Quote:
Originally Posted by TheAlpineOracle
No the problem is that everyone can name a friend or two that went into teaching for all the wrong reasons, and they are part of a system with no accountability which has the potential to create a train wreck as a result.
I think it's more prevalent today then it was in the past, and I think it's magnified in Alberta, because let's be honest, our school system is full of quite a few people that weren't the pick of the litter coming out of University. Couldn't get jobs in their home Provinces, and moved out here only as a last resort.
That's getting away from my point though, which is that teacher's don't do themselves any favours in the court of public opinion by the comments they make and their constant griping. Everyone else is faces the same pressures they do in every other profession, it just manifests itself in different forms.
One of the most idiotic arguments I hear frequently from teachers/nurses/AHS is that they shouldn't be subject to any rollback or any type of cuts while the private sector suffers because they've never benefited from oil and gas sector like the private sector has. Are they friggen' serious? They are the highest paid in the country. My wife makes probably 30K a year more here than she would in the Maritimes, and 20K more than she would in Ontario.
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Here is the median total incomes in Canada in 2013 (the most recent data I could find):
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tabl...il108a-eng.htm
Here is a list of salaries of teachers in Canada in 2013:
http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedfiles/pub...13-14brief.pdf
There are 4 lists, each comparing minimum and maximum salaries of teachers in two different categories. If you rank the teachers' salaries in respect to the median incomes for each province (e.g.: Alberta minimum salary of Category 5 teacher ($61,333)/Median Alberta Income ($97,390) = 63.0%), Alberta teachers rank 9th out of 10 in 3 of the lists and 10th in the other (note: I didn't include the Territories).
As it says in the article linked to in the OP, the existing contract expires on August 31. In the current contact, the teachers took a 3 year wage freeze and got a 2% raise with a 1% lump payout in the last year. By my math, that is a 3% raise over the last 4 years, so I doubt very much that their standings in the lists will be any better now.
Yes, Alberta teachers make more money than teachers do in any of the other provinces. However, they make less compared to the rest of the citizens of the province than do most of the other teachers in Canada. If you want to bitch about how much teachers in Alberta make then you should be prepared to bitch about how much everyone else in Alberta makes too.