Why I will be a striking teacher on 30 November

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...P=FBCNETTXT9038

My profession gets a lot of stick, but teachers work damned hard for our money and deserve respect – not a pensions cut

 

I am a teacher. You must remember – they had them when you were at school: tall person, stood at the front, usually shouting, that kind of thing. I'm one of those. And though Wednesday 30 November should be a normal, boring school day, it's highly likely that I will not be going into work and neither will most of my colleagues, because we will be on strike. The last time we went on strike, a lot of otherwise seemingly pleasant people seemed rather angry with us and made comments, which, on the whole, did not show much understanding of our motivation for striking. Because I'd like that not to happen this time, I've made my own little contribution toward the task of explaining exactly why we are likely to strike on 30 November.

 

I got out a calculator and worked out that superficially, on my current income, I earn around £18 an hour – if you think I work a standard 40 hour week, that is. Imagining I get to school at 8am and leave every day at 4pm, and do this for 40 weeks (because I have so very many weeks off every year, of course), the total number of hours worked is 1,600. How lazy of me – the OECD worked out that in 2010 the average worker in the UK actually put in 1,647 hours.

 

Except that we need to add in some other bits.

 

Presentation and parents' evenings easily add about 30 hours a year to my total (and that's a fairly generous underestimate, in truth). I leave school at 4pm on a Friday if I'm lucky – there are department meetings, year team meetings, development team meetings, after-school detentions and after-school clubs pretty much every other day of the week, which make 5pm a much more likely time to leave school most days. Marking 30 books or essays doesn't happen quickly and has to be done regularly; likewise, lessons do not plan themselves, especially if you have learners with special needs. A conservative estimate of the time I spend working outside normal school hours would be around 15 hours per week – multiplied by 40 weeks, there's an extra 600 hours on my total. These are hours almost all of us work, all the time, whether you realise it or not. There is a reason we tend to get frosty when people snidely comment on our "long holidays" and "3 o'clock hometimes".

 

Not counting the days I give up of my own volition, for the likes of weekend trips and extra coursework sessions, my hours-per-year work total is closer to 2,250 than 1,600 – that's over 25% more working time than the average UK worker, no matter how the holidays average out (and yes, we put in some work in the holidays, too). It also means I'm earning something like £12.88 per hour. That is by no means to be sniffed at – I have a good standard of living and I am grateful for it – but perhaps you get the message that I, and every other teacher I know, work damned hard for that money.

 

I would modestly state that I do my job quite well. In terms of targets, which the government seems to think are the ultimate measure of whether one is a good teacher or not, the number of GCSE students in my department achieving a grade C or above surpassed our set goal by 10%. My sixth-form students succeeded, and two went on to university to further study the subject I taught them. But there were other things that went well, things the government doesn't measure. I stopped a child from being bullied and got another into counselling, for example. I got a class full of badly behaved boys to settle down and actually try to achieve something; they now want to learn, something they scorned a year ago. I coached colleagues who were going through tough times to help them pull it together and do their best for their students.

 

No one gave me a bonus for these things, and I didn't ask for one because I don't expect or need it. The idea, however, that bankers who did their jobs so spectacularly badly that the whole country is suffering for it went on to receive hundreds of thousands, even millions of pounds in bonuses, is one I find a teensy bit irksome – particularly when the government then proposes cutting my pension to help mop up the mess.

I may moan about having no time, and get stressed out about marking and record keeping, and roll my eyes at initiatives to cajole Ofsted into rating our school better than average – but I do love my job. Some days I come home and am too physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted to do anything but get straight into bed, but I can't imagine enjoying any other profession as much as mine. I want to carry on doing it as long as I can, and I want to have the enthusiasm and energy necessary to help young people learn as much as they can, as well as they can.

 

This is why it's hard to carry on regardless when you are consistently put down as not being good enough, and given more to do with less time in which to do it, and told you are worth less money for your efforts. This is why it's demoralising to be told you should keep giving as much of your time and energy as you do already until you are nearly 70. This is why I'm fed up enough with the way my profession is being treated to do something about it.

 

I can't say for sure whether the coffers are empty or not. But does that mean I shouldn't strike? Not even slightly.

 

Striking is not a dirty word. Striking is not the fallback of the workshy. Striking is not lazy, selfish, stupid, pointless, antagonistic, communist nor any of the other criticisms I heard levelled at us last time we downed tools. Going on strike is one of the very last ways we have in the current world of work to make people who might otherwise forget remember the fact that we are doing our best. A strike is not unreasonable – it is a stand for belief in yourself and your coworkers. It is a demand that those at the top remember they would not be there without you. It is a thoroughly timely reminder that you will not be ridden over roughshod and keep smiling through it. It is a powerful weapon that we do not wield often, and it should not be scorned and denigrated by those with whom the government reminds us "we're all in this together".

 

We do a good job. We deserve respect. Going on strike is our chance to remind the government of this, whether it changes anything for us in real terms or not – and I for one can't wait to stand up and shout it at them.

 

Typical teacher, eh?

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Superb article, and it pinpoints the reason EXACTLY why this is happening... Support your public sector, support your teachers, support every worker in the country who gets the shitty end of the stick because of this f***ing Westminster bast*rd government and the Corporate Financial Services industry..... -_-

Outstanding. I fully support the public sector strike. It's not their mess and they are highly suffering as a result of the banking sector.

I do not support the teachers striking and never will. It's an utter disgrace.

I do not support the teachers striking and never will. It's an utter disgrace.

 

f*** off Chris, what would you know about workers..? You've never done a day's work in over 20 years... Someone like you criticising workers' rights to strike is just a complete piss-take..... <_<

I fully support the strikes. My mum (who's now stuck working for HMRC for another five years thanks to the pension cuts) and my aunt (who's taken early retirement after working as a teacher for over twenty years) are both taking striking. Apparently on the day they're getting 'retail therapy', also known as going shopping :lol:

Well- unpopular opinion time- but I have to say neither do I support it.

 

What I don't understand is why a teacher can't put into a private pension like any other person in this country?

 

I'm not saying they aren't doing a good job, just like most in the private sector are, adn they may be getting less money perhaps it would be a better idea for the government to say ok we'll pay you the same rate as the private sector and scrap the public sector pension altogether. I understand that people take a job in the public sector because of the perks in some instances but they have to appreciate they are perks NOT rights.

 

As for the bankers argument well the last government chose to bail out the banks so yes we the tax payer have to pay that back, as far as I can tell you can do it in two ways, either tax people more or cut? If the answer is yes to tax people more then I'm not in favour of it, if it's just to tax the rich more then we could be in for a very big shock. For every multi millionaire/ global corporate institution that leaves this country then how are we to replace the revenue they generate in corporate tax and in employee tax? Again the answer is the same, tax the rest of us more or cut deeper

 

As for bonus's as I understand it a company who makes a large enough profit to pay bonus's has two options. Bearing in mind that this is private money in the stricktist sense then the company can not pay any bonus to the employee and leave that money on its balance books (assuming they keep it in the UK) and pay 28% tax on it (the corporation tax rate) or they can give it in a bonus to keep staff- that employee (assuming that that takes them over the 150k limit) will then 50% on that excess increasing from the 40% tax they pay if earning over 35k so the tax man gets more back.

 

Anyway that's another thread I suppose- the point I'm making is that we either cut or tax?

Edited November 21, 201113 yr by gezza76

Well- unpopular opinion time- but I have to say neither do I support it.

 

What I don't understand is why a teacher can't put into a private pension like any other person in this country?

 

I'm not saying they aren't doing a good job, just like most in the private sector are, adn they may be getting less money perhaps it would be a better idea for the government to say ok we'll pay you the same rate as the private sector and scrap the public sector pension altogether. I understand that people take a job in the public sector because of the perks in some instances but they have to appreciate they are perks NOT rights.

 

As for the bankers argument well the last government chose to bail out the banks so yes we the tax payer have to pay that back, as far as I can tell you can do it in two ways, either tax people more or cut? If the answer is yes to tax people more then I'm not in favour of it, if it's just to tax the rich more then we could be in for a very big shock. For every multi millionaire/ global corporate institution that leaves this country then how are we to replace the revenue they generate in corporate tax and in employee tax? Again the answer is the same, tax the rest of us more or cut deeper

 

As for bonus's as I understand it a company who makes a large enough profit to pay bonus's has two options. Bearing in mind that this is private money in the stricktist sense then the company can not pay any bonus to the employee and leave that money on its balance books (assuming they keep it in the UK) and pay 28% tax on it (the corporation tax rate) or they can give it in a bonus to keep staff- that employee (assuming that that takes them over the 150k limit) will then 50% on that excess increasing from the 40% tax they pay if earning over 35k so the tax man gets more back.

 

Anyway that's another thread I suppose- the point I'm making is that we either cut or tax?

 

Private sector pensions have been getting defrauded by Wall Street and the speculators though... Seriously, it would shock you if you actually knew the extent of the fraud these b'astards have committed upon ordinary people...

 

Bankers are not entitled to bonuses as I see it, not until every single penny has been paid back to the taxpayer that they took from us.. ALL the major banks are technically insolvent, why should these people get bonuses..? It's ridiculous...

 

The right to strike or withdraw labour is a fundamental human right, simple as.. If you dont understand why it is that people are so incensed and so angry about this, I dont really think you've been paying attention. There's also the threat of wide-scale redundancies, pay freezes and other factors too to be taken into consideration...

 

Nassim Taleb on banker's bonuses and why they have no right whatsoever to have them...

 

Well- unpopular opinion time- but I have to say neither do I support it.

 

What I don't understand is why a teacher can't put into a private pension like any other person in this country?

 

I'm not saying they aren't doing a good job, just like most in the private sector are, adn they may be getting less money perhaps it would be a better idea for the government to say ok we'll pay you the same rate as the private sector and scrap the public sector pension altogether. I understand that people take a job in the public sector because of the perks in some instances but they have to appreciate they are perks NOT rights.

 

As for the bankers argument well the last government chose to bail out the banks so yes we the tax payer have to pay that back, as far as I can tell you can do it in two ways, either tax people more or cut? If the answer is yes to tax people more then I'm not in favour of it, if it's just to tax the rich more then we could be in for a very big shock. For every multi millionaire/ global corporate institution that leaves this country then how are we to replace the revenue they generate in corporate tax and in employee tax? Again the answer is the same, tax the rest of us more or cut deeper

 

As for bonus's as I understand it a company who makes a large enough profit to pay bonus's has two options. Bearing in mind that this is private money in the stricktist sense then the company can not pay any bonus to the employee and leave that money on its balance books (assuming they keep it in the UK) and pay 28% tax on it (the corporation tax rate) or they can give it in a bonus to keep staff- that employee (assuming that that takes them over the 150k limit) will then 50% on that excess increasing from the 40% tax they pay if earning over 35k so the tax man gets more back.

 

Anyway that's another thread I suppose- the point I'm making is that we either cut or tax?

 

You raise some good points, but it reaches a point where speculation over what could be directly economically beneficial has to take a backseat in favour of simple principles. On that point I agree with Grimly, I'd say priority #1 is to kick up a fuss in Europe and make sure there's the enforcement of an EU-wide Robin Hood tax so as to cut the number of businesses which flock abroad.

And here's just one example of pension scheme fraud that Wall Street is committing on a daily basis....

 

http://www.pionline.com/article/20110711/PRINTSUB/110709940/

 

So, let's not blame employees for the dishonesty of the Capitalists...

Private sector pensions have been getting defrauded by Wall Street and the speculators though... Seriously, it would shock you if you actually knew the extent of the fraud these b'astards have committed upon ordinary people...

 

Bankers are not entitled to bonuses as I see it, not until every single penny has been paid back to the taxpayer that they took from us.. ALL the major banks are technically insolvent, why should these people get bonuses..? It's ridiculous...

 

The right to strike or withdraw labour is a fundamental human right, simple as.. If you dont understand why it is that people are so incensed and so angry about this, I dont really think you've been paying attention. There's also the threat of wide-scale redundancies, pay freezes and other factors too to be taken into consideration...

 

Nassim Taleb on banker's bonuses and why they have no right whatsoever to have them...

You may be right on your private pension point but I hardly saw an outcry from the union's when Gordon Brown made several changes to the way pension rights were accrued in the private sector after he became Chancellor yet NOW the unions want public support? What many in the private sector can't understand is what is happening to the public sector has already happened to the private a decade before- perhspa they would be onto more of a winner if they campaigned to get private sector pensions up to the same standard as public pensions? And tell me how many of these union bosses are on final salary pensions- quite a few I can tell you.

 

As I say in my initial post you get more back from the bankers if they get a bonus than you would in corporation tax or if the company simply moved the money out of the UK. If that happned again we would all have to pay more.

 

Furthermore you mis- understood what I meant- I meant I didn't agree with what they were striking for- not that they were striking at all. Of course people can strike and it's their right to, but as a cause I don't agree with it. Threat of wide scale redundancies, pay freezes and other factors? oh that sounds like the private sector......

You raise some good points, but it reaches a point where speculation over what could be directly economically beneficial has to take a backseat in favour of simple principles. On that point I agree with Grimly, I'd say priority #1 is to kick up a fuss in Europe and make sure there's the enforcement of an EU-wide Robin Hood tax so as to cut the number of businesses which flock abroad.

And what about outside Europe? There wil always be countries who will be wringing their hands in glee to get hold of all that tax revenue which otherwise they wouldn't be able to!

And what about outside Europe? There wil always be countries who will be wringing their hands in glee to get hold of all that tax revenue which otherwise they wouldn't be able to!

 

For a start, I tell you right now, if I were in charge, I'd close down ALL tax havens.. The City of London, Jersey, Guernsey, the Caymans, they would be getting f**ked by the tax-man right now... As would the likes of Vodafone, Tesco, Philip Green and all the other scumbag tax dodgers that are f***ing this country....

 

You may be right on your private pension point but I hardly saw an outcry from the union's when Gordon Brown made several changes to the way pension rights were accrued in the private sector after he became Chancellor yet NOW the unions want public support? What many in the private sector can't understand is what is happening to the public sector has already happened to the private a decade before- perhspa they would be onto more of a winner if they campaigned to get private sector pensions up to the same standard as public pensions? And tell me how many of these union bosses are on final salary pensions- quite a few I can tell you.

 

As I say in my initial post you get more back from the bankers if they get a bonus than you would in corporation tax or if the company simply moved the money out of the UK. If that happned again we would all have to pay more.

 

Furthermore you mis- understood what I meant- I meant I didn't agree with what they were striking for- not that they were striking at all. Of course people can strike and it's their right to, but as a cause I don't agree with it. Threat of wide scale redundancies, pay freezes and other factors? oh that sounds like the private sector......

 

Dont get me started on Gordon Brown, as far as I'm concerned, he's a traitor to every single working class person in this country..

 

It's not up to the public sector unions to battle for the private sector, for a start, I dont think legally, they even can... Wouldn't that be considered as "secondary picketing"...?

 

Obviously the private sector should be striking too.. I would LOVE to see a General Strike in this country... Every workers downing tools for 24 hours... It would be beautiful sight... Unfortunately, the private sector is nowhere near as well represented, and we have Thatcher to thank for that one as she destroyed the unions... If we'd had unions like Germany, the Govt would actually be forced to seriously bargain and not take the piss.... No one messes with German workers, they have the best standards of living in Europe...

For a start, I tell you right now, if I were in charge, I'd close down ALL tax havens.. The City of London, Jersey, Guernsey, the Caymans, they would be getting f**ked by the tax-man right now... As would the likes of Vodafone, Tesco, Philip Green and all the other scumbag tax dodgers that are f***ing this country....

Perhaps you would- they, on the other hand would be getting their top accountants to shift the money sideways, up and down and out of the country leaving you with the crumbs.....

Perhaps you would- they, on the other hand would be getting their top accountants to shift the money sideways, up and down and out of the country leaving you with the crumbs.....

 

And I would make "creative accounting" illegal... HA... :P

Dont get me started on Gordon Brown, as far as I'm concerned, he's a traitor to every single working class person in this country..

 

It's not up to the public sector unions to battle for the private sector, for a start, I dont think legally, they even can... Wouldn't that be considered as "secondary picketing"...?

Well we agree on GB at least!"

 

I might not be up to them, but when the greater majority has already suffered this what's the incentive to give support now? Public sector unions represent a minority in the population now (in the main because they whole sale abused that power in the 70s) so their cry may fall on deaf ears?!

 

I agree we do need th emoney back from Bankers et al, but how best and quickest to get it is the answer, I doubt taxation is the answer in all honesty.

And I would make "creative accounting" illegal... HA... :P

You and I both know that the money would be long gone before you could pass that law! :D

Obviously the private sector should be striking too.. I would LOVE to see a General Strike in this country... Every workers downing tools for 24 hours... It would be beautiful sight... Unfortunately, the private sector is nowhere near as well represented, and we have Thatcher to thank for that one as she destroyed the unions... If we'd had unions like Germany, the Govt would actually be forced to seriously bargain and not take the piss.... No one messes with German workers, they have the best standards of living in Europe...

Well we disagree on why the unions are no longer powerful- blame the meglomaniac Scargill for that one!

 

As for Germany well they have different work ethic too- we have grown fat and lazy as a nation on the spoils of empire.

You and I both know that the money would be long gone before you could pass that law! :D

 

Then I guess a lot of Banksters will be going to the Gulags then until they coughed it up..... :lol: :lol:

Woo, five weeks into my first teaching job and I get to strike. I just hope the kids don't get massacred by trees again or I won't be able to sleep for the rest of my life, knowing it's entirely my fault.