Another state pushes Anti Union Laws

[Gulo Blue]

ok, but people below the university level don't need that kind of protection. it's just an abusive perk that breeds apathy and doesn't provide them any protection they don't already have.

If what was taught at a grade school level wasn't subject to politics, especially local politics, I might agree.

 

[Spartanmack]

"It's a legitimate approximation"

No it isn't. You decide to invest in equipment to catch salmon during the salmon run abased on the approximation that you make your daily income all year, you'd be hosed. How many economic measures are normalized by time of year because of the seasonal nature of certain industries? I don't even think you think it's a good approximation. If you had to guess what the average teach makes in their off months and you would be awarded some motivating amount of money depending on how close you were, I think you'd come up with a better approximation.

I do think it's a bad approximation - horrible really - for salmon fishing but that's a horrible analogy because there is a lot more risk and volatility to the income of people who catch salmon, not so with teachers. It may not be a legitimate and reasonable approximation for salmon fisherman but it works pretty well for teachers - that's the rate at which they're earning and they're going to get paid that same rate whether the salmon are running or not.

"you're completely ignoring the utility value of the extra time off."

I'm not ignoring it. I considered the range between $56-75k.

That's why I said it was an approximation - it's a range that's different for based on the choices they make. A lot of them probably don't realize that annualized income, but a lot of that difference is because of choices they make re: how they spend their summer break, those choices they make have value to them - hard to measure since it's not tradable, but you do the best you can.

 

[Spartanmack]

If what was taught at a grade school level wasn't subject to politics, especially local politics, I might agree.

they teach a prescribed curriculum pretty much straight through high school. If some loon goes off the script and starts filling kids' heads with nonsense, then they should be subject to discipline including the possibility of being fired. if the curriculum itself is political, then they have the same protections anyone else has from wrongful dismissal. Tenure below the university level is a horrible idea.

 

[Gulo Blue]

bad analogy - horrible really - because there is a lot more risk and volatility to the income of people who catch salmon, not so with teachers. It may not be a legitimate and reasonable approximation for salmon fisherman but it works pretty well for teachers - that's the rate at which they're earning and they're going to get paid that same rate whether the salmon are running or not.



That's why I said it was an approximation - it's a range that's different for based on the choices they make. A lot of them probably don't realize that annualized income, but a lot of that difference is because of choices they make re: how they spend their summer break.

Now you're just being nit picky. Dodging the issue of seasonal opportunity over an irrelevant detail and worrying about the use of the word approximation when I clearly considered the impact of the value of those summer months.

"a lot of that difference is because"

...but not all...I suspect you agree with that point and are just being argumentative.

 

[Gulo Blue]

they teach a prescribed curriculum pretty much straight through high school. If some loon goes off the script and starts filling kids' heads with nonsense, then they should be subject to discipline including the possibility of being fired. if the curriculum itself is political, then they have the same protections anyone else has from wrongful dismissal. Tenure below the university level is a horrible idea.

If it were not political, I doubt you'd hear half the complaining you do regarding tenure.

 

[tomdalton22]

I wonder what teachers would want to get paid if they went to teaching all year. My guess is they would say $56K for 9 months = $75K for 12.

 

[Spartanmack]

Now you're just being nit picky. Dodging the issue of seasonal opportunity over an irrelevant detail and worrying about the use of the word approximation when I clearly considered the impact of the value of those summer months.

"a lot of that difference is because"

...but not all...I suspect you agree with that point and are just being argumentative.

NO! this is not a nit, that is a material difference. Risk and volatility are priced into a lot of seasonal work, especially commodities like fishing. You have yield concerns, market price concerns, fluctaution in consumable prices (fuel, bait, etc). That's not the case for teachers. That's a HUGE difference. The greater the volatility, the less predictable their income is. I'm surprised you don't see that. Plus, I'm guessing the average fisherman or ice road trucker doesn't have the same off season opportunities as a teacher. It's not like they can charge $30 to $50/hour to tutor summer school kids or get paid to do part time office work.

And I'm not being argumentative - it seems you're being pedantic. Of course they don't all realize economic income of 75k per year, but when comparing their wages to people who work 12 months a year, annualizing their 9 month salary is a reasonable approximation. Just saying "No, they make 56k so they're paid less than everyone else" is nonsense. If the average annual salary of people with a college degree is $60/year and teachers are making $56k per year for 9 months work, they're clearly doing better than average.

 

[Spartanmack]

If it were not political, I doubt you'd hear half the complaining you do regarding tenure.

definitely not. A lot of the complaining I hear about tenure comes from teachers who are fed up with what these rules are doing to education - the two biggest gripes are generally about seniority and tenure and the apathy they breed.

 

[Spartanmack]

I wonder what teachers would want to get paid if they went to teaching all year. My guess is they would say $56K for 9 months = $75K for 12.

my guess is they would find a way to ask for a lot more than $75k.

 

[Michchamp]

definitely not. A lot of the complaining I hear about tenure comes from teachers who are fed up with what these rules are doing to education - the two biggest gripes are generally about seniority and tenure and the apathy they breed.

wow, so you're actively going out and interviewing teachers to learn about their biggest gripes with respect to the educational system first hand. that's real deep. I don't think anyone else here has the sort of committment to education that you do.

 

[Gulo Blue]

NO! this is not a nit, that is a material difference. Risk and volatility are priced into a lot of seasonal work, especially commodities like fishing. You have yield concerns, market price concerns, fluctaution in consumable prices (fuel, bait, etc). That's not the case for teachers. That's a HUGE difference. The greater the volatility, the less predictable their income is. I'm surprised you don't see that.

And I'm not being argumentative - it seems you're being pedantic. Of course they don't all realize economic income of 75k per year, but when comparing their wages to people who work 12 months a year, annualizing their 9 month salary is a reasonable approximation. Just saying "No, they make 56k so they're paid less than everyone else" is nonsense. If the average annual salary of people with a college degree is $60/year and teachers are making $56k per year for 9 months work, they're clearly doing better than average.

"Risk and volatility are priced into a lot of seasonal work, "

The analogy was about the seasonal opportunity. That there is risk involved is irrelevant to the analogy because it doesn't impact whether or not you'd extrapolate seasonal profit to an annual income. My point is not based on risk and it is not impacted by the presence of risk. Add the words "on average" to the fishing story if it doesn't make sense to you otherwise. It's an unnecessary complication. If there was no risk in fishing, you still would not perform the extrapolated annual profit calculation to make business decisions.


"Just saying "No, they make 56k so they're paid less than everyone else" is nonsense."

So go argue with someone making that point. I didn't. I said that depending on how much value you assign that 3 months off they fall in between the 70-80th percentile...and that's out of everyone, not just people with degrees.


edit:
"And I'm not being argumentative - it seems you're being pedantic."

I feel like you agree the value of the $56k + 3 months off to an average teacher is somewhere between $56-75k, just like I've been saying, but you're adding details about volatility to make it appear is if there's a disagreement hinging on some important technicality.

 

[Spartanmack]

"Risk and volatility are priced into a lot of seasonal work, "

The analogy was about the seasonal opportunity. That there is risk involved is irrelevant to the analogy because it doesn't impact whether or not you'd extrapolate seasonal profit to an annual income. My point is not based on risk and it is not impacted by the presence of risk. Add the words "on average" to the fishing story if it doesn't make sense to you otherwise. It's an unnecessary complication. If there was no risk in fishing, you still would not perform the extrapolated annual profit calculation to make business decisions.

"Just saying "No, they make 56k so they're paid less than everyone else" is nonsense."

So go argue with someone making that point. I didn't. I said that depending on how much value you assign that 3 months off they fall in between the 70-80th percentile...and that's out of everyone, not just people with degrees.


edit:
"And I'm not being argumentative - it seems you're being pedantic."

I feel like you agree the value of the $56k + 3 months off to an average teacher is somewhere between $56-75k, just like I've been saying, but you're adding details about volatility to make it appear is if there's a disagreement hinging on some important technicality.

Hang on a second - when this discussion started you said "extrapolating from the paid part of the year makes zero sense" you didn't mention anything about a range until we'd been back and forth on it a few times about 2 pages later whereas from the beginning, I've said it was a legitimate "approximation". So whatever confusion there was about that is at least as much on you as me.

And I still don't think risk and volatility are irrelevant at all. I think it's a major difference that makes the analogy very weak. On top of the volatility, you also have a much shorter "season" for most work that is truly seasonal. Also, many of the workers in those seasonal trades probably have a lot bigger range (to the downside) in the value of their off season opportunities. So extrapolation for comparison is a lot less meaningful for the seasonal types of jobs you're talking about. That's not a nit - those are big differences. Of course, a teacher can't simply opt to work for 3 more months, but since their economics are 100% predictable for those 9 months, extrapolation is clearly more accurate and reliable for making these comparisons. The fact that extrapolating doesn't work as well for some jobs doesn't make it an invalid method for comparing any less than 12 month job.

 

[Gulo Blue]

Hang on a second - when this discussion started you said "extrapolating from the paid part of the year makes zero sense" you didn't mention anything about a range until we'd been back and forth on it a few times about 2 pages later whereas from the beginning, I've said it was a legitimate "approximation". So whatever confusion there was about that is at least as much on you as me.

Posts 22 and 26, right? Both on page 3.

 

[Gulo Blue]

" The fact that extrapolating doesn't work as well for some jobs doesn't make it an invalid method for comparing any less than 12 month job."

It doesn't work for either seasonal job, at all. So it's a bad comparison to regularly paid 12 months jobs.

 

[Spartanmack]

" The fact that extrapolating doesn't work as well for some jobs doesn't make it an invalid method for comparing any less than 12 month job."

It doesn't work for either seasonal job, at all. So it's a bad comparison to regularly paid 12 months jobs.

it actually works pretty well for teachers when you want to compare their pay rates to those of people who work all year long. At least we agree it doesn't work well for salmon fisherman.

 

[Spartanmack]

Posts 22 and 26, right? Both on page 3.

I missed 26 but didn't you engage in this argument for 2 pages after I said it was a good "approximation" in my first post on the subject?

 

[Spartanmack]

wow, so you're actively going out and interviewing teachers to learn about their biggest gripes with respect to the educational system first hand. that's real deep. I don't think anyone else here has the sort of committment to education that you do.

says the guy who draws conclusions like rich Germans are smarter than rich Americans because he's met some wealthy Germans. I see you didn't ask Santa for self awareness this year like I recommended - you just can't help but serve up meatballs, can you? I'm actually related to several teachers and am friends with several more. I volunteer for a good friends charity whose mission is education reform where I deal with teacher and administrators who spend their careers on education reform. I have another very good friend of mine who left Wall Street to start a school and my brother-in-law is principal at a charter school that's consistently ranked in the top 25 in the country. So while my evidence may be anecdotal, it's probably a lot more sound than the data you collected for your "rich Germans are smarter than rich Americans theory".

And by the way, you misspelled commitment. Anyway, I'd say I'm a bit more committed to education than people like you whose commitment consists of whining on the internet about how they want to fix education by making it equally bad for everyone and throw more money into ideas that have already been shown to be failures.

 

[biggunsbob]

Who protects the workers in these right to work states because it is certainly not the employer's who love that they can fire without cause.

Here is a example

A Worker works from 2pm to 10pm and is on call until right up till ten. They can get called out at 9:59 and they have to go. This is a driving job. They get it done in a hour and get back at 11pm. Now They have to be back driving at work at 3am? so that is 2.5 to 3 hours in-between shifts. You cant bitch about it cause they can fire you for no reason. who gives a shit if you can hardly keep your eyes open because the employer probably has dead pheasant insurance on you. I do believe in most cases Unions have the best interest of their workers in mind. Who is going to protect that worker above ? I guess no one.

 

[Gulo Blue]

I missed 26 but didn't you engage in this argument for 2 pages after I said it was a good "approximation" in my first post on the subject?

I don't follow. You mention approximation in post 33 and I quoted it as post 35.

 

[Spartanmack]

Who protects the workers in these right to work states because it is certainly not the employer's who love that they can fire without cause.

Here is a example

A Worker works from 2pm to 10pm and is on call until right up till ten. They can get called out at 9:59 and they have to go. This is a driving job. They get it done in a hour and get back at 11pm. Now They have to be back driving at work at 3am? so that is 2.5 to 3 hours in-between shifts. You cant bitch about it cause they can fire you for no reason. who gives a shit if you can hardly keep your eyes open because the employer probably has dead pheasant insurance on you. I do believe in most cases Unions have the best interest of their workers in mind. Who is going to protect that worker above ? I guess no one.

OSHA, anti-discrimination and a host of other employment laws.