Amazon Buying Up "Dead" Malls?

[former player]

But I guess at the end of the day, subject to the proviso that there should be a safety net that makes sure everyone has food and shelter (regardless of whether working or not), I'm happy for the free market to dictate wages.

If by "free market" you mean "unregulated market" that's how slavery happens.

[norajean]

I guess a dead mall is better than an RV-slash-homeless mall but not as good as a mall employing a few hundred well paid Amazon employees.

[Dicey]

Oh dear.

See: Popcorn. And also this:

Yeah I'm not convinced anyone earning $15/hour has much by way of transferable skills. Otherwise he or she wouldn't be earning $15/hour

I'll be sure to pass that on to the teachers I know whose salaries work out to about $13 an hour. They already know they are undervalued, so maybe they should take those useless skills to the Amazon warehouse.

Jesus, the disconnect and privilege in some of these comments is astounding.

The context for understanding Bloop Bloop Reloaded's posts is that he believes poor people are poor because of their "inferior genes," whereas he--of course--is an übermensch. His egocentric worldview requires rationalizations like the above one; it is too difficult and painful for him to imagine anything but a tautologically just world.  That's the kind of person you're talking to.

[Fishindude]

There is no hate towards teachers, and nobody is saying there isn't some after hours work required, much like many other jobs.   They also probably have to buy a few things out of pocket, big deal carpenters and mechanics have to buy all of their own hand tools.   
Simply stating the facts.
Most full time jobs require you to work year round, minus whatever vacation and holidays you take.   For the average person that might be 4-5 weeks per year off work.
Teachers work 180 days, per contract which amounts to having 16 weeks off.    They've got an extra 12 weeks (3 months) more than the average full time worker, that they can be doing something else unrelated to teaching.   
 

[waltworks]

Carpenters and plumbers aren't salaried (at least any that I know) so if they work extra hours, they get paid for extra hours.

Teachers do a lot of work to prepare lessons, grade papers, attend (mandatory) professional development training, etc, etc. No extra pay for any of that.

My wife is a teacher and yes, summers off are awesome (though shorter by 2-3 weeks than you think because of end of year teardown/debrief stuff and start of year prep/classroom setup). But the extra morning/evening/weekend hours add up fast. I'd guess the total number of hours worked for the entire year is pretty comparable to most other 40 hour a week white collar jobs. It just pays a lot less.

Being a teacher is "easy" in that you don't have to have an advanced degree in most cases, but for those folks (ie Bloop, FishinDude) who think they'd choose teaching over other similarly paid jobs because it's such a walk in the park... I'd love for you to shadow a teacher at school for a day.

It's a little odd to me, because I never see other occupations getting thrown under the bus like teachers. I don't tell everyone I think plumbers or lawyers or baristas or secretaries are lazy and overpaid or that their jobs are easy. Almost all jobs are pretty hard in their own way and I respect the people doing them. Teaching is an occupation that is uniquely undervalued/underpaid in the US, to the point that just scanning and loading boxes in a warehouse pays better. There is no other white collar job that requires a college degree that pays $13 an hour out there. Not even close. Think about whether that makes sense before you make any more snide comments about teachers.

-W

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

I didn't say I'd rather be a teacher over other similarly paid jobs - I said I'd rather be a teacher over most other jobs if they all paid the same. Of course that's not the same concept.

Having said that, in Australia if I had to choose a job that paid ~$80k a year I'd sure as fuck choose teacher; but it seems they are one of the occupations that are heavily underpaid in the States (or also overpaid in Australia).

A bit off-topic but the main thing about being a teacher that I've noticed is that there's not a lot of differentiation between good teachers and bad teachers when it comes to pay. Perhaps because it's hard to objectively rate teacher performance. But to me that makes it difficult to entice talent to the profession. Why work hard when it's not likely to be rewarded? Why have stringent standards when it's not going to lead anywhere?

The great thing about my job as a trial lawyer, to use a counterpoint, is that there's a huge spread of incomes. My Bar association did a survey a few years back which showed that the median junior trial lawyer billed <$100k (in Aussie dollars, and this isn't even a salary - this is revenue, from which operating expenses have to be deducted). But the median trial lawyer with >10 years experience billed over $400k. You want professions which have a big range of incomes because that means you get bang for buck.

That's what I like about the US - for the most part the money is meritocratic. It's what I don't really like about Australia because our incomes clump too closely in the middle, hence me choosing one of the few careers where there is a bit of stratification.

The reason no one criticises plumbers is because they charge market rate too.

There is no other white collar job that requires a college degree that pays $13 an hour out there.

I'd love for good teachers to get paid $200k or $300k. If they graduated summa cum laude for example and had really good research understanding and could be amazing tutors for children they'd deserve every cent. But unfortunately our society doesn't seem to value that sort of pure education much and also, as I said, I think it's hard to objectively judge teacher 'value' - but I'd be all ears to finding a way to better stratify teacher performance and pay.

[waltworks]

But teaching doesn't require a college degree?

In the states it does, maybe it's different in Australia?

You can be a substitute teacher (which usually means glorified babysitter unfortunately) some places with just a high school certificate, but not a full time teacher. Teaching (especially younger kids) is a complex set of skills, that like most skills, has to be learned.

It is hard to evaluate teachers, and that's a tough problem to solve (and perhaps unsolvable, though the best/worst are usually pretty obvious). I'm not sure just accepting that the whole profession should be underpaid is a useful solution, though. It might be better to pay a lot in the hopes of attracting better teachers, even if that means overpaying some crappy ones in the process.

-W

[chemistk]

But teaching doesn't require a college degree?

In the states it does, maybe it's different in Australia?

You can be a substitute teacher (which usually means glorified babysitter unfortunately) some places with just a high school certificate, but not a full time teacher. Teaching (especially younger kids) is a complex set of skills, that like most skills, has to be learned.

It is hard to evaluate teachers, and that's a tough problem to solve (and perhaps unsolvable, though the best/worst are usually pretty obvious). I'm not sure just accepting that the whole profession should be underpaid is a useful solution, though. It might be better to pay a lot in the hopes of attracting better teachers, even if that means overpaying some crappy ones in the process.

-W

That's 100% the solution. So many people who would make great teachers choose not to because it's just not a viable source of income in so many areas. So it becomes self-selecting - the people who would make great teachers (who, in turn, would help kids learn and grow much more than those who just spit out preset curricula) end up doing other things because they're going to earn more. The talent pool becomes diluted with people who are mostly 'okay' and a heck of a lot more people who trend toward 'ineffective'.

As my wife also chose, people who could be great teachers end up not going into the profession or lasting long because the prospect of daycare costs and the inflexibility that goes with it makes a lower-paying profession like teaching unappealing? Who the hell wants to work at a job where much if not most of your paycheck is just going toward someone else watching your kids? I know that's not a universal answer and on a long scale the logic falls apart a bit, but we really have worked to disincentivize good teachers over the last few decades in the country.

But also the education system is bogus too, judging teachers against shit like standardized test scores and classroom attendance.

[maizefolk]

It's a little odd to me, because I never see other occupations getting thrown under the bus like teachers. I don't tell everyone I think plumbers or lawyers or baristas or secretaries are lazy and overpaid or that their jobs are easy. Almost all jobs are pretty hard in their own way and I respect the people doing them. Teaching is an occupation that is uniquely undervalued/underpaid in the US, to the point that just scanning and loading boxes in a warehouse pays better. There is no other white collar job that requires a college degree that pays $13 an hour out there. Not even close. Think about whether that makes sense before you make any more snide comments about teachers.

The vast majority of teachers I've interacted with in my life are good and hard working people aiming to do right by their students. A few were terrible. Almost every adult who grew up in the USA likely interacted at great length with what, between 12-30 public school teachers in their lives going through school themselves? The unfortunate thing is that, like a lot of things, the bad ones leave much stronger impression on people's minds than the good ones. The sad fact of the matter is that I find I cannot remember the names of most of the good teachers I had in school, but there are at least two terrible ones I still remember well and could still recount the stories about. I suspect that, combined with the regular difference in perception you see between people working in the private sector and the public sector ("my tax dollars pay your salary!" and all that stuff) may explain why teachers take a lot more flack than many other professions.

I don't have a good solution, but I do think finding an effective way to get rid of bad teachers really is in the professions' best interest as a whole. I know this idea has a terrible reputation among folks who actually teach, and there are plenty of good arguments against most of the ideas for standardized metrics for assessing who is a good or bad teacher. But there are bad teachers, within the schools everyone seems to know who they are.* And looking at it long term (over decades) doing so would produce new generations of voters with a much more positive overall impression of the profession and the people who do the work, precisely because the few bad teachers leave a disproportionate impression in their students' minds for decades and decades afterwards.

*I went to an quite overcrowded high school. One of the classes I took had only 13 students because most parents had found a way to get their kids out of that particular teachers' classes from already knowing/hearing about his track record.

[waltworks]

Yes, the teacher's unions have what appears to be a death wish for public education. My wife is a teacher and the union here is not bad and works closely with the district - but even here it's almost impossible to fire a bad (we're talking really bad) teacher.

If I ran the circus, I'd double teacher pay (or better yet, index it to the 150% of the median wage for a college graduate)... and ban public sector unions outright at the same time. You're going to get paid well. But if you don't do an awesome job, you're history.

-W

[dividendman]

A few points:

1) Amazon is not a monopoly in any sense of the word. They are not the only provider of any service in any area, in fact, they are not even > 50% in any particular market segment be it cloud or retail, or even the subsection of retail that is online sales. Amazon operates in a lot of markets, that makes it a large conglomerate, but not a monopoly. Also, the more markets Amazon enters, the *better* it is for consumers in those markets due to increased competition.

2) Even if Amazon was a monopoly that's not sufficient to "break it up". They have to harm consumers (which they are not doing since consumers are largely benefiting from the anti-inflationary effects Amazon has on prices, and the convenience of it's operations) and/or they have to inhibit competition, which they are also not doing. Anti-trust laws aren't there to protect employees.

3) Amazon coming up with their own products based on their market data (from operating a retail marketplace) IS the exact same thing as Walmart's "Great Value" brand or Costco's "Kirkland" brand (and soon probably Uber with Ubereats, etc.). They use the their marketplaces to research products and see if they can easily build a comparable product for cheaper. This isn't' against the law and is helpful to consumers by promoting competition and lowering prices.

4) I've worked in an Amazon warehouse (aka a Fullfilment Center), as every Amazon employee had to do when I joined, I never had a problem going to the washroom. Yes, this is anecdotal and it was just a one week stint rather than a full time job. Yes, it was hard, but I didn't see anything inhumane. It was also much easier than other jobs I have done in the past (other warehouses as a teenager, painting in hot houses, roofing, etc.)

5) Amazon is working very hard on replacing all of the warehouse workers and drivers with machinery/automation (I worked in this area), so these complaints about working conditions should be impacting less folks as time goes on.

6) Finally, the malls. Amazon purchasing the space and making them productive seems like a good idea to me.

[maizefolk]

5) Amazon is working very hard on replacing all of the warehouse workers and drivers with machinery/automation (I worked in this area), so these complaints about working conditions should be impacting less folks as time goes on.

Long term, I am interested to watch and find out if the same people who are unhappy about amazon's working conditions are in favor of automating those jobs, or if they will also end up unhappy with amazon for automating away jobs people depend on to pay the bills.

[PDXTabs]

2) Even if Amazon was a monopoly that's not sufficient to "break it up". They have to harm consumers (which they are not doing since consumers are largely benefiting from the anti-inflationary effects Amazon has on prices, and the convenience of it's operations) and/or they have to inhibit competition, which they are also not doing. Anti-trust laws aren't there to protect employees.

Well, today that's true under current statute and interpretation. It has not been historically true. See:

• The Antitrust Paradox
  
• United States antitrust law

EDITed to add - Amazon’s use of marketplace data breaks competition law, EU charges

[Paul der Krake]

5) Amazon is working very hard on replacing all of the warehouse workers and drivers with machinery/automation (I worked in this area), so these complaints about working conditions should be impacting less folks as time goes on.

Long term, I am interested to watch and find out if the same people who are unhappy about amazon's working conditions are in favor of automating those jobs, or if they will also end up unhappy with amazon for automating away jobs people depend on to pay the bills.

The thing with FC jobs is that they are mind-numbingly boring. They require juuuuust enough human decision-making that it's better to pay people than try to have a robot do it. But objectively, it's a essentially a waste of human potential. Eventually that will be solved, and nobody should lament that those jobs are gone. Just like nobody should lament the loss of coal jobs.

[maizefolk]

5) Amazon is working very hard on replacing all of the warehouse workers and drivers with machinery/automation (I worked in this area), so these complaints about working conditions should be impacting less folks as time goes on.

Long term, I am interested to watch and find out if the same people who are unhappy about amazon's working conditions are in favor of automating those jobs, or if they will also end up unhappy with amazon for automating away jobs people depend on to pay the bills.

The thing with FC jobs is that they are mind-numbingly boring. They require juuuuust enough human decision-making that it's better to pay people than try to have a robot do it. But objectively, it's a essentially a waste of human potential. Eventually that will be solved, and nobody should lament that those jobs are gone. Just like nobody should lament the loss of coal jobs.

I don't disagree with you at all. But whether "should" is going to translate into "will" I'm not so sure. Certainly there are plenty of folks who do lament the loss of coal jobs.

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

Put it this way, there's no doubt in my mind teaching is not one of the harder jobs. If you gave me the choice of being a teacher, Amazon worker or doctor for the same pay, I'd choose teacher every day of the week.

Fascinating that you apparently think this is an option ever presented to anyone, ever.

I see you are unfamiliar with, or deliberately ignoring, the point that the mental exercise was to establish that teaching (without reference to pay or bang for buck) is not an objectively hard job. I hope that you are not one of those people who thinks every job is of the 'same difficulty'.

5) Amazon is working very hard on replacing all of the warehouse workers and drivers with machinery/automation (I worked in this area), so these complaints about working conditions should be impacting less folks as time goes on.

Long term, I am interested to watch and find out if the same people who are unhappy about amazon's working conditions are in favor of automating those jobs, or if they will also end up unhappy with amazon for automating away jobs people depend on to pay the bills.

I think some people genuinely think everyone deserves a job that not only pays a living wage but is also 'pleasant' for lack of a better word.

[waltworks]

I think an Amazon warehouse job is (obviously) more *physically* difficult than teaching, but if you took a random sample of 100 adults, probably 90 of them could do it at least adequately after being trained.

So it's "easy" in that most people can relatively easily do it, though they might get tired doing it for 8 hours.

You'd probably only get 20 decent teachers from that pool of candidates (and maybe 1 or 2 engineers/doctors, 1/10 of a scientist, etc) so I'd personally say teaching is "harder" than the Amazon job.

-W

[Chris22]

I think an Amazon warehouse job is (obviously) more *physically* difficult than teaching, but if you took a random sample of 100 adults, probably 90 of them could do it at least adequately after being trained.

So it's "easy" in that most people can relatively easily do it, though they might get tired doing it for 8 hours.

You'd probably only get 20 decent teachers from that pool of candidates (and maybe 1 or 2 engineers/doctors, 1/10 of a scientist, etc) so I'd personally say teaching is "harder" than the Amazon job.

-W

Maybe maybe not.

Like it or not, the truth is that a degree in elementary ed to be a teacher is about the easiest BA you can obtain, often at schools that are just above community colleges and admit just about anyone.  Education masters are generally from schools that are essentially diploma mills.  Being a very good teacher is difficult and takes talent and skill. Being a poor or average teacher takes work, but let’s face it, it’s not super challenging work.

And, teachers/teachers unions have fought to make evaluating teachers difficult/impossible, and therefore rewarding the good ones is also difficult or impossible due to lack of evals and due to contracts that don’t reward excellence, just seniority.

So to recap, extremely low barrier to entry, low minimum level of effort, no reward for high effort/high skill. Why are teachers surprised they are not paid better? 

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

That's the problem we have in Australia too (though teachers here are quite well paid). The entrance requirement for tertiary study to become a teacher has been way too low. Fortunately there were reforms so that the minimum "ATAR" (tertiary percentile) rank raised to 65.0 in 2018 and 70.0 in 2018, meaning that all teaching candidates have to have achieved a better tertiary entrance score than "70%" of the population, although the ATAR is actually disingenuously scaled so that it's not a true percentile and a score of 70 would only be better than about 50% of all secondary students who enter university.

To give you some comparison, the minimum ATAR required to study law or medicine varies from about 95.0 - 99.50 depending on the institution and other factors.

Till there is a way of evaluating teaching potential and teaching performance so that you get people with 99.9 ATARs wanting to go into teaching rather than law/medicine, both pay and rigour are going to lag.

I have no doubt teaching is a really important vocation. Time to start treating it like the other really stringent vocations: high entry requirements, rigorous study and gruelling performance testing.

[waltworks]

Maybe maybe not.

Like it or not, the truth is that a degree in elementary ed to be a teacher is about the easiest BA you can obtain, often at schools that are just above community colleges and admit just about anyone.  Education masters are generally from schools that are essentially diploma mills.  Being a very good teacher is difficult and takes talent and skill. Being a poor or average teacher takes work, but let’s face it, it’s not super challenging work.

And, teachers/teachers unions have fought to make evaluating teachers difficult/impossible, and therefore rewarding the good ones is also difficult or impossible due to lack of evals and due to contracts that don’t reward excellence, just seniority.

So to recap, extremely low barrier to entry, low minimum level of effort, no reward for high effort/high skill. Why are teachers surprised they are not paid better?

Look, a degree in teaching might very well be the easiest BA you can get. But that's still more work/effort than... not getting one. Are you really arguing that teaching is easier than working at an Amazon warehouse? Because that was my specific argument.

No argument on the unions or diploma mill Masters/PhDs in education. A lot of the teacher's unions are awful and many/most of those advanced education degrees are a joke.

-W

[waltworks]

I have no doubt teaching is a really important vocation. Time to start treating it like the other really stringent vocations: high entry requirements, rigorous study and gruelling performance testing.

I agree with all of that... but you probably have to raise pay *first* to make it work. Otherwise you just won't have teachers.

-W

[Chris22]

Maybe maybe not.

Like it or not, the truth is that a degree in elementary ed to be a teacher is about the easiest BA you can obtain, often at schools that are just above community colleges and admit just about anyone.  Education masters are generally from schools that are essentially diploma mills.  Being a very good teacher is difficult and takes talent and skill. Being a poor or average teacher takes work, but let’s face it, it’s not super challenging work.

And, teachers/teachers unions have fought to make evaluating teachers difficult/impossible, and therefore rewarding the good ones is also difficult or impossible due to lack of evals and due to contracts that don’t reward excellence, just seniority.

So to recap, extremely low barrier to entry, low minimum level of effort, no reward for high effort/high skill. Why are teachers surprised they are not paid better?

Look, a degree in teaching might very well be the easiest BA you can get. But that's still more work/effort than... not getting one.

Not sure that’s true either. What’s harder, working in a warehouse or fucking off as a college kid with an easy major from 18-22?

Are you really arguing that teaching is easier than working at an Amazon warehouse? Because that was my specific argument.

Being an excellent teacher is harder than being an excellent Amazon warehouse worker, and takes more talent/skill.

Being a crappy teacher harder than being a crappy Amazon worker?  Not so sure.  And a crappy Amazon worker will lose his/her job. Crappy teacher, again, not so sure.

[Chris22]

I have no doubt teaching is a really important vocation. Time to start treating it like the other really stringent vocations: high entry requirements, rigorous study and gruelling performance testing.

I agree with all of that... but you probably have to raise pay *first* to make it work. Otherwise you just won't have teachers.

-W

I would argue that step one is evaluate and stratify teachers, and pay the good ones a lot more, and ease the bad ones out.

Step zero probably needs to be abolish the teachers’ unions to have a chance at even sniffing step one.

[waltworks]

Evaluating teachers is something that has been an ongoing problem for decades. It's just really hard to do. There's a ton of academic literature on the subject if you're ever really bored but the basic problem is that every year, you get a different set of kids - and then every year after that until they graduate, another person teaches them. So while it's easy to track the progress of a cohort of kids, it's pretty much impossible to attribute their outcomes to a specific teacher. Likewise in-year assessments are notoriously noisy/random to the point of uselessness.

If there was an easy way to (objectively) tell which teachers were good and which ones weren't, that would make things easy. But thus far nobody has come up with one, outside of the obvious bad apples who are abusive/commit crimes involving kids.

That said, administrators generally have a good (albeit subjective) sense of who is going well and who isn't. They should have more power to fire ineffective teachers.

I agree on the unions, I'd dissolve them for all public sector employees if given the chance.

None of this changes the basic problem that if you want good teachers, you probably have to pay more, though. Even if you can never solve the assessment problem, would you rather have teaching be an attractive profession to above-average college graduates, or below-average ones (the current situation)?

-W

[maizefolk]

One question I've always wondered about is the focus on teacher student ratios, at least at the high school level. Would a student be better off learning calculus or biology from an outstanding (and higher paid) teacher in a class of 45? Or from a mediocre teacher in a class of 20? Is the answer the same for history? For english?

Ideally you have the great teacher AND the small class size, but given X dollars does it make sense to spend money on fewer better teachers or more less effective teachers?

[waltworks]

I bet someone has studied at least the class size side of things. Again, though, we don't really know which teachers are, in any objective sense, the best, at least most of the time.

Hell, we should be spending more money on education research!

-W

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

Evaluating teachers is something that has been an ongoing problem for decades. It's just really hard to do. There's a ton of academic literature on the subject if you're ever really bored but the basic problem is that every year, you get a different set of kids - and then every year after that until they graduate, another person teaches them. So while it's easy to track the progress of a cohort of kids, it's pretty much impossible to attribute their outcomes to a specific teacher. Likewise in-year assessments are notoriously noisy/random to the point of uselessness.

If there was an easy way to (objectively) tell which teachers were good and which ones weren't, that would make things easy. But thus far nobody has come up with one, outside of the obvious bad apples who are abusive/commit crimes involving kids.

That said, administrators generally have a good (albeit subjective) sense of who is going well and who isn't. They should have more power to fire ineffective teachers.

I agree on the unions, I'd dissolve them for all public sector employees if given the chance.

None of this changes the basic problem that if you want good teachers, you probably have to pay more, though. Even if you can never solve the assessment problem, would you rather have teaching be an attractive profession to above-average college graduates, or below-average ones (the current situation)?

-W

To be fair, you could say the same about surgeons and trial lawyers. Both well insulated professions which are difficult to evaluate. A bad outcome could be the result of a bad case or an unhealthy patient. But both professions are a lot more stringent than teaching, I'd suggest.

Best way to increase standards in a profession is to increase the entry requirements - maybe if you had to get a 99.50 ATAR (equivalent to a 2300 on the new SAT), and study at least 11 years of post-secondary education as most surgeons do, then teaching standards would naturally rise. Of course we'd also have to pay them a lot. The point is, until we are stricter with allowing only a small cohort of people in to be teachers, we'll suffer from bad teachers - not due to any inherent failing of teachers, but due to the lack of rigour in the profession.

[waltworks]

Maybe we're talking past each other. Higher entry requirements are a good thing and I agree 100%. But if you implement that without raising pay first, you will just end up with no teachers at all. You can advocate for genius teachers working for peanuts all day, but that's not going to happen.

Surgeons can certainly be evaluated objectively. They are the only person treating a patient. Sure, they'll have people in worse shape and better shape, and good luck and bad luck, but over a few years, you'll have hundreds of patients and it'll average out. You can track the outcome easily (ie, patient died, patient recovered, etc) because there's only one patient and one surgeon (or at most a few) involved.

You could test teachers pretty accurately by having them teach a cohort of kids all the way from preschool to college, I guess. But by the time you had useful information they'd be retired, and it would probably be a disservice to most of the kids.

-W

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

There are several surgeons for each operation and only one of them is the principal. Even then some surgeons might be dissuaded from taking on harder cases if their performance was evaluated in terms of outcomes. At most you can evaluate whether a particular operation resulted in an clinically bad outcome and then reason backwards.

I have no issues with paying teachers market salaries and opening up schools to free market principles. It would be problematic for various reasons though (to do with access to education).

You could test teachers pretty accurately by having them teach a cohort of kids all the way from preschool to college, I guess. But by the time you had useful information they'd be retired, and it would probably be a disservice to most of the kids.

Or you could just have a standardised entry test for teachers like how other professions measure their own.

[waltworks]

Sure, entry tests/minimum standards sounds great. Still gotta raise pay first. Do we agree on that?

-W

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

Can't you do it concurrently (for new applicants) while keeping pay the same for existing teachers? That seems like the fairest way to do it. Grandfather existing teachers and then make all new teachers be subject to higher standards and higher pay in turn. Any existing teachers who want to sit the more stringent requirements can do it, and if they pass they get the higher pay.

[waltworks]

That would require getting rid of the unions first, which is just a political nonstarter. So you'd have to accept paying some current mediocre teachers more than they deserve until they retire. IMO that's fine, you can't make the perfect the enemy of the good in this sort of situation. It's not "fair" but if the fair solution isn't actually one we can accomplish, c'est la vie.

-W

[namasteyall]

http://www.bitchesgetriches.com/stop-feeding-amazon/
Interesting article and sad sad .

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

Well, at the end of the day the workers themselves voted against the union.

My values include free market neoliberalism so I'm okay with shopping at Amazon, except it hasn't really ever taken root in Australia (and the prices here a noncompetitive anyway) so I refuse to shop at Amazon for that reason. Back when the dollar was high against the USD, I did buy a lot of stuff from American Amazon and I used a freight forwarder. Maybe some day that will happen again.

[Dicey]

http://www.bitchesgetriches.com/stop-feeding-amazon/
Interesting article and sad sad .

O.M.G. If all of their stuff is even reasonably close to as good as that article, I'm heading down that rabbit hole in a big way. Thank you for the link!!!

[robartsd]

Can't you do it concurrently (for new applicants) while keeping pay the same for existing teachers? That seems like the fairest way to do it. Grandfather existing teachers and then make all new teachers be subject to higher standards and higher pay in turn. Any existing teachers who want to sit the more stringent requirements can do it, and if they pass they get the higher pay.

If the existing teachers have to opportunity to meet the new qualifications and receive the higher pay without risking their current jobs should they fail, you might get unions on board. You'd probably have to raise the bar slowly so that a large majority of incumbents meet any new qualification at the time of implementation to maintain union support. You'd likely still need to provide larger than COLA raises to those who fail the new qualification, but perhaps not the full increase.