you’ll see the biggest hypocrite on this site looking right back at you!!

Posted by: JohnnyBelt on June 16 2014 10:39 PM

If there is some sort of evaluation process, how come nobody ever gets fired? Is pay dependant on performance? What happens to teachers who are so-called ‘bad performers’? Are the evaluation results public?

I would like to hear more of your insight.

———————————————————-

1. there is an evaluation performance, it is in contract, and it is to be done by the employer. if you believe that nobody ever gets fired, you should ask the employer why that is the case. while you’re at it, inquire as to why administration at all levels don’t get regular performance reviews and if that is good for the system.

2. pay is not dependent on performance. the question then becomes, if it were to be based on performance, against what is it to be measured?

3. there are many support options available to teachers who receive a poor evaluation. there is, as part of the process, further evaluation, etc. dismissal is one of those options. the process is fair to the employer and to the teacher, if it is followed properly and done as it is laid out in contract, otherwise, it can be grieved.

4. performance evaluations are not made public.

thank you.

Posted by: cupricity on June 16 2014 6:59 PM

Teachers are professionals. They work from 820 to 220 with 1 hour of breaks in between. That is 5 hours. They are home at 3 most of the time, and they do some homework marking etc.
The average teacher would be hard pressed to show 8 hours a day for actual work. There are exceptions, but there are plenty who don’t do 3 hours extra.
Next they get july and August off including part of september, and part of June. Plus 2 weeks at Christmas, 2 weeks at spring break, plus every stat holiday, plus 10 paid sick days plus 5 pro D days. All this brings the work year down to about 39 weeks. If we assume 35 hours a week times 39 weeks we get 1365 hours a year. The average teacher in BC makes 73,500 plus benefits worth 18,000. That makes for 91,500 in compensation to work about 1/2 the time the average professional works. So if the average professional made 183,000 they would have a case. As it stand teachers have a gravy job compared to nurses, doctors, police officers, or really pretty much anyone. The issue isn’t how much pay they should get extra, it’s how much we should take away. Pay cut and class size cut now.

You’re an idiot

billy: “2. pay is not dependent on performance. the question then becomes, if it were to be based on performance, against what is it to be measured?”

So what exactly is the point of the evaluation? Good performers are not rewarded and bad performers are not punished in any way.

“1. there is an evaluation performance, it is in contract, and it is to be done by the employer. if you believe that nobody ever gets fired, you should ask the employer why that is the case. while you’re at it, inquire as to why administration at all levels don’t get regular performance reviews and if that is good for the system.”

Absolutely administration should be evaluated. And yes, it is good for the system to remove the dead weight.

As for why nobody gets fired, the BCTF would likely have more insight than the employer would. The process for firing someone is probably near next to impossible. It’s one of the cornerstones of unions — guaranteeed job security, no matter how incompetent.

billy: “2. pay is not dependent on performance. the question then becomes, if it were to be based on performance, against what is it to be measured?”

So what exactly is the point of the evaluation? Good performers are not rewarded and bad performers are not punished in any way.

“1. there is an evaluation performance, it is in contract, and it is to be done by the employer. if you believe that nobody ever gets fired, you should ask the employer why that is the case. while you’re at it, inquire as to why administration at all levels don’t get regular performance reviews and if that is good for the system.”

Absolutely administration should be evaluated. And yes, it is good for the system to remove the dead weight.

As for why nobody gets fired, the BCTF would likely have more insight than the employer would. The process for firing someone is probably near next to impossible. It’s one of the cornerstones of unions — guaranteeed job security, no matter how incompetent.

Interesting to listen to the crap that Jim Iker was spewing on this morning’s News.

It was then far more interesting to read Michael Smyth’s “In The House” opinion piece in this morning’s Vancouver Province newspaper!

Would be nice if Iker was more honest with all of us and with his membership! But that’s not likely to happen now, is it!

Oops.

So I’ve heard the usual suspects on here comparing teachers to babysitters so lets discuss the teachers as babysitters. The last time I paid a babysitter I left her one distraught little boy while my wife and I went out. I paid her 5 dollars an hour cash money with no taxes held back. If teachers are simply babysitters then we should be paying them, and this is a little thing we call math, using the following formula:
I’m only going to pay them 3 bucks per hour to babysit. So 180 days a year worked X 6 hours (that’s 9 to 3 as some of you on here think they work) is 1080 hours X $3.00 per hour = 3240.00 per year per kid X 30 kids = $97,200.00 per year.

Problem solved.

Lets reverse the process and see what we are paying them to babysit:

If you’re gouging the taxpayer for $65,000.00 per year, we realistically look at a 9.1 hour day (that’s from Fassbender) with a class load of 30 kids (I think we can agree that this is pretty average), and a 180 day work year, our hourly rate for babysitting is $1.32 per hour. Hardly a kings ransom.

Oh, and they teach our kids.

@ billy68, your comment seems to be another failed attempt to blame the employer for all the problems in the system, but that’s the UNION way, right??

Seems like the only thing that Unions are any good at is protecting the jobs of people that should lose their job!

Grieve this and grieve that and so on and so on! At what point does the Union sit back and think that maybe it is expending a lot of time, money and effort protecting someone who really should go find another line of work?

Perhaps that’s where all of the Strike Fund money went, wasted on “duds” instead of accepting of reality?

Reality, now there’s another problem. Unions really don’t seem capable of grasping any concept of reality. The BCTF’s demands remain out-to-lunch and clearly unaffordable!!

The BCTF seems to think that there is NO COST at all to all of the benefit improvements that they are demanding. Gimme, gimme, gimme! After all the Government can go out behind the Legislative Building and just pull some more money off of the Money Tree that grows out back.

The BCTF doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge that there is no money tree, there’s only you and me!!

Do teachers have any skills for doing other jobs, or are they basically trained for teaching and nothing else.

If they were to leave their so called profession, where would they go, and what would they do.

How many business’s are looking to hire unemployed school teachers???

PGguy1234
You have said it best. GO TEACHERS GO

The Top 100 made 838 million. That is rich.
BCs 32,000 teachers cost us around 3.2 billion. (It costs the tax payers around 100,000 per teacher per year).

Stop demonizing Clark, Fassbender, politicians, or corporate elites. The issue at hand is the fact that we spend as much money as other jurisdictions as a percentage of the budget.

We spend that money but get crowded classrooms when we should be getting top notch education.

I have no problem paying taxes but I want value for my money. Why should a teacher in Canada make almost twice as much as a teacher in Europe where class size is smaller and cost of living is higher!

Rationalize the system. 30% cut in class sizes 30% cut in teachers salaries, hire the teachers that can’t get jobs. God knows there are 10s of thousands of them.

You are supposed to pay babysitters minimum wage PGguy! Don’t be so cheap.

“Grieve this and grieve that and so on and so on! At what point does the Union sit back and think that maybe it is expending a lot of time, money and effort protecting someone who really should go find another line of work?”

Once again Hart Guy I’ll explain the union process! A grievance is filed when someone isn’t following the collective agreement. Both parties look at the wording of the agreement and try and solve the issue before it has to go to expensive arbitration. That’s how problems are solved. Some employers just want to constantly push the collective agreement when all they have to do is follow it and no more grievances.

PGGUY1234

Numbers do not lie: You wrote.

If you’re gouging the taxpayer for $65,000.00 per year, we realistically look at a 9.1 hour day (that’s from Fassbender) with a class load of 30 kids (I think we can agree that this is pretty average), and a 180 day work year, our hourly rate for babysitting is $1.32 per hour. Hardly a kings ransom.

The average teacher makes $74,000 plus benefits of 18,000 (Guaranteed PENSION!)

180 days a year implies 36 weeks which is accurate. But 9 hours? They are only in the classroom 5 hours! (8:20 to 2:20 with 2 15 minute breaks and lunch).

5 hours times 180 days is 900 Hours a year actual time spent in the classroom! Divided by 92,000 a year we are talking $100/ hour per hour spent in the class (and don’t tell me I can’t count that juicy defined benefit in their, otherwise take it away from the teachers). If there are 24 kids on average in the provice we are over 4 dollars an hour per kid.

Think about it. Teachers are paid $100/ hour ON AVERAGE for classroom time.

What about all the young teachers who can’t get jobs because the BCTF has sucked all the money available for outrageous wages out of the system. They are like ticks on a moose.

I am suggesting a mere reduction to $66/ hour which is still higher than Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, US, Portugal and England…

http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2013/02/15/average-class-size-in-b-c-school-districts-2012-13/

http://teachingbritishcolumbia.wordpress.com/

The BCTF is a small dog with a loud bark that is increasingly becoming useless. Why they have come to be known as a militant organization is beyond me, as for the last 15 years they have accomplished little to nothing for their members. If you work for the BCTF, you are in for a nice ride. Starting salaries are often double that of a starting teacher, plus you get a generous retirement package along with very nice medical and dental. The sad thing to remember, is that the BCTF does not compensate new teachers in their practicums. Practicum work is a requirement of your graduation. During practicum, you are required to perform all the duties of a full-time teacher for over 3 months. I do not know of any other ‘professional’ organization that does not compensate the intake of new workers into the profession while they are apprenticing. Trades workers, accountants, lawyers, doctors, police and many other organizations pay you for the work you do as you enter their profession. Teaching does not. While your sponsor teacher takes a 3 month in-school holiday, you get nothing. I remind you that you are basically unable to work another job even if you wanted to due to the demands of teaching. In fact, you pay over $1500 a year to the BCTF in dues. Add on your licensing fees to the BCCT plus your out of pocket expenses for classroom supplies and you are in for an average of $2500 dollars a year.

NoWay, you don’t need to explain the union process to me. Along time ago I was a Union member!

I left the union environment because I got fed up with working with people who’s greatest skill was their ability to coast through the day, putting more effort into “looking” busy than in actually doing any work. I got tired of receiving the same rate of pay as those that did as little as is humanly possible in a normal work day! I got tired of the complete lack of initiative or drive exhibited by the majority of my co-workers! I got tired of the constant whining about how hard done by they were, how over-worked and how stressed out they were.

Over-worked? Only if avoiding work can be considered over-worked!

Hard done by? Compared to who?

cupricity has it right! Cut class sizes in half and cut wages in half! Hire twice as many teachers and let them teach smaller classes, all within the confines of the Public’s ability to pay!!

@taxpayerteacher

I thought that you were on your way to a teaching position in Sweden, or was that another case of the bottle talking?

The person in the highest elected position in the province along with the richest person in the province both decided on a path other than a 4 year degree and it turned out pretty well for both of them and many others I might add. Meanwhile there is a good chance that the person serving them their morning coffee at Starbucks has a liberal arts degree.

Hmmmm, just read that the School Support Workers and their CUPE Union have ratified their recently negotiated contract offer!

Funny how the Support Workers appear to be smarter and more reasonable than our esteemed BCTF members!!

So you must complain a lot Hart Guy or is it just about teachers and their collective agreement! What about all the other union contracts both private and public? Should they shut up and take less too? Private sector contracts costs are passed down to the consumer. How about you charge less for your product or service?

Teachers work their butts off too.

Posted by: cupricity on June 16 2014 6:59 PM

“Teachers are professionals. They work from 820 to 220 with 1 hour of breaks in between. That is 5 hours. They are home at 3 most of the time, and they do some homework marking etc….”
———
I am a teacher, but I do not work those hours you suggested. Where do you get your data from?

I arrive at school at 8am and leave around 4pm. I do bring marking home with me as well. I do about 1-2 hours of marking each night.
———

“Next they get july and August off including part of september, and part of June. Plus 2 weeks at Christmas, 2 weeks at spring break, plus every stat holiday, plus 10 paid sick days plus 5 pro D days.”
——–

Again I ask where do you get your data from? Yes, we do get July and August off, but WE DO NOT GET PAID over the summer months.

We get part of September off and June?? Really? School starts the tuesday after labor day, always has. The last day of school in June is the last friday of the month.

As for those sick days, yes, we do get 10 per school year, about one a month, but if we are sick, we don’t get paid extra. We do not get our sick days paid out when we retire.

Ask me how many sick days I took this school year? NONE Last school year: ONE

The hours that they work based on cupricity’s numbers aren’t even based on a fairly tale never mind fact. Gassbender made statements that average teachers work 9.1 hours per day. This calculation was used to determine how much of the teachers money they took based on the work they did and the work they didn’t so lose the argument regarding this 3 to 6 hour day that you think they work.

@johnnybelt

you asked for insight, and i offered it. the process is there. i have been in the system for almost fourteen years, have requested an evaluation, and have been told that my administrator was ‘too busy.’ this is not the fault of the union in any way, shape, or form. this is the role of the employer.

@hartguy

wow! that is quite an axe. you must have a very large wheel. you can keep grinding away and attempt to put words into my mouth, but, as usual, they are not correct. i simply pointed out what johnnybelt asked. it takes two to dance, and if one partner is unwilling…well…

i am going out on a limb and i will guess that you are self employed, hard working, and strongly opinionated. yes, teachers’ salaries are paid for out of tax payer funds. i won’t make the argument that i pay taxes too, it doesn’t fly with me…but i know you pay taxes, as does everybody on here…the question is how much? 2.5% or 11%? if it is 2.5%, congratulations, you have bellied up to the bc liberal gravy train and i don’t harbour any ill will for that. if it is 11%, congratulations, you pay among the lowest corporate taxes in the country. either way, it is better than it once was, and you didn’t have your charter rights trampled to get there…but that is a different story all together.

enjoy your day.

thank you.

Teachers work long hours people. Get over it. The argument regarding 5 or 5 hour days is ridiculous. Sick day arguments don’t hold water either. If you are a teacher in the district for 20 years, you could have 6 or 7 months of sick time accumulated in your benefit. If you retire tomorrow, you receive nothing. I would love to know the number of sick days that retiring teachers in BC walk away from at retirement. Not every benefit has a direct cost to the poor taxpayer. Some are in case of emergency. Like buying a fire extinguisher as opposed to watching your house burn down.

Extended health benefits. They get Blue Cross. If you work at a pulp mill you get a card that allows you to get your drugs, pay your deductible and walk out of the store. If you’re a teacher, you need to fill in a bunch of forms, mail all your receipts in, go through an approval process and hope for the money back. Does not sound golden to me.

i don’t understand how the same people that complain about high teacher wages are the same ones that refer to teaching as babysitting, and say how easy the job is and how little work teachers actually do. if such a job existed, holy cow, sign me up! pension? yes. luxurious working conditions? yes. no possiblity of ever being disciplined or fired? yes.

why don’t these guys just become teachers?! oh yeah, they’ll tell us how noble they are, how they refuse to live off the ‘taxpayer teat’, how all public servants are bottom of the barrel, lazy incompentents that couldn’t possibly hope to find work in the much vaunted private sector.

it also seems like some of these posters that bash teachers and espouse the glory of owning their businesses spend an inordinate amount of time posting on teacher-related subjects. business must be slow. maybe you should have picked a different career.

I would venture to guess that most private sector unions do not get paid sick days starting on the first day they are off and then do not get full wages never mind banking them until retirement. This seems like this exclusive to the public sector unions and all banking of these days should be clawed back at the earliest opportunity.

I know of at least one public sector union that gets a paid “wellness day” if they do not call in sick for a certain length of time. It goes from the sublime to the ridiculous.

They don’t bank sick days until retirement. Doesn’t happen. Give it a rest.