Conrad Black: Public-sector unions are a blight on our society

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

By the time you add up the totals, I'm betting we probably spend more on the sick days then the Senate expense claims.

You can't split hairs here, both are pretty much fraud in a civil service workplace.

Both probably don't cost a whole lot to the individual tax payers.

One is sexier then the other that is all.

Beef jerky is the sexiest of all dried meats.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Likely a boatload more stressful than 95% of other jobs.

No

I would argue, that police, fire, paramedic, military, some forms of construction, boat navigating.

And those people don't get a nearly 20% of the year off while basically getting paid for it.

While teaching can be stressful, I don't think I would put it in the top percentile of jobs that cause heart attack.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Beef jerky is the sexiest of all dried meats.

Um the terms what in and blue blazes comes to mind.

[Ark2]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

I can't speak for teachers in Ontario, but my sister is an elementary school teacher in New Brunswick, and she assures me that both she and all her colleagues treat their sick days as entitled days off and use the full allotment every single year. She once complained to me that it's hard to find a substitute teacher in June because so many teachers are calling in "sick" to make sure they use all their days prior to the end of the school year.

We are running into the same issue in Ontario this year as well now that sick day banking has been eliminated. The wife of one of the guys that I work with has taken her last two sick days this week, which is also the last week of school. He says that she is going shopping today, but hey, being a high school music teacher must be unbearably stressful. I'm sure she needs it...

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

I can't speak for teachers in Ontario, but my sister is an elementary school teacher in New Brunswick, and she assures me that both she and all her colleagues treat their sick days as entitled days off and use the full allotment every single year. She once complained to me that it's hard to find a substitute teacher in June because so many teachers are calling in "sick" to make sure they use all their days prior to the end of the school year.

So?

[PsYcNeT]

"Kids these days have no respect/are dumb/are ignorant of their past/untrained for the future/are going to doom the planet!"

"#### teachers, they have the cushiest job ever!"

[Makarov]

What does this have to do with public sector unions? Workplace fraud is a problem that transcends public employers or unionized workplaces. For example:

The survey of firms with less than 500 employees found that one in four, or 26 per cent, of companies had been cheated by an employee. The most common examples would be misappropriation of either company assets and inventory, or straight cash.

SOURCE: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/stor...ud-report.html

EDIT: I'm not suggesting that the federal government, as an employer, should not be investigating workplace fraud, including abuse of sick day entitlements. I'm merely arguing that this issue has little to do with public service unions.

[Ark2]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Likely a boatload more stressful than 95% of other jobs.

Based on what exactly?

The threat of physical harm? No.

Job security? No.

Being overly intellectually demanding? No.

Sure, you have to deal with troublesome kids on a regular basis, but so do waitresses, bus drivers, Dollar Store employees, day care workers, babysitters, etc.

I'm not trying to say that the job doesn't have its stresses, but to suggest that it is even close to the top 5% seems pretty dubious to me.

[opendoor]

I'd like to see a chart that compared the increasing number of sick days taken by teachers with the increasing number of children with behavioral problems and/or special needs students being thrown into classes with little to no support. I suspect they're correlated, as in my experience with friends and relatives who've been substitute teachers it seems the teachers with some of the worst classes take the most days off.

Some teachers are definitely lazy, and there should obviously be more mechanisms for punishing those who abuse things like this, but for most I see it as a natural evolution of cost cutting. If you make an environment more stressful and less bearable for staff then they're going to take more mental health days. What's worse, is that it's not just the teachers that suffer for it but the rest of the students as well.


Though ultimately this is a bit of a red herring IMO. Teachers in Ontario are allotted 10 sick days a year. A substitute usually makes about $240 a day so even if every single teacher in the entire province took every single sick day they were entitled to you're only talking about $2400 extra per class per year. Now obviously a huge number of those days are unavoidable because they're actually sick and there's no way every single teacher uses every day allotted, so the actual marginal cost per class from this is fairly small. That doesn't mean it should be ignored, but it's a pretty minor issue IMO.

[Ark2]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

"Kids these days have no respect/are dumb/are ignorant of their past/untrained for the future/are going to doom the planet!"

"#### teachers, they have the cushiest job ever!"

And you don't think this has anything to do with teachers? In Ontario, they worked to rule this past year, refusing to do any extra curriculars while preventing parents from volunteering in their place. Yet, all throughout this, the teachers union ran radio ads saying that they were fighting for kids and were putting their interests first. What kind of respect should that invoke?

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by Ark2

And you don't think this has anything to do with teachers? In Ontario, they worked to rule this past year, refusing to do any extra curriculars while preventing parents from volunteering in their place. Yet, all throughout this, the teachers union ran radio ads saying that they were fighting for kids and were putting their interests first. What kind of respect should that invoke?

Yeah those damn teachers, pushing for bigger classroom sizes, funding cutbacks, old-ass out of date teaching materials, and crumbling school buildings.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Yeah those damn teachers, pushing for bigger classroom sizes, funding cutbacks, old-ass out of date teaching materials, and crumbling school buildings.

And yet in theory, the actions that they're talking about earlier is diverting funding that could be used to help the issues your talking about.

[Brannigans Law]

Originally Posted by Ark2

They already get 11 weeks vacation! Not to mention 6 PA days which are little more than half days for them before they get to leave. How stressful do people really think teaching is?

The disrespect for teachers in our society and ignorance towards their job is almost too much to deal with.

[Ark2]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Yeah those damn teachers, pushing for bigger classroom sizes, funding cutbacks, old-ass out of date teaching materials, and crumbling school buildings.

Running radio ads saying that you aren't participating in extra-curriculars, aren't available for after class help, and aren't writing any comments on report cards because you are putting kids first is the very opposite of showing respect. It's this kind of attitude that has been prevalent amongst teachers for years, so if your position is that kids are less respectful today, I think it is reasonable to suggest that teachers might be reaping what they are sowing.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Brannigans Law

The disrespect for teachers in our society and ignorance towards their job is almost too much to deal with.

That could be said for a lot of jobs......

[Ark2]

Originally Posted by Brannigans Law

The disrespect for teachers in our society and ignorance towards their job is almost too much to deal with.

I don't know what it is like in Alberta, but in Ontario, they have only their atrocious PR management to blame for this.