Handsome Compensation

As salaries go, Canadian teachers do very well for themselves. It's a difficult job to be sure, teaching children in a collective educational setting. Children are wont to be impudent, difficult to control at times, more inclined to physical action than sedentary cerebral pursuits; they've minds of their own. And in a collective situation present problems that would vex the patience of any adult.

But there are some consolation prizes in a profession that has generous spates of time off; for public holidays, and a long interregnum in the summer months that no other profession offers as compensation for difficult nine-to-three o'clock days, five days a week. It's an honourable profession, one is entitled to be proud of claiming. That it is physically and mentally trying is beyond dispute.

Which is why people who don't feel a personal calling to respond to the needs of children to be enthused by the learning process, to contribute to their store of knowledge at a time when their brains are most receptive and capable of imbibing lessons, should not respond to the appeal of the profession.

Unless such people have a respect for the individuality of children and their individual and collective needs, they should simply forget it and move on.

Teachers' unions represent them very well; they bargain hard for all manner of complementary benefits, alongside the salaries teachers receive. Those salaries and those benefits are the envy of most working-class people. But then we're talking about academically proficient and work-load-stressed professionals. Many of whom also sacrifice personal time to further advance the well-being of their students.

Still, the bargaining now proceeding toward the potential of a strike option, is pretty rich, at this time in the country's economy. The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario has rejected a $800-million deal, one that would have seen improvements in their pay scale, and in allied areas by the 2012-2013 school year. The union acts for 76,000 elementary school teachers across the province.

This is no mean-spirited offering, representing a 12.55% increase in salary over a four-year period. Consider: the teachers at the highest pay scale would be bringing home roughly $94,600 a year. That's quite a salary. The framework agreement so recently rejected was inclusive of a significantly reduced workload with funds allocated for the hiring of additional teachers, and to provide professional development training along with improved benefits.

The Catholic and francophone teachers have already accepted similar framework agreements. The elementary school teachers' union is balking because of a funding disparity identified between elementary and high school students, it would appear, and remain the sole unionized school board employees who have chosen not to sign on to the four-year framework agreement.

Seems they're stubbornly holding out for richer endowments at a time when other, more sensible teachers' unions have determined it's in the best interests of teachers, students, school boards and the economy to sign on. Pity. Perhaps in their great wisdom they know something about the health of the economy that everyone else is ignorant of.