Morning Brew: Ontario teacher walkout looms, casino meeting favors "no," sending messages to space, ferries could get ad wraps, and Leafs want better with Nonis

You need to hold a strike when people are going to pay attention, that's why.

Can all employers now "impose" a contract and make striking "illegal"?

Just fine them then. These teachers are making a mockery of the profession.

Teachers on strike. THERE'S news!! Sure. They might want to look at what happened to the garbage workers.........

Any person who becomes a teacher without doing due diligence regarding the working conditions, the job expectations, or the risks, is plainly put a fool. Its like a firefighter complaining about being subjected to smoke inhalation; they knew what they were getting into and accepted the risks associated with the profession.

Teachers choose to be teachers. If that's a decision they didn't totally think out ahead of time then there is no one to blame but themselves.

They are banned from striking. If they walk off the job and they are not in a legal strike position, they are participating in an illegal strike and can be punished.

BRB, class. Making 70K with three months off a year, not including the five seconds it takes to "lesson plan" (i.e. looking at the curriculum, realizing it can't be changed and saying "yep, I'm teaching this next year")

I'm not a teacher, but I have a lot of friends who are. And all they do is complain and bitch about how much they hate there jobs. I honestly can't think of one who 'enjoys' what they do. There Facebook status' are always moaning about how much they hate it! Thank god I don't have children, because most teachers hate what they do!!!!

I don't get it.
Why become a teacher if you hate it so much?!
Or, just leave and o something else if you think another job is so much better. (ps. another job won't give you 3 months off a year)

70k a year, after ten years: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/anatomy-of-an-ontario-teachers-paycheque/article6015968/

Yeah, teachers have good pay and benefits. Because they have a union, like I said. I never said teachers didn't assume the job would be hard, but they expect to be compensated fairly for it. If your job is hard and requires more than a masters, and you only get 40K for it, then it must not be very important or you have a terrible employer and are willing to put up with them. Either way it isn't the teachers' fault you didn't plan your career better.

If you think their job is so easy and they don't deserve the pay then do exactly what I said and fire them all and replace them. Duh. If the new teachers do just as good a job then everything is fine. If they don't then I guess we'll all learn why we need teachers.

I'm just so sick of people's answer to "my job sucks and I don't get paid enough" being "someone else should get paid worse so I feel better!" instead of the far more obvious "what can I do to improve things?". Stop whining about someone else getting paid better than you, and start looking at how they got that way and how you can improve your own life.

I'm just so sick of people's answer to "my job sucks and I don't get paid enough" being "someone else should get paid worse so I feel better!" instead of the far more obvious "what can I do to improve things?". Stop whining about someone else getting paid better than you, and start looking at how they got that way and how you can improve your own life.

You'd have a point here if teachers weren't public sector employees. They act this way, every year it seems, because they're entitled. I am their employer and they're taking advantage of me.

And not only does that have to end right now, it has nothing to do with what I do for a living in the private sector.

Teaching, an easy job! WOW. Anyone who says that should be made to work as a teacher for a week. You'll run screaming from the building by Monday noon.

How about how they get pay raises? In the private sector, raises are based on performance. There are semi-annual/annual performance reviews that directly lead to the amount of an employee's pay increase.
Meanwhile, teachers get the glory of 3% contractually agreed upon raises. Additionally, they get raises on a grid system that grants raises based on experience/level of education.
For a teacher, there is no incentive to perform well. No wonder it's such a cushy job and so much of the public is angered.
As a private sector employee, I'm extremely jealous.

Then go for it. Because one quick look at your attitude and it's clear you'll be eaten alive.

As mentioned earlier, some of us also have to deal with bureaucracy and something even worse than children-- petulant adults. It's in the bag, don't worry about me. Just worry about your precious pension. It's not like Little Timmy used after school football to escape his abusive father or anything.

Because they're public sector employees. That's why it's important to discuss their salary, pension, and benefits package, especially when it becomes a source of arrogance and general out-of-touchness. And that doesn't even mention the slew of skilled replacements available who would drop whatever they're doing to land their dream job and, just guessing here, wouldn't be so brazenly obnoxious and arrogant about it.

Also, the day I see a teacher protest wages outside a McDonalds, is the day I'll stand up for someone who makes two or even three times the median salary in the province. Instead, they want those McDonalds workers to contribute three more cents from their meagre pay to fund rollover sick days.

Teachers, for the most part, have accepted that they have the most underappreciated job in the country. There's a good sample right here of the jealous ignoramuses who think teaching is an easy and overpaid gig. Bleat on all you like. That's no reason for teachers to stop fighting for basic worker's rights.

No ones "jealous". They're just tired of trying to get their kids educated while every few months the teachers are going on strike and whining about it.

"basic worker's rights"... like banking sick days, right? God you're just a tad deluded and have simplified this argument to fit your mental framework.

Jealous? No.

I have work ethic and integrity. Maybe teachers should give either of those a shot, but preferably both.

Wow, that's a whole lot of ignorance to assume no one works harder than teachers do. I'm not claiming I'm the hardest worker, but I also don't think, in general, that teachers are the hardest workers.
I don't want to take teachers away from their families. I'm pointing out that they work fewer hours but paid on par with the rest of the middle class of the private sector. Why is that the case? If they work fewer than 200 days annually, they should be compensated as such. Thus, a fair salary would be 80% of average as they work 80% of the days.
As for that last comment, people in Toronto were pretty worked up over the garbage strike.

Ryan, clearly you don't know any teachers or you wouldn't be saying this. The teachers I know are in the classroom by 8am (7am, if their school has an early start time)and are there until at least 6pm. More often, it's until the custodians ask them to wind things up so they can lock the doors at 8pm.

Are there bad teachers? Of course, there are bad employees in every profession. But to say they don't work as hard as you because they don't work as many days as you is foolish.

Right. I get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I go to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down at the mill, and pay the mill owner for permission to come to work, and when I get home, my wife and kids kill me and dance about on my grave singing Hallelujah.

Therefore, teachers don't work hard.

Oh, we do. I'll have your serving of crow waiting for you.

RIGHT. Now we know you're lying. If a school finds a child still waiting to go home hours after classes have ended, they're going to call child services.

Keep on trying, Rob. Your posts are funny for all the wrong reasons.

I have seen the light! I have just quit my job and enrolled in teacher's college. I hope I'm good enough to make it as a teacher. As a stupid neocon moron, I don't think I can make it though since I've been brainwashed by Big Media for so long.
What I have been doing for a living as a sheep was far inferior to teachers. I can't believe, in my sheeple ways I haven't seen it. Please forgive me Simon and Skye! I beg your eternal forgiveness!!!

I will now join the ranks of the hardest working people in the world, teachers. I don't think I'll be able to survive, but thankfully those 2 months off should help.

You keep bringing up farm animals but you have pig shit for brains. Ironic.

It would seem my caploc is lazy tonight though. Haha. And your wee internet meltdown WAS rather entertaining though.

It's pretty easy to see how Ford got elected by reading the comments on this board. A huge number of Torontonians, right and left (and myself included) really do not like unions. While I did not let this cloud my judgement about Rob Ford (1 right does not balance 999 wrongs) certainly many did.

'MOST people outside the Unionised Elite are far from lazy. When most of us are unhappy with a job, we DO do something about it, we find a better job!'

And on, and on, the cycle goes, where it stops, nobody knows. You must like letting corporations kick you in the ass.

'People are speaking out more because they are getting sick and tired of these strikers expecting 'support' when they don't deserve it.'

'People' (and I use that term VERY loosely-the other word that I used applies to them more) are only 'speaking out' because they've been brainwashed by Big Media to do so, like you. Let me guess-you're one of the sheeple that used to insult the Occupy movement, right?

'We're lazy because we don't agree?'

You're lazy because instead of using the example of the teachers (and others) in this situation, you've decided that it's better to just sit back and let your employer fuck you. That's why I call you and people like you 'sheeple' instead of people.

'It's not just the teachers, it's our society that feels it's more entitled every day.'

Said 'entitlement' is a human right, enshrined in many constitutions and in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and many people express that right around the planet. Unlike you and your fellow brainwashed sheeple whose minds have been corroded by years of neocon bullshit, at least they know how to fight for said rights, unlike you.

'Did you ever think that some people comment just to rile up those of you that think the internet is real life?'

This is a forum for discussion, and I'm disagreeing with you and many of your fellow dupes/stooges; the trouble is, you can't really argue the truth of what I Alex, and Skye are saying (nor can you doubt it when and while it's happening in the real world) and so of seeing said truth, you come up with a schoolboy howler like that. Many people use the Internet daily to do this-what's the difference between this site and those other sites where they do talk about labor issues?

'usually you post valid opinions'

This one is just as valid, except to people who can't see that they're being fucked, like you and all of the other sheep that bashed the teachers for going on strike. I'd suggest that people like you stop being brainwashed, and read some history about labor unions and what they fought, bled, suffered, and even died for and also realize that what's happening now is the same as what happened then, but knowing you, you'll just go back to doing the same things as usual, and being forever brainwashed. So it goes.

Needing to post meaningless responses much?

I wouldn't care whether a group was unionized or were lazy or entitled, if they were private sector. That way, I could simply choose to use another service provider and take my money elsewhere. Not the case with teachers. If you support teachers then tell your elected officials. If you want the govt to take a hard line with teachers, tell your elected officials to keep up the good work. In terms of the war for hearts and minds, I doubt that any of the recent media coverage favours teachers.