Re: The St. FX faculty strike:
Reading the comments on the mainstream news websites, and seeing an overwhelming amount of resentment and bitterness towards the faculty beause they are asking for a raise to bring them inline with cost of living and other Universities. People saying they shoudl be happy with what they got that they shoudlnt be making what they make and that there is people with no job blah blah blah.
These individuals went to school for 10+ years to be in the job they are in. These are the people who do life-changing research and improve the lives of others. These are the people who educate our future leaders – and given the state the world is in, future leaders need all the insight and knowledge they can get.
How dare you, general public, resent someone who has dedicated their life to making the life of others better for asking to be compensated in such a way that reflects their (a) initial investemnt in obtaining such a position and (b) contribution to society as a whole. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. If totally reflects on the backwards thinking that goes on in this neck of the woods.
These pillars of our community are amongst the most educated people in our province and you know whats going to happen if we continue to take them for granted, pay them shitty salaries and not even compensate them for the cost of living? They’re going to leave – like everyone else who is fed up with the backwards thinking around here. Then you’ll bitch and moan because the universities start to decline in their enrollment and have to lay others off. Its a vicious cycle. If you cant attract students to pay the bills, other cuts happen. What attracts students? Outstanding programs and research opportunities (for the graduate level).
So before you go on your short sighted “Well I don’t make a hundred grand a year as department manager at Walmart so why should Dr. so and so at X with a PHD who is working on research that could cure cancer” maybe … just maybe think ahead a little bit and give the issue some thought.
Ironically, most of these same sour grapes people are probabally saving up their beer cans to go see an NHL game or UFC fight where people are making millions to push a piece of rubber around on the ice or beat the shit out of each other. —Fuck Off With The Sour Grapes Already
This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 6, 2013.
Quit kissing faculty ass to get a better grade. They knew what the pay scale and benefits were when they accepted their position in the ivory tower, so no there is no sympathy from me. But if you want to find sympathy, it is in the dictionary between shit and syphilis.
There is sympathy from a lot of people, no matter what “clever” place you put the word.
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ivory tower
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Threatened by educated people, are you?
lols
PisP
While I support the teachers rights and their cause, I am bitter that the bargaining strategies seem to focus on holding the students hostage. As was previously said, “They knew what the pay scale and benefits were when they accepted their position”. If they want to re-negotiate their contracts, which I support, there are a couple months a year that they could have done it without impacting the students education.
Yet they chose to walk picket in the worst weather of the year?
There’s something here other than “they’re holding the students hostage”. And the students I know from my former department(music- Hey! Don’t laugh! It’s a “subject”!) support their faculty.
PisP
I think both Sonic and the Paul that is Paul both make great points. I, personally, am sick of hearing people bash unions and say that they have no place in society. Even when the transit strike was going on and I had to walk everywhere (and even though at least 40% of drivers are pricks) I still sided with the union.
If we take away people right to collective bargaining and the right to protest/picket, then what’s next? Is minimum wage on the chopping block? Unions are still important, weather it is a union of professors or a union of sanitary workers.
Perhaps we are hearing a lot of these bitter “sour grapes” attitudes that OB mentions as a reflection of how poorly our province is doing with balancing the standard of living, the minimum wage and attainable jobs.
It was stated that if the 11 percent wage increase is given or granted then there will be layoffs in other jobs within university, I maybe wrong but were they not offered 7% which isn’t too bad in this day and age. I would think also the raises are going to be coming from a rise in tuition costs. I wouldn’t be too happy if I lost my job on the back of a Prof getting more then maybe they should. It could be fearmongering but then again with two sides there are two stories.
Excellent point Paul, I did not take that into consideration. The questions that now arise to further my point would be; Give up summer vacation or stand in the cold? Strike during summer and let the argument stand on its own, or, strike when the students are present and use that as a bargaining tool?
Unions, while borne of the communist ideology, are the only defence to the Malthus idealistic price we pay for living in a construct society of misery and vice.
Holding those innocent ‘hostage’ is really the only barganing chip unions have. but really, anyone associated with union (and not being a part of it) are all considered poker chips when negotiating. That’s it’s power and security of the working class who choose to engage in Union.
A balanced economy is a bitch to maintain. but if all subsistance was free to all humans (as it should be imo) thereby eliminating the need to pay for your freedom, we’d surely see a collapse to the superstructure that holds our lifestyle.
And really, why shouldn’t our education rise in price like everything else. it’s not like these teachers are doing Gods work as suggested by the OB’r.
Wait, people are upset at a union?
ya don’t say.
As someone who’s had a 0% raise for 6 years with great performance reviews,
I have very little sympathy for those on the $100k + list.
I don’t like hockey, I think its cruel to the animals to dress em up and make em skate around like that. I really enjoyed the lockout – no boring games on tv for a while, its was nice! Not sure why they stopped playing; please tell me it wasn’t a strike to make more money! What they earn is ridiculous already. I think there should be a $100,000 cap on althlete’s salaries (even that’s too much). The country’s income needs to be more evenly disbursed among the 99% not monopolized by 1% (barbarians).
Even if they had the cap, it’s the stadium owners who would be raking in all the extra profits….
it’s not like, out of the goodness of their hart, they’re going to double the wages to the poor kids slinging hotdogs and walking the aisles pushing pop and beer.
Agreed Z but I get what you’re saying no_fool…when you’re making large amounts of money, compared to what we’d call the middle class, using your union to go on strike and demand even more money garners little respect/support. I didn’t miss the Hockey, either. It’s hard to say where to draw the line, really. Professors are educators who use students as bargaining chips (after they’ve paid some of the highest tuition in the Country to attend classes) and Hockey Players are Athletes who use their fans and the sport itself as bargaining chips. It does get under your skin a bit, doesn’t it? The only thing that keeps on board with unions is the alternative: without unions corporations and politicians and others of that ilk, who hold power over the livelihoods of large numbers of people, can do whatever they want and have no resistance. I think everything should be unionized.
so how shitty is their salary? a whole lot me than mine with all my education and training
cost of living in Antigonish is a hell of a lot less than in Halifax so I doubt they need to make the same $$ as a Dal professor.
I should say – a whole lot MORE THAN me.
and ZZZ – I hear ya! we must work at the same place
Unions _are_ still important, when it comes to upholding the Nova Scotian status quo.
How would all these Nova Scotian monopolies/little empires survive and flourish without the one two punch of a government union and government.
The right to work is just as important as the right to strike/collective bargain/blame everyone else for how your chosen career has failed to live up to its billing…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_xIAXwKr-c
When I look at the salaries on the online STFX (and all the other universities) Public Sector Compensation Disclosure, my heart doesn’t exactly bleed for these folks. When you think about the professorial standard of living, add in the free trips to conferences to exotic locals and the all the other perks for people that pump out scores of graduates with impractical degrees or graduates with practical degrees for whom there are no jobs, I wonder where the value is.
Waaaahhhhh, waaaaaaahhhhhhhh… My perfectly acceptable salary, union job protection, and defined benefit pension plan aren’t enough. Waaaaaaahhhhhhhh.
Up yours!!!
I really hate seeing people bitch about how much money other people make. There are reasons for people hauling in big cash. They include:
– Need for advanced education/skills (doctors, professors, welders, etc.)
– It’s a dirty job (rig workers)
– Requires lots of dedication/risk, but your chances of getting in are slim so the payoff has to be big (athletes, blockbuster writers, successful business owners)
– You provide significant monetary value to employer (movie actors, stockbrokers)
– Shortage of labour (Tim Horton’s workers in Alberta)
– Pay needs to be high enough to make corruption not worthwhile (politicians, judges)
– You’ve taken a huge personal risk to be where you are
I’m sure there are more. And many professions tick off more than one of these criteria. In the case of professors, they need advanced education, your chances of becoming one are slim, many provide significant monetary value to their employer, and I’d go so far as to say it’s a dirty job (academia is hell -> publish or perish!)
So next time you say “that bastard is making tons of money and I’m not, it’s not fair!!!!” take a second to look at that list. Which of those criteria does your job meet? What about the other guy? Think about it.
mandatory dues should never end up as political donations. that is stealing from my pockets to line the pockets of a politician that I may not support.
I work at MSVU. The initial deal that they rejected was the exact same deal we voted to accept a week ago. If they wanna strike let them strike, i did the math. For every month we striked we had to get paid 304 paycheques to break even with the wage percentage difference. (and not all university workers make huge money its just faculty i make 40k a year)
academia is hell -> publish or perish! Boo hoo!
If fish plant workers can lose their job when there’s no work, why can’t an academic who teaches useless courses. Why the hell should tuition and tax payers be funding multiple tenured professors making $130k each to teach graduate studies in, just as one of many examples, some obscure literature? How much more thought and research do things like that need? How does it benefit anyone on earth other than someone who wants to teach it? That’s a hobby, not a profession!
HOW MUCH IS INTELLIGENCE WORTH?
“People saying they shoudl (sic) be happy with what they got that (sic) they shouldn’t be making what they make and that there is (sic) people with no job (sic) blah, blah, blah.” Fuck Off With The Sour Grapes
The real question is not so much whether “Fuck Off” is correct in his defense of salary increases for the faculty at St. F.X. or whether the criticisms of his position from the commenters on this thread are correct but rather it is the reason(s) both sides offer to support their views. In other words, what criteria determine (or should determine) what constitutes a just wage in general and a fair salary for university professors in particular?
The commenters, as expected, are for the most part little more than the usual pack of anti-intellectual rednecks who, to a man, scream abuse at the professors and their “soft” life but, also as expected, provide no reasons for their views. They appeal, if at all, to crudely pragmatic grounds, i.e., the “use criterion” which they assume to be primary, paramount and unassailable.
Sadly, however, “Fuck Off” does the same in his attempt to quantify the value of the professors in particular and education in general. He talks about things like “initial investment” and, of course, the eventual “pay-off”. But there is a case to be made that education in general and intelligence in particular are not reducible to the “economic nexus,” i.e., a dollars-and-cents calculation. It has something to do with what might be called being a “cultured human”. In other words, in the present case, the real question boils down to how much is culture and, by extension, intelligence worth?
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
Lemme guess, MM. Because you are a professor, you believe that you are qualified to determine what a fair and equitable salary and benefits package would be for all professors across the country? Kinda like CEOs deciding what their bonuses should be, right Champ?
PS; us dumbass rednecks pay your salary, or at least our taxes subsidize it. So next time you look on some poor blue collar slob that you have such disdain for, say “thanks”, cause that loser put his hard earned money in your pocket so you can act like an elitist ass.
My Aunt is a university professor in the Eastern Townships in Quebec. I don’t know how her salary compares to profs around here, but she said that there was “no question” profs are overpaid. And she teaches business, many of her grads go on to make big money and contribute to society and such. She still thinks she’s overpaid.
Nova Scotians won’t be happy until everybody is making minimum wage
If they were making crap money and had no benefits, they would have a case but they have good benefits and making in the $100,000 range, so once again, no sympathy here.