Tommy, please show your calculations and explain what you mean by “average private worker.” If it’s on the video, I appologize, but my internet connection is too slow for most videos.
[quote=green_achers]Tommy, please show your calculations and explain what you mean by “average private worker.” If it’s on the video, I appologize, but my internet connection is too slow for most videos.
[/quote]
You got it! Private Workers are people that work in the private sector and not for the Government. Gov Public workers are paid by your tax dollars while Private workers are paid for by privately owned businesses. So any teacher that works for a Public school is a Public workers and any teacher at a Private school is a Private sector worker.
First, I went straight to the Dept of Education’s own website to look for the average salaries of Public vs. Private teachers. http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55 You can see the real figure straight from the source is $49,600 for Public vs. a mere $36,300 for private teachers.
*Note: The more I research this NPR report, the more I find how much they fudged the numbers. Seems that the majority of private schools don’t even turn in statistics on teachers salaries because they don’t have to unless they belong to the National Association of Independent Schools, (NAIS) http://www.nais.org/ So right off the bat, NPR and the nutty Professor picked and choosed just what schools they want to compare. For example, Culver Military Academy in Indiana pays it’s teachers some of the highest in the nation because it is THE premier High School in the world. They averaged schools like Culver’s salaries which were reported in while NONE of the Catholic High schools and every other Private school across the states reported thier estimated $29,000 estimated average pay. Funny how NPR didn’t mention that???
OK next I took the numbers I posted above and factored in some of the figures for the Teachers who are protesting in Wisconsin.
- Wisconsin Public School teachers contribute a measley 0.8% towards their pensions vs the average private sector’s 7% (~6.2%)
- Wisconsin Public School teachers contribute a mere 6% vs the average private sector of 14% (~8%)
- Wisconsin Public School teachers get 2 weeks of vacation to start, up to 4 weeks after 20 years. (Private school teachers get at least 1 week less comparing the same time on the job.) (~3.9%)
- Wisconsin Public School teachers get 5 personal days per year and 10 sick days (which can accumulate up to a total of 150!!) while most private schools only give 2 personal days and 5 sick days a year which don’t roll over. (~5.2%)
- Wisconsin Public School teachers get to eat school lunches at a 75cent surcharge. (Our tax dollars pay for the difference.) Total cost is actually around $5.00 so that’s a $4.25 difference at 180 days = $765.00
Just these differences in benefits raise the reported average salary of Public School teachers 23.3% over the private sector. That puts them at nearly $62,000 average salary with benefits factored in compared to $36,300 for the private sector. (Keep in mind, that’s without comparing Catholic schools and anyone not affilitaed with the NAIS which makes the difference even greater!) There are even more differences where Public schools only require an education degree with a minor while private schools require 2 degrees typically, not just a minor. Then there is job security with the Unions because you can’t fire them and let’s not forget tenure… OK it’s late. This is way more than I ever wanted to research teacher’s salaries. No matter if you factor things or not, the point was the Public Unions make more any way you look at it and they are using your tax dollars to pay for it.
Well, of course they’re using our tax dollars, they’re in public schools. I don’t understand the point of that.
I was wondering if you meant all private employees or just teachers. It sounds like you’re reasonably comparing apples to apples, so that’s good. Over the years, I have known a lot of teachers, and I knew public schools paid better, but I didn’t know how much.
Of course, in most cases, a public school generally has to pay more to attract equally qualified teachers. The work environments tend to be a lot more difficult and sometimes dangerous. I’ve known some that were in private schools who wanted to teach in public schools, and others who wanted to stay in private, even though the pay was worse, because of the environment.
Don’t know how wide the differential needs to be, but it seems like a conversation that needs to happen.
From Fox News [et al]:
“Wisconsin’s measure would end collective bargaining for state, county and local workers, except for police, firefighters and the state patrol.”
[quote=TommyHolly]
Professor Hurd inconvienently left out the following:
-Defined Benefit plans (and the extra low percentage they pay into it.)
-Medical Insurance both current and during retirement… (as well as the % of what they are required to co-pay)
-Sick days, Private Days, Vacation time
-Pensions (and the extremely miniscule less than 1% they pay into it)
-In the teachers case, salary per hours worked (since they only work 180 days out of the year)[/quote]
The interesting point is not the comparison between public and private workers. Professor Hurd agreed that public state employees have better benefits than private workers. In both union and non-union states however, the public worker benefits are about the same.
I understand that public employees may have perks you can justifiiably call unfair. And there are some absurdities, I heard on NPR no less, such as a jail which can’t close down even though it holds only one prisoner because of a union contract preventing the lay-offs of the jailers. I agree these things need to be fixed. My question is why can’t they be fixed at the bargaining table once everyone understands there is a crisis. But I could be wrong; maybe the unions are intransigent, but I’d like to see that first.
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