We have pretty much the same years of job experience. I admit to being envious of their holidays now and again, and their short days. They say their work is stressful. No doubt it is!!! My work is also stressful – don’t finish til 6 or 7pm most evenings, but I enjoy my work. I’m not complaining.

I had a 10% paycut last June  I also had to increase member contributions to the company pension plan (with the recent pension fund levy announcement- no doubt another increase is in store).
I didn’t march the streets in protest. Sure who’d listen? Two of my friends (both qualified solicitors) are out of work! I do feel lucky to have a job.

Joe Durkan admits that his salary should be cut by 20%. In fairness not many others will be welcoming a paycut (I certainly wouldn’t) but the government has a responsibility to ‘grow a pair’, stand up to the unions and cut salaries in the first instance, and not service levels(!!) of Irish civil servants on behalf of all Irish citizens because this is necessary. Sorry civil servants! your employer does not have the money to sustain your current salaries . There is no argument.

You mention bringing conditions in line with European averages. I would be totally in favour of this. What I would suggest is a shorter school day (preferably through longer breaks during the day), and 4 weeks extra teaching in June/early July. I would also put in place 2/3 weeks of training for teachers in August, to keep them up to date not only on their subjects but also their methods, IT, etc. This would still leave teachers with a very generous 6 week break in the summer (as well as breaks throughout the year). But I appreciate these are not economic points, so I’m straying from my home turf!

To close, just on one other point you made, the pensions levy is not a pay cut. It’s just your employer asking you to make a slightly less negligible contribution to an excellent defined benefit pension when you retire. Even if it were doubled (which would be extreme), it would still not even come close to the true financial cost of a public sector pension. If I could free up a little time, I would love to explain this point a little better. It’s not sour grapes, I don’t want to bash, but I do want people who are going to get these pensions (including myself, although I only notched up a couple of years in the public sector) to understand how lucky they are.

Thanks again, though, for taking the time to comment in such detail.

R

I have the 2009 OECD Indicators in front of me. They are largely consistent with the figures from the 2008 study. Irish secondary teachers work 735 teaching hours per year. This is in contrast to a European average of 665 in lower secondary and 635 in upper secondary school. Taking the average here, we work around 80 hours more teaching per year than the European average. And this is despite working 4 weeks less! That is some disparity. Would you agree that someone working, let’s say, 8 hours a day in a job deserves to get paid more than someone working 6 hours at the same job?

My point is that the wage per teaching hour is most relevant, not per day. The amount of hours you teach dictates the amount of preparation and corrections you have. Looking at the report, Irish secondary teachers earn $72 per teaching hour. This is completely consistent with the European average of $63 for lower secondary and $74 for upper seondary education. And this was before the 7.5% pension levy (pay cut)!

I am not arguing that Irish teachers don’t get paid more in absolute terms – they do. However, when working conditions are taken into account, the disparity disappears. Irish teachers work a 22 hour week. The European average on these figures is around 18 hours. There’s a 4 hour disparity there – the equivolent of about one day’s teaching per week. Therefore, for 34 weeks Irish teachers work 1 day more than the European average. For 4 weeks European teachers work 20 days more than Irish teachers (when we’re not working). That is still a 14 day weighing on our side.

If you are advocating Irish teacher’s wages abeing reduced to European levels in absolute term, wouldn’t you also have to advocate Irish teachers’ working conditions falling into line with those same European standards? This would mean the reduction of the Irish teaching week by 4 hours a week – I’d very much take that.

in conclusion, I feel that Irish teachers can find great solace in these OECD figures.I believe that pay will have to come down for budgetary reasons, nothing else. There is no moral imperative on these figures. With the inevitable reduction in pay, there is a serious case for a reduction in teaching hours in Ireland. Would you agree? I’d love to hear your opinion on this. The ironic thing is that of all things to do with teaching you’d think that the long holidays are the most unjustifiable. With the 22 hour teaching week these holidays turn out to be the most unjustifiable to touch!

Thanks for the comment. I wouldn’t like you to think that I am attacking teachers. I am trying to investigate which sectors in Ireland are most in a position to “bear the burden” for the adjustment. I saw official figures that Irish primary teachers are paid 57,000 euro on average – http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0416/teachers.html – and decided it warranted further investigation.

I know what you mean about relative wages – in Russia, the average wage in education is low than any other sector apart from agriculture – I’m not arguing that Irish teachers should be a poorly paid occupation. I’m just trying to find out whether – due to mechanisms like guaranteed incremental increases in pay and ‘benchmarking’ – they might be overpaid.

Hope that makes sense,

R

As an example, here is Switzerland, (not EU I know but…) teachers get paid less than house cleaners. I don’t what that says about Switzerland but I don’t know if you would want to compare their wages to those of Irish teachers.