Work Reform

Educated young people overthrow governments. You do the math.

They also want children to learn, which is the biggest thing that draws them to the job and gets them to accept shitty pay.

Teachers should get paid way more than they do.

The mess is allowing decades of union-busting to be effective. Teachers in my state of Victoria (Australia) are heavily unionised, so US$50k is the starting salary. You would absolutely be making what she is now, $64k, if you’d worked for 8yrs like she had.

Edit: And that’s just for public teaching jobs. Australia has way more private schools than the US and those pay even more. With 8yrs of experience it would be easy to get one of those positions and be making $70k.

The headline is really misleading. She now works for Costco corporate doing marketing training. The typical store employee is still around $18/hour.

Downvoting you, because you are mischaracterizing the article content.

The first half of it describes how she started there and the regular positions she had, before she moved up and into the teaching position she has at corporate office, which is similar to the teaching position she had before; both are of a teaching.

From the article...

At first, I made $18.50 an hour — a little less than what I earned as a teacher. I put in 40-hour workweeks, five days a week, and got a $1-per-hour raise when I hit 1,000 hours.

The important thing to remember is that she's still a teacher. She's just not teaching children anymore, since it doesn't pay enough. This should be a wake up call to most people...

Next line that you left off speaks to that...still.

"That's my position. We just haven't figured out how to do it yet."

That hits hard. Will we ever figure out how to do it here?

This might be the most memorable quote from the entire run of the West Wing for me. Our teachers are doing their job out of good will and our society is taking advantage of them because their value far outstrips what they are paid.

All of this is true,
instead of happening in schools for the advancement of knowledge,
it is happening in corporations for profits and egotistical power trips.

I work in a Costco. They treat me very well. Far better than the Walmart I worked at prior. Pay is far better too. As an example, I helped run the night shift as an Overnight Support Manager at Walmart. My topped out pay in that role was 50 cents an hour more than my starting pay at Costco. Now, 18 months later, I make more as a frontline grunt at Costco than I did in that management role.

3 years from now, as a frontline grunt, I'll be making more than the Assistant Manager I worked under at Walmart.

Everyone who can should shop there, max markup is 14%, they stand by their products, generous warrantees AND they treat their people very well

Any work reform, pro Union, ethical consumers out there should actively shun Walmart, shove a finger into Amazon's ass, and shop Costco when possible, support an ethical supply chain

I feel this story buries this: Costco above other stores is a step up from most careers

I have a close friend from high school who has worked there for 15 years now, she said she never thought Costco would be more than a summer job between college searching but she's happy there and they treat her well. Nothing wrong with that

"Then fucking school your kids at home and let's see how that goes."

They are, and not well.

Because it’s basically right wing propaganda very subtly pushing the message that we should privatize education and that corporations are good

Bullshit jobs are paying better than shit jobs. Might be a sign corporations are sitting on most of the money.

Actually, 2/3rds. If she's earning 50% more, that means the previous wage was 100 and now is 150. 100 / 150 is 0.6666... or 66.66%, 2/3rds.

Sorry for the pedantism, but it's the kind of math that needs to be correct to avoid misunderstandings.

Still an awfully sad thing, tho. Teachers should be paid the same as doctors, IMHO.

If anyone here lives in California, please express your support for AB-938. It increases teacher pay and attempts to maintain it at an inflation adjusted level.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB938

Let you assembly person know we need this now.

Clearly there would be a bias there, but are they wrong?

Some states? Maybe. Georgia (as mentioned in the article), likely not. There has been a continual war on education in the US and we see it on display every election cycle.

Despite their best efforts (including paying teachers in red states poverty wages), those who would keep us dumb and scared are frustrated to find a new generation that doesn't give a fuck about division along arbitrary demographic lines and is increasingly aware of class warfare.

This drives further education cuts and cries from extremist/hate motivated groups to further crack down on our schools because these parents are so weak willed as to be offended by diversity and critical thinking.

I hope these are the last dying wails of this kind of hatred and ignorance, but I'm not taking that for granted. Vote, educate, and promote solidarity and unity at every opportunity because the shitheels who are on the other side will fight tooth and nail to destroy education funding and cut down our teaching corps.

Edit: How a teacher of eight years experience is making $47k a year is a travesty.