Stellar work without a bonus?

One of the reasons I love teaching is that the job isn't about making a fat, old, white guy a bit richer than he already is. Every other job I've had has been inherently limited by this focus; the only reason you're there is to make a one percenter a little bit richer.  That raison d'etre infects everything about working in a money focused business. That I hear people refer to this as 'real work' always makes me laugh; it's real work in the same way that prostitution is real honest work - you lay yourself down for the money.  The argument that working for money adds real vigor and toughness to a workplace is nonsense. What it actually does is create fearful, simpering employees who believe that sucking up to their boss is more important than the work they do.

Ideas like excellence, originality, creativity and even work ethic are pretty much irrelevant.  If they can make more money by tossing out the hardest working, most creative, excellent employee, they will (and do - especially in the short term gains world we live in now). The only time businesses produce excellence is when small groups within the organization are protected from the pimps who are running it. That doesn't happen often. What usually happens is that businesses take the excellence and research they need from publicly funded universities.

That infectious economic thinking has blighted Ontario education thanks to Laurel Broten's story telling around fiscal responsibility.  Listening to the tragic prostitutes in the private sector telling us to accept their shabby circumstances because of economic necessity is purely the result of Ontario Liberal Party spin, and it has demonized my profession as a result.

Education: a reason to be optimistic about the future!

Teaching in Ontario has achieved real excellence in the past decade. We are truly world class, one of the very best. What made this happen? Bonuses? Financial incentives? No teacher ever got into teaching to make money. No teacher has ever gotten a cash payout for doing their job at a world class level (we'll leave that for all those excellent bankers out there). If financial reward isn't the point of performing at such an outstanding level, what is?

Public education is one of the most powerful social movements we've ever created. As Ray Kurzweil states his five reasons to be optimistic about the future, we are more educated than we've ever been before. We pay ten times what we used to into education as a society, but our post secondary graduation has increased by 280 times. We are making better use of the talent of our people; that is the crowning achievement of public education: social efficiency on a previously unheard of scale. The irony is that this very socialist mechanism, designed to realize the potential of all members of our society, also drives economic growth.

I'm back at school again tomorrow, dropped in to the political maelstrom of a forced contract, listening to blathering idiots whining about how much teachers get paid and how little they do. I'm tempted to get stingy about my work, but I don't think I can. I didn't get into this profession for the politics or the economics, I got into it because it's one of the finest possible reasons anyone could have for going to work; to help human beings recognize their potential. 

What I do is the opposite of the pyramid scheme most people find themselves working at each day; it's a good in itself, economically, socially, personally. I can't help but want to over achieve, no matter what the lowered expectations around me might suggest.

Hostage Situation

 I'm being held hostage by an authoritarian government.  These fascists (they certainly don't believe in democracy) have demanded that I surrender my rights and work under their terms.  In this impossible environment the people who speak for me have begun a legal battle on this government's attack on my fundamental Charter freedoms.  The process of overturning that legislation will take time, but it will eventually be overturned and will result in the end of this nasty, self-serving government and their illegal legislation.

My rep has also tried to bargain a deal to protect me in the meantime.  The bargain was made with a Bill 115 Magnum aimed at our heads, so a fair deal wasn't exactly the result of the process.  

There was no negotiation, it was more like begging for our lives.  This government was happy to turn the public against us in order to further their agenda.

If you're held hostage you look for the basics, you don't start asking for more than you had. It's a moment of desperation.

If we don't take the deal our rep has scraped together for us, this authoritarian regime will put us in an even worse situation because it has legislated our rights away.  In either case we will no longer have anything like we had.  We either lose a lot and keep a bit because our rep got some concessions out of the regime, or we end up in their even worse MoU prison, either way, we lose.

When someone has a gun to your head, do you start moralizing with them?

So do we vote for a contract that strips us of years of concessions because this government would rather flush money down poorly managed ehealth experiments, semi-privatized air ambulances, quarrelsomeness wind power and on again/off again power plants, or do we go to the wall and burn it all down because this is just wrong?  

If we don't vote for this, something even worse is imposed on us anyway.  This is divisive no matter how you play it.  Junior teachers lose their grid increases, senior teachers (who are the majority) don't lose their retirement sick-day payouts.  Some boards may OK this, others may not.  This isn't going to create labour peace, it's going to create an uneven mess across the province.

In the meantime that fight to overturn the regime continues.  In a year and a half, we could very well be standing over the ruins of Bill115 (and the Ontario Liberal dream of being the government) and be able to bargain a fair deal under Canadian law; we can't do that right now.  Whether we vote for this or not, our agreements will be in tatters because the Ontario Liberals and their Tea-party-Hudak lapdogs have pushed through this ridiculous, undemocratic legislation.

Do you go along with what you know is wrong hoping to protect you and your family as best you can or do you say, "NO, this is wrong, I will not be a party to it"?  This isn't an easy decision.

The lack of clarity, both moral and professional in this makes this a very uncertain, difficult decision to make.  Unfortunately I'm a bloody minded kind of fellow; I fear I'll vote for what's right, whatever the cost, politics be damned.

PRIVATE TEACHER, PUBLIC JOB