Teachers’ salary claims

Press, 18 April 1978, Page 18

Teachers’ salary claims

Sir, — Aline Pengelly April 12) decries a situation where the worker who “kills sheep commands more than one who teaches his child.” I see nothing wrong with this at all and would certainly expect to be well paid for working amidst blood and guts all day. Ideally, the rewards for each occupation would reflect the relative attraction of the work. Admittedly freezing workers may be forcing their rates above this fair equilibrium by using industrial power in the middle of each killing season, but I suspect the Christchurch high school teachers are also tampering with the free interplay of supply and demand by asking for more money when the present rates already produce a surplus of applicants for Christchurch jobs in most subjects. — Yours, D. W. COLLINS. April 12, 1978.

Sir, — May I be the first to help Allison Franklin realise her wish that “teachers . . . show the way . . .to recover from these hard times.” “The way,” I believe, involves hard work, self-sac-rifice, and mutual co-oper-ation. I have already shown that I believe in these things by sacrificing a living wage for 10 years of training after I turned 15. I have continued to sacrifice most of my evenings and much of my week-ends and I am finding an increasing amount of my holidays being absorbed by training courses covering the ever-changing requirements of my job and by merely trying to recover from the fatigue of the previous term and from the tension-induced ulcers. The consequent “respect from the community” shows itself in my being spat on, told to “get . . . ,” threatened with gang reprisal and even murder and in being snubbed by the community’s elected representatives. — Yours, etc., D. D. SANDERSON. April 14, 1978.