TEACHERS' UNION ARE OUT TO LUNCH

The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario recently walked out of talks with the province. Apparently our "Education Premier" has finally realized that politics aside, he and the Province can no longer afford ridiculously high teachers' wages and benefits. Fifty years ago the School Boards and the Province had no difficulty imposing low wages, high expectations and tyrannical rules on teachers. Basically they laid the groundwork for a strong, aggressive and hostile union. As somebody once said "Companies get the unions they deserve." In this case the "company" is the province and the School Board. By the way when I say that the Premier and the Province can no longer afford our teachers, what I really mean is that we the taxpayers can't afford them. We never could anytime within the last twenty years plus but we did it anyways.

Today's Waterloo Region Record carrys an Opinion piece from Luisa D'Amato titled "Teachers' sick leave bonus passe". Luisa rightly points out that our "Education Premeier" has been the teachers best friend for a long time. Under his watch wages and benefits have risen dramatically and they were already excellent to start with. The top rate for a senior public school teacher here in Waterloo Region is $94,500. I'm sorry but I've met teachers who are excellent and they aren't worth that much. As far as the rest go they are self important, dogmatic, intolerant individuals with a much too strong sense of entitlement. They've been told for so long by their union that the sun shines out of their butts that they've come to believe it. That combined with their employers lack of accountability and hundreds of millions of dollars in their budgets which they freely misuse on legal advice and protection, and you have a system that is out of control. There isn't very much that I agree with Conservatives on but this is one item that I do.

One of the final straws in this unsustainable scenario is the ability of teachers to cash in accumulated sick days when they retire. They receive twenty paid sick days per year. If they aren't sick twenty days a year then they accumulate. Twenty-five or thirty years later they retire and get a cash payout of up to half a years salary (ie. $94,500).
Suck it up teachers, just like the rest of us who are paying your inflated salaries and benefits.