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My wife makes under $40k after about 10 years. Health benefits blow, too. I'd love if the unions around here were some of those mean ol' ones who get teachers w

My wife makes under $40k after about 10 years. Health benefits blow, too. I'd love if the unions around here were some of those mean ol' ones who get teachers way more than they deserve or whatever. The one here can't even keep their daily planning periods clear of bullshit meetings. She grades or lesson plans for over an hour just about every night, has 30-60 minutes of meetings after school at least once a week. That wasn't so bad before we had kids, but it's really shitty now. Lots of her co-workers work second jobs to make ends meet. Luckily for us I make a whole lot more than she does, which is dumb because she both does way more good than me and works much harder.

pkaye 7y ago
The teachers union in my city basically negotiated a deal for higher pay but the union would self fund their health benefits. It turned out to be a bad deal because over the years health care costs skyrocketed compared to the pay increases. What amazed me is some teachers are mentioning premiums higher than the individual market rates. So apparently they can't even negotiate good group premiums.
- shantly 7y ago
  School district controls ours but this year they were all "the bad news is ya'll got sick too much so the rates are going up and deductible's worse, the good news is it's only going up 10% this year and, oh, probably forever into the future every year, and no we didn't get a second quote, the insurers told us they didn't even make any money on us last year." There's a shocking amount of incompetence and corruption in school admin. Sometimes it's hard to tell which is which.
yellowapple 7y ago
My impression (based on having interacted with a lot of teachers, including friends and family members) has been that teachers' unions are "those mean ol' ones who get teachers way more than they deserve", but only for those teachers with a substantial amount of tenure (on the scale of multiple decades). Any other teachers were effectively deemed expendable, getting abysmal salaries and pink slips.

pkaye 7y ago

The teachers union in my city basically negotiated a deal for higher pay but the union would self fund their health benefits. It turned out to be a bad deal because over the years health care costs skyrocketed compared to the pay increases. What amazed me is some teachers are mentioning premiums higher than the individual market rates. So apparently they can't even negotiate good group premiums.

shantly 7y ago
School district controls ours but this year they were all "the bad news is ya'll got sick too much so the rates are going up and deductible's worse, the good news is it's only going up 10% this year and, oh, probably forever into the future every year, and no we didn't get a second quote, the insurers told us they didn't even make any money on us last year." There's a shocking amount of incompetence and corruption in school admin. Sometimes it's hard to tell which is which.

yellowapple 7y ago

My impression (based on having interacted with a lot of teachers, including friends and family members) has been that teachers' unions are "those mean ol' ones who get teachers way more than they deserve", but only for those teachers with a substantial amount of tenure (on the scale of multiple decades). Any other teachers were effectively deemed expendable, getting abysmal salaries and pink slips.