Path: utzoo!censor!geac!jtsv16!brian
From: brian@jtsv16.UUCP (Brian A. Jarvis)
Newsgroups: ont.general
Subject: Re: Community College Teachers on strike
Message-ID: <1209@jtsv16.UUCP>
Date: 14 Nov 89 15:43:59 GMT
References: <606@alias.UUCP> <1989Nov11.143948.15365@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <18113@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <207@isgtec.UUCP>
Reply-To: brian@jtsv16.jts.com (Brian A. Jarvis)
Distribution: ont
Organization: JTS Computer Systems Ltd., Toronto
Lines: 63

In article <207@isgtec.UUCP> robert@isgtec.UUCP (Robert Osborne) writes:
>In article <18113@watdragon.waterloo.edu> mdhutton@violet.waterloo.edu (Mike Hutton) writes:
>>I'm not so sure about the collage strike, partly because I am ignorant of
>>most of the details.  I can't really understand why college teachers would
>>make less than high-school teachers.

>Better yet, why do carpenters, brick layers, GM assembly line workers,
>etc. make more than teachers and nurses?  Like all occuptions where there
>is also a non-monetary reason to work (teaching, nursing, school board
>trustee's (uhmmm, bad example :-)) the employers tend to rip off the
>workers.

Umm... I tend to look at this from the opposite direction.  Teachers are
getting good pay, but the auto workers and brick layers are getting about
twice as much money as they deserve.  Mostly due to monopolization of
labour.  "Closed shop".

>       There is also a reluctance on the part of the public to pay
>these people more:  "Teachers get summers off so their salary should
>lowered accordingly".  This leads to situations like the current nursing
>crises (look in the careers section, practically every hospital is looking
>for nurses).  I firmly believe that nurses and teachers are *grossly*
>underpaid,  I certainly want the person teaching or healing my children
>to be making more than person slopping mortar on the bricks of my house!

Hey, your teachers must be making radically different amounts than the
teachers at my schools.  They were the best paid occupation in the area,
short of the lawyers and doctors and a handful of entrepreneurs.  They were
all (with the exception of the few rookies fresh out of college) in the
$35,000+ bracket, department heads more and other officials
still more yet.  And back in Temiskaming, housing costs are a *LOT* lower
than Toronto...

I'll certainly agree with your comments on nursing, however.  That is one
sector that should get a raise.  NOT a single lump increment, but an
increment of, say, 4% above inflation for the next three to five years or
so.  So that we *taxpayers* will be able to absorb the costs gradually.

Most of the "underpaid" people are NOT underpaid in most areas of Ontario;
in Toronto, however, where my rent for a basement apartment is twice as much
as my parents' mortgage payment for a 160 acre farm, yeah, Toronto-based
workers are likely underpaid.  I understand Ottawa isn't much better,
although I haven't any first hand information on that.

But I don't see why my tax money should be given to someone for the luxury
of living in Toronto...

[...some text deleted...]

>I think all of Canada Post, provincial, and federal civil services should
>be fired and the useful 50% hired back.  I really hate the attitude that
>if somebody hires you they are somehow indebted to you for life (sort of
>an "indentured master" :-).

Amen.

>Rob.

-- 
Brian A. Jarvis,                        J.T.S. Computer Systems,
brian@jtsv16.jts.com,                   Downsview, Ontario
...jtsv16!brian                         Canada M3H 5T5  (416) 665-8910
   History is all too frequently the study of the worst case scenario.