gramarye wrote >>
rustbelt wrote >>
So you're suggesting that everyone should not only keep their existing compensation packages but get paid more if we decide to have them work in the classroom year-round (like almost every other professional occupation)?
I don't think it's unreasonable at all to say if a worker in any profession is required to work more, they should get paid more. Do you really expect ANY worker to work 90-100 extra days for free? That's no recipe for Ohio to retain qualified teachers & school employees.
Actually, what I most likely expect is for them to work their existing 9-month schedules for less, since that seems the most likely outcome of SB 5; this hypothetical discussion about extending school years is sadly most likely to remain hypothetical. However, yes, with increased ability to hire and fire, a significant number of teachers looking for work, and (though this is a minor point, just one that stands out because of the earlier posts this morning) the prospect of an influx of young, high-energy TFA teachers, I expect that motivated management might well be able to staff a school year-round with good teachers without having to budget for massively increased labor costs.
My salary is constant whether I work 60 hour weeks or 80 hour weeks. I work the longer weeks when necessary because that is simply the level of expectation. The nature of being a salaried employee is that you work as many hours as the job requires. That's true of teaching as much as any other profession. If you're not that committed to your profession, then you may need to reconsider it. Ohio is not short of people trying to get into the teaching profession; we can afford some attrition, particularly when the first ones to go voluntarily under a restructured school year would be the becnhwarmers who are most saliently motivated by getting the biggest paycheck for the least work, anyway.
You may want to reconsider your economics before you get disillusioned. If your employer stated you would work 80/hr weeks, well then, you came into the position fully aware. But, if they said we'll give you $x for 40 hours (because whether they call it salary or not, they're pitching you on 40 hours more or less), then you find yourself working 80 hours, we'll you're either half as effective as they thought you would be, or they're giving you the work of two employees. So, sold a salary position on a normal work week (which is in fact 40 in a lot of places), it's a problem one way or the other when you're working twice that and your default expectation is that compensation shouldn't change.
As a general purpose anecdote from my own experience, I've worked with large numbers of co-workers at high skill positions over the years, and the highest skilled and most effective employees are the ones working the closest to 40 hours. Once hours go way beyond that, you either have a complete distortion of the job requirements, or you've got employees that are not able to complete their job in 40 hours, which means their not really competent employees. That's not to say there aren't jobs whose requirements aren't really conducive to a traditional work schedule, there certainly are, but they aren't the norm as you suggest.
It's like the old Scrooge McDuck adage from the Disney comic... "work smarter, not harder".
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