Tag Archives: Labor

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Average public school teacher paid more than median household income

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CNS News reports.

Excerpt:

The average public school teacher in the United States is paid more in base salary alone for just the work he or she does during the school year than the median U.S. household earns in an entire year.

In the 2011-2012 school year, according to a newly released report by the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, the average base salary for a full-time public school teacher in the United States was $53,100 for the regular school year—not counting any earnings made for summer work.

In 2011, the latest year estimated by the Census Bureau, median household income in the United States was $50,054.

Thus, the average base salary paid to a public school teacher for the regular school year was $3,064 more than the income the median household made in an entire year.

According to the NCES, many public school teachers are paid additional money—over and above their base salaries—by the public school systems that employ them. For example, 41.8 percent are paid an average of $2,500 during the school year to work in extracurricular activities; 4.4 percent get an average of $1,400 during the school year in compensation based on their students’ performance; and 7.9 percent get an average of $2,100 during the school year from other school-system sources.

Also, 16.1 percent of public school teachers have a second job outside the school system that employs them as a teacher. These teachers earn an average of $4,800 during the school year from those outside jobs.

When all sources of teacher income are taken into account, according to the NCES, the average teacher income during the 2011-2012 school year was $55,100.

If two public school teachers were married to one another, and each earned only a public school teacher’s average base salary of $53,100; their combined income would be $106,200. That is 212 percent of the nation’s median household income.

And what are you paying for, exactly?

One of the reasons why I think that teachers should not be paid so much is because they are not accountable when they do wrong. Thanks to teachers unions, it’s almost impossible to fire them. I can understand paying people less when they have more job security, but we are paying teachers more and they have tons of job security. How much job security? Well, consider this story about a public school teacher who molested one of his students and was convicted of rape. That part is not surprising. What is surprising is how seven of his female colleagues wrote letters on his behalf to try to get him a lighter sentence. Do you think that those seven teachers will be fired for doing that? Guess again.

One of the character witnesses is the rapist’s own wife:

High school teacher Toni Erickson is the wife of child rapist Neal Erickson.  Clearly, Mrs. Erickson has exhibited loyalty toward her husband and is willing to overlook that he molested an eighth grade boy for three years, and that is very touching.  But what’s scary is that from Toni’s lopsided perspective, the child is less a victim than the rapist.

In her letter to the judge on Neal’s behalf, Mrs. Erickson said this:

As for punishment, because I know that is something the community expects, hasn’t he been punished enough? He is losing a job he has held for 17 years [during three of which he was raping a child] and losing all future career potential as a teacher.

It’s clear that Toni seems more upset about the damage to her husband’s future than the physical and psychological damage he imposed on a child.  Mrs. Erickson also blames the community for demanding what she apparently feels is a disproportionate level of punishment, and deems herself qualified to determine how much penance for a child rapist is penance enough.

Toni’s moral position that statutory rape is not harmful to children was further exposed when she said,

I have seen many delightful students who have been damaged by horrible events in their lives. While I acknowledge that Neal’s conduct with [a victim he found ‘delightful’] was wrong, I do not believe [the 14-year-old] was damaged by Neal’s action[s].

Furthermore, she said,

“I base my opinion on my personal interaction with [the boy], both before and after Neal’s actions. However [my daughter] very likely could be [damaged]. Please don’t punish her by [her father’s] absence in her life.”

So according to a woman who has overseen a high school classroom for 15 years, jailing a dangerous predator is cruel, because when he’s not molesting boys, Neal is needed to father their daughter?

Would you like to get your money back from the public school system and send your child to a school that is accountable to you? Well, tough. You can’t. You can’t even have them fired when they condone raping children. If they’re not going to be accountable, then I don’t see why they should be paid so much.

News

President Obama intervenes to exempt Congress from Obamacare

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From the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

To adapt H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating the cynicism and self-dealing of the American political class. Witness their ad-libbed decision, at the 11th hour and on the basis of no legal authority, to create a special exemption for themselves from the ObamaCare health coverage that everybody else is mandated to buy.

[…][Obamacare] means that about 11,000 Members and Congressional staff will lose the generous coverage they now have as part of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). Instead they will get the lower-quality, low-choice “Medicaid Plus” of the exchanges. The Members—annual salary: $174,000—and their better paid aides also wouldn’t qualify for ObamaCare subsidies. That means they could be exposed to thousands of dollars a year in out-of-pocket insurance costs.

The result was a full wig out on Capitol Hill, with Members of both parties fretting about “brain drain” as staff face higher health-care costs. Democrats in particular begged the White House for help, claiming the Reid language was merely an unintentional mistake. President Obama told Democrats in a closed-door meeting last week that he would personally moonlight as HR manager and resolve the issue.

And now the White House is suspending the law to create a double standard. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that runs federal benefits will release regulatory details this week, but leaks to the press suggest that Congress will receive extra payments based on the FEHBP defined-contribution formula, which covers about 75% of the cost of the average insurance plan. For 2013, that’s about $4,900 for individuals and $10,000 for families.

[…]This latest White House night at the improv is also illegal. OPM has no authority to pay for insurance plans that lack FEHBP contracts, nor does the Affordable Care Act permit either exchange contributions or a unilateral bump in congressional pay in return for less overall compensation. Those things require appropriations bills passed by Congress and signed by the President.

But the White House rejected a legislative fix because Republicans might insist on other changes, and Mr. Obama feared that Democrats would go along because they’re looking out for number one. So the White House is once again rewriting the law unilaterally, much as it did by suspending ObamaCare’s employer mandate for a year. For this White House, the law it wrote is a mere suggestion.

The lesson for Americans is that Democrats who passed ObamaCare didn’t even understand what they were doing to themselves, much less to everyone else. But you can bet Democrats will never extend to ordinary Americans the same fixes that they are now claiming for themselves. The real class divide in President Obama’s America is between the political class and everyone else.

Just keep in mind that there is only one party fighting to repeal this monstrosity, and it’s the Republican Party. The Democrat Party wrote this bill, they supported this bill, and their supporters helped push it through. Now they are trying to get THEMSELVES out of it. But they still want it to apply to YOU. The only people trying to get YOU out of it is the Republican Party.

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News

IRS employee union opposes making Obamacare apply to themselves

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CNS News reports.

Excerpt:

The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents Internal Revenue Service employees, is urging its members to oppose legislation that would force federal employees off their government healthcare plans and onto the state and national healthcare exchanges established under Obamacare.

Members of Congress and their staffers are already required to participate in the exchanges, which will go into effect next October 1st under the Affordable Care Act.

However, a bill (HR 1780) introduced in April by Rep. David Camp (R–Mich.) would extend that requirement to all federal employees, an idea that does not sit well with the union.

So NTEU is strongly urging its members –  including the Internal Revenue Service agents tasked with implementing Obamacare – to oppose Camp’s legislation, which would compel them to personally participate in the same healthcare program they will be enforcing.

On the NTEU website, union members are urged to email their congressman and senators, asking them to oppose H.R.1780. NTEU provides a sample letter that members can simply sign and send, or rewrite it as they wish:

“I am a federal employee and one of your constituents. I am very concerned about legislation that has been introduced by Congressman Dave Camp to push federal employees out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and into the insurance exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

[…]Last election cycle, the NTEU donated $547,812 to pro-Obamacare Democrat candidates, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi ($10,000), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) ($11,000), and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) ($12,500). And that figure doesn’t include the $62,500 the NTEU donated to the Democrat National Committee, or the $125,000 it gave to various left-leaning super PACs.

However, the union only donated $24,000 total to Republican candidates during the same time period.

Wow. And recently we saw that three of the biggest automobile manufacturer unions were also pushing back against Obamacare. Apparently, no one who actually worked to get Obamacare passed wants it for themselves. They just want it for other people.