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Originally Posted by CFO
Actually many in oil & gas have taken 2 rollbacks in the last 10 years. Oil crash prior to COVID and then during COVID.
Did the public sector roll back wages at least 10% twice?
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That’s such a strange comparison, one that I’ve never tried to make. I only brought up the wage thing because you claimed that public teachers are making “constant” demands; which is not true at all as evidenced by stagnant wages and working conditions with no threat of a strike until now. Rollbacks to oil and gas suck for sure and I empathize for those families; that doesn’t however mean teachers have been giving “constant” demands.
Also, it’s not a race to the bottom; when oil and gas sector workers were laid off teachers would buy food and snacks for kids out of their own pocket. We don’t need to draw a line between two professions as if problems with one means the other should have the same problems. It’d be strange to say that we’ve had no improvement in working conditions, so therefore, no one else should have improvement in working conditions either. We don’t have rollbacks because we are unionized; which is nice in some ways but also terrible in other ways. Each profession has its affordances and drawbacks. If you’re in oil and gas, you’ve chosen a profession that’s tied to a boom and bust cycle. And if you think being in the public sector and getting unionized is so lucrative for you, then go into teaching.
The conversation I’ve always try to move towards is about supporting students, that’s the central issue but you keep steering it back to wages. The Oil and Gas sector isn’t serving the same groups in the same way. Different profession different problems, but kids are more involved in one of them. I’d happily take the current deal on wage increases if there was something better for class size and complexity, and I know many other teachers feel the same way.