Dear Editor,
We beg your pardon, we who have spent our professional careers in the field of industrial relations, as employers and unionists, must take exception to the remark in SN of September 2, 2018, allegedly made by a Junior Minister, which reads as follows:
“No one can be brought in who can do better than us. We are the experts.”
The above is a profound admission of how much this particular ‘expert’ knows that he does not know; or else he would not be so self-exposed.
That the breadth of his knowledge of the facts of the disparate salary structures of teachers and of public servants is blatantly misinformed, is shown in the following comment, which presumably was intended to match the intelligence of his audience. It reads as follows:
“Our responsibility must be to put children first. We can’t discard our care for them because we want a lil money.”
Certainly the audience would not have detected the misconstruction contained in this statement (if correctly quoted) by a self-proclaimed expert.
Following is not the first time that opportunity is taken to reproduce the current salary scales applicable respectively to teachers and public servants.
Hopefully the disparities will confirm why teachers need ‘a lil money’.
Careful examination of the above shows how several of the Teaching Service Scales are swallowed up in different (non-comparable) Public Service Scales.
But it is equally, if not more, critical for all interested parties to contemplate the so-called comparable levels of jobs, particularly in terms of their accountability relationships, which teachers must commit:
– the immediate leadership
– other monitoring personnel (MOE)
– Clients (Students/ Parents)
– Stakeholders (Parent/ Teachers’ Associations)
Not to mention the daily achievement of set targets.
The following Table provide samples of Job/ Position relativities.
Comparative Jobs Structures based on Broad Salary Relativities
One of the remarkable features of the Commission’s Job Hierarchy is the conundrum inherent in:
i) Acting Teacher – TS 1 (B);
ii) the following Temporary positions in what is designed as a permanent
structure in which presumably all jobs are pensionable:
a) Temporary Unqualified Assistant – TS2 (A)
b) Temporary Qualified Master III – TS2 (B)
c) Temporary Qualified Master II – TS2 (C)
d) Temporary Qualified Master I – TS3
Derisibly the position at d) above equates with those of: Trained Teacher, Assistant Lecturer II & I – GTI, NATI and Instructor I – GITC, CSHE, and LTI (none of which is ‘Temporary’.
The above disposition must make for the most self-contradictory job hierarchy anywhere in the world. Imagine looking forward to a career prospect of ‘Temporary’ promotions. From any interpretation of career growth it is a construct of sheer idiocy.
Hope the above adds some clarity to the apparent confusion of how ‘lil money’ teachers are paid.
Yours faithfully
E.B. John
