Ontario Teachers, Do The Math

Mulder

In relation to the OPSEU teacher’s strike, I heard a college professeur call Lowell Green today.  He mentioned some numbers that relate to his story.  Let me restate these (along with my assumptions)

  1. He has 18 hours of teaching time a week
  2. He has at least 1 hour of prep work for every 1 hour of teaching time (let’s assume 1.25)
  3. He has 32 weeks of teaching a year (i.e. 20 weeks of no classes)
  4. He makes $70,000 a year
  5. He does some prep work over the summer. (let’s assume 1 day a week, because after all it is summer)
  6. Let’s assume a veteran equivalent to 10 years in other industries and give our teacher 4 weeks of full paid vacation annually.  This would be complete down time with no prep work, no teaching, no marking, etc.

Now for Math 101 – Adding and multiplying
40.5 (x32 weeks)=1296 (the hours of teaching and prep for teaching)

8 (x16 weeks)=128 (the hours of work in off teaching weeks)

Total hours?  (1296+128)=1424

Now for Math 102 – Dividing and Crying
$70,000 / 1424 = $49.16 per hour worked  (note minimum wage in Ontario is currently $7.75/hr and moving to $8.00/hr on January 1st, 2007)
1424 / 48 weeks = 29.67 hours per week (not on vacation)

Now for Strike Assessment 101 – There is never any subtracting

And that, my friends, is Officially Screwed