The teachers’ pay union dues of about $200 a month and now this same union is forcing teachers to take off days without pay while the union still gets paid. The union has told the teachers they cannot show up to work more that 30 minutes before the bell rings. If a teacher shows up earlier they are fined by the union and ostracized by the union rep that oversees each public school, almost blackballed, or even worse bullied, which is the one thing teachers and principals are now trying to stop in our schools yet the unions bully the teachers. Teachers are also turning on each other and many do not support the one day strikes or the fact that the union is forcing them to take away extracurricular activities from the children they hoped to help in the first place. Teachers are supposed be teachers to help educate students, which is hopefully why they got into this profession in the first place. The Teachers Union is affecting that as well by not allowing the teachers to show up earlier than 30 minutes to do proper prep work, so who suffers, again the students at the hands of the union. The union is also forcing teachers to start rotating one day strikes which again hurt students especially those in Grade 12, the most important year of their public school education. The teachers are handcuffed by the union that they pay about $200 a month in dues to. We non-teachers thought it was all about money and privilege and security of tenure. Still, Ontario teachers maintain the recently enacted sections of Bill 115 cruelly freeze their wages, cut allowable sick days from 20 to 10 and limit their ability to strike. On Dec. 31 the government is expected to block teacher strike action through Bill 115 and a collective agreement will automatically come into play. As it is perfectly entitled to do. As a public sector union, the province employs teachers and as their employer in return it has every right to secure the best workplace agreement it can in the name of taxpayers. So expect the union to force another teacher strike sometime in January when we will again hear them call selflessly for democracy and then cry freedom in the name of teachers. To put things in perspective, the current annual starting salary for a new teacher at lowest and highest pay rates: $45,709, $55,404. Salary for a teacher with just over 10 years of service at the lowest and highest pay rates: $76,021, $94,707. Nice work if you can get it when most other companies are making cuts due to the state of the economy. Add to that the fact that teachers are currently credited for 20 sick days per year. If they don’t use them all, the remainder can be banked indefinitely until retirement and cashed out up to a maximum of half a year’s pay. What with other insurance and pension entitlements, the teachers union feel they have a lot to lose with the introduction of Bill 115. It’s all about the money for the teachers union that is pretending to care about the teachers. Our message to the teachers union is simple, stop bullying teachers and let them teach our children. Let the teacher’s union get of their butts and go picket the government if you wish but stop punishing the students and the parents.