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Wisconsin Teacher Pay

Mike

Well-known member
$101,091: Average annual compensation for Milwaukee teachers
Washington Examiner | 3/6/11 | John McCormack

Posted on Sunday, March 06, 2011 2:38:23 AM by Nachum

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel confirms that's how much the average Milwaukee teacher will be paid in salary and benefits in 2011: the average MPS teacher would receive total compensation of $101,091 -- $59,500 in salary and $41,591 in benefits. We double-checked with MPS spokeswoman Roseann St. Aubin and she confirmed the figures. We wanted to compare the $101,091 for MPS teachers to other teachers, but the latest figurescompiled by the state Department of Public Instruction are for 2009-2010, two years earlier. Those figures show for 2009-2010, MPS teachers earned, on average


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
 

Lonecowboy

Well-known member
What planet does this guy live on? :? :?


Protesters in Madison have "aroused a sleeping giant" in the national fight for workers' rights, filmmaker Michael Moore told thousands at the Capitol Square on Saturday, as rallies opposing Gov. Scott Walker's budget proposals wrapped up their third week.

"America is not broke ... Wisconsin is not broke," Moore said. "The only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers."


Government spending has aroused a sleeping giant- it's called the TEA party, the voice of the once silent majority!
 

Tam

Well-known member
And don't forget that is not a 12 month year like the average worker they get the summer and all holidays off with their children. :wink:
 

Larrry

Well-known member
I sure didn't see doughboy offer up his 50 million to help the teachers or the states shortfall.



HYPOCRISY rears it's ugly head again.
 

Tam

Well-known member
the average MPS teacher would receive total compensation of $101,091 -- $59,500 in salary and $41,591 in benefits.

Highest Salaries By City for Elementary School Teacher Jobs

1. Long Beach, California
2. Stockton, California
3. Fairfax, Virginia
4. Los Angeles, California
5. Riverside, California
6. Washington, District of Columbia
7. New York, New York
8. Bakersfield, California
9. San Jose, California
10. Jersey City, New Jersey
11. Mesa, Arizona
12. Fresno, California
13. Baltimore, Maryland
14. Alexandria, Virginia
15. Honolulu, Hawaii
16. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
17. Plano, Texas
18. El Paso, Texas
19. San Francisco, California
20. Houston, Texas

Milwaukee who has a average salary of $59,500 and they don't even make it into the top twenty schools. But look at all the California Schools that are in the highest salary list. 8 in the top 20 and people wonder why Califorina is going bankrupt. Union funded Democrats have controled that state for how long?
 

Tam

Well-known member
Larrry said:
I sure didn't see doughboy offer up his 50 million to help the teachers or the states shortfall.



HYPOCRISY rears it's ugly head again.

Maybe he will give them the settlement of his lawsuit too. :wink:
 

Steve

Well-known member
Tam said:
Larrry said:
I sure didn't see doughboy offer up his 50 million to help the teachers or the states shortfall.

HYPOCRISY rears it's ugly head again.

Maybe he will give them the settlement of his lawsuit too. :wink:

“I am not a multi-multi-millionaire. I have done well,” Moore said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, when Hannity suggested Moore has made millions of dollars off the capitalist system. “I have a house in Michigan and an apartment here.”

maybe when he sucks the last few million out of those who watched his last movie he will have time to add up his "millions"
 

TSR

Well-known member
Golly, Wisconsin teachers didn't even make the top 20. Boy, imagine the lines of people with degrees lined up for those jobs. No doubt you would have to know someone important politically to get a teaching job in any of those places.
 

Silver

Well-known member
The wage doesn't seem out of hand, but what the heck are these 41K in benefits all about? Is that what health care costs down there or does anyone know how this breaks down?
 

Mike

Well-known member
Silver said:
The wage doesn't seem out of hand, but what the heck are these 41K in benefits all about? Is that what health care costs down there or does anyone know how this breaks down?

By ROBERT M. COSTRELL / WSJ
The showdown in Wisconsin over fringe benefits for public employees boils down to one number: 74.2. That's how many cents the public pays Milwaukee public-school teachers and other employees for retirement and health benefits for every dollar they receive in salary. The corresponding rate for employees of private firms is 24.3 cents.

Gov. Scott Walker's proposal would bring public-employee benefits closer in line with those of workers in the private sector. And to prevent benefits from reaching sky-high levels in the future, he wants to restrict collective-bargaining rights.

The average Milwaukee public-school teacher salary is $56,500, but with benefits the total package is $100,005, according to the manager of financial planning for Milwaukee public schools. When I showed these figures to a friend, she asked me a simple question: "How can fringe benefits be nearly as much as salary?" The answers can be found by unpacking the numbers in the district's budget for this fiscal year:

Social Security and Medicare. The employer cost is 7.65% of wages, the same as in the private sector.

.•State Pension. Teachers belong to the Wisconsin state pension plan. That plan requires a 6.8% employer contribution and 6.2% from the employee. However, according to the collective-bargaining agreement in place since 1996, the district pays the employees' share as well, for a total of 13%.

Teachers' Supplemental Pension. In addition to the state pension, Milwaukee public-school teachers receive an additional pension under a 1982 collective-bargaining agreement. The district contributes an additional 4.2% of teacher salaries to cover this second pension. Teachers contribute nothing.

Classified Pension. Most other school employees belong to the city's pension system instead of the state plan. The city plan is less expensive but here, too, according to the collective-bargaining agreement, the district pays the employees' 5.5% share.

Overall, for teachers and other employees, the district's contributions for pensions and Social Security total 22.6 cents for each dollar of salary. The corresponding figure for private industry is 13.4 cents. The divergence is greater yet for health insurance:

Health care for current employees. Under the current collective- bargaining agreements, the school district pays the entire premium for medical and vision benefits, and over half the cost of dental coverage. These plans are extremely expensive.

This is partly because of Wisconsin's unique arrangement under which the teachers union is the sponsor of the group health-insurance plans. Not surprisingly, benefits are generous. The district's contributions for health insurance of active employees total 38.8% of wages. For private-sector workers nationwide, the average is 10.7%.

.•Health insurance for retirees. This benefit is rarely offered any more in private companies, and it can be quite costly. This is especially the case for teachers in many states, because the eligibility rules of their pension plans often induce them to retire in their 50s, and Medicare does not kick in until age 65. Milwaukee's plan covers the entire premium in effect at retirement, and retirees cover only the growth in premiums after they retire.

As is commonly the case, the school district's retiree health plan has not been prefunded. It has been pay-as-you-go. This has been a disaster waiting to happen, as retirees grow in number and live longer, and active employment shrinks in districts such as Milwaukee.

For fiscal year 2011, retiree enrollment in the district health plan is 36.4% of the total. In addition to the costs of these retirees' benefits, Milwaukee is, to its credit, belatedly starting to prefund the benefits of future school retirees. In all, retiree health-insurance contributions are estimated at 12.1% of salaries (of which 1.5% is prefunded).

Overall, the school district's contributions to health insurance for employees and retirees total about 50.9 cents on top of every dollar paid in wages. Together with pension and Social Security contributions, plus a few small items, one can see how the total cost of fringe benefits reaches 74.2%.

What these numbers ultimately prove is the excessive power of collective bargaining. The teachers' main pension plan is set by the state legislature, but under the pressure of local bargaining, the employees' contribution is often pushed onto the taxpayers. In addition, collective bargaining led the Milwaukee public school district to add a supplemental pension plan—again with no employee contribution. Finally, the employees' contribution (or lack thereof) to the cost of health insurance is also collectively bargained.

As the costs of pensions and insurance escalate, the governor's proposal to restrict collective bargaining to salaries—not benefits—seems entirely reasonable.

Mr. Costrell is professor of education reform and economics at the University of Arkansas.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Op-Ed
University of Montana economist Tom Power

The latest political fad is to blame the budget difficulties at both the federal and state levels on government employees, in particular on their wages, benefits, and right to bargain collectively. There is something massively disorienting about this picture because it involves a distorted rewriting our recent economic history and the basic facts about government employment.

Federal, state, and local government budgets are under stress right now because of the financial collapse that triggered the Great Recession. As financial markets melted down and housing values plummeted, financial and construction workers were laid off wholesale, households stopped spending as much money and started saving so that they had some financial cushion if their family got caught up in the cascading layoffs. Faced with a drop in consumer spending and tight credit markets, businesses shelved expansion plans and did the opposite, laying off workers throughout the economy. Business profits tumbled, wage payments shrank, capital gains disappeared and were replaced with capital losses. The flow of tax revenues to federal, state, and local governments declined dramatically.

But governments still had to meet their usual obligations to put police on the streets, firefighters in fire stations, and teachers in schools. The federal government continued to face the cost of two wars and the world's mightiest military force spread across the globe. Local governments still had to plow the snow and repair the roads.


In addition governments at all levels faced the increased costs associated with supporting the unemployed, coping with rising poverty, hunger, and homelessness and helping communities and families weather the worst economic decline since the Great Depression, 70 years ago. It was those shrinking government tax revenues and stable or rising demand for government services that created the budget problems that plague governments at all levels.

It was not the wild spending of liberals or the wages and benefits of government workers who created the current budget problems. When the last Democratic president left office in 2000, the federal budget was running a surplus and most state government budgets were being balanced. It was not wild liberals who insisted on fighting two wars and expanding Medicare benefits while dramatically cutting taxes. It was a conservative Republican, George W. Bush. Instead of asking us to sacrifice to fund those wars and expanded benefits by paying higher taxes, he cut our taxes, started running massive deficits, and insisted that the most patriotic thing for citizens to do was to go shopping, assumedly using their credit cards.

Meanwhile, the deregulation fever spread and the economy lurched from one speculative bubble to another. We were all going to get rich, not by making more or better products, but by investing money in more and more risky financial gambles. The Las Vegas casino became our new economic model. The outcome was the near collapse of the nation's and the world's financial system and almost a repeat of the Great Depression. Instead, we "merely" got the Great Recession, the economic pain of which is likely to be with us for at least two more years.

It was not overpaid school teachers or police officers who brought this on us. It was outrageously overpaid financial speculators and corporate CEOs. Strangely enough, I do not hear Republican demagogues urging that the government take action against the real culprits behind the financial collapse and resulting Great Recession. The people who became hundred-millionaires in their high-stakes gambling with our livelihoods and homes go unmentioned. The fact that they are back at work wheeling and dealing and raking in their outrageous salaries, bonuses, and commissions is also ignored.

Instead the state budget deficits are blamed on underpaid school teachers and other civil servants. The fact is that the pay received by most state and local government workers, when adjusted for education, skill, and experience is notoriously lower that the pay in the private sector. Many local government workers actually qualify for food stamps.

It is true that politicians found it easier to make government jobs somewhat more attractive not by raising government workers' salaries but by offering expanded medical and retirement benefits. Like many large corporations, those politicians also did not adequately fund the pension promises they made to their workers. Those promises did not have to be paid for until some distant point in time when the politicians and corporate CEOs would be long gone. As the failure of corporate pension plans across the nation over the last two decades has demonstrated, such financial irresponsibility has not been limited to the public sector.

The attack on teachers, police officers, fire fighters, and other civil servants as the cause of the various states' budget problems is cheap scapegoating. Public employees did not cause the Great Recession that cutoff the flow of tax revenues to state government coffers. Very wealthy financial speculators did that. It is pure political demagoguery to use the fear and uncertainty generated by the current economic hard times to attack underpaid workers in order to pursue an unrelated political agenda, namely to renew the ongoing attack on workers' rights to collectively bargain in their workplace.

There is no doubt that there is more economic pain to come and that government employees are going to have to share in it. Most have offered to do so. That is a fact of life during a serious economic downturn. But blaming the hard times and budget deficits on those whose pay and benefits you are cutting and topping that off by unilaterally taking away some of their civil rights, demoting them to second class citizens, is hardly a way of bringing citizens together to weather, as best we can, these very difficult times. When we need to be pulling together as a nation, state, and community, this partisan scapegoating is simply making bad times worse.
 

okfarmer

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
Op-Ed
University of Montana economist Tom Power

The latest political fad is to blame the budget difficulties at both the federal and state levels on government employees, in particular on their wages, benefits, and right to bargain collectively. There is something massively disorienting about this picture because it involves a distorted rewriting our recent economic history and the basic facts about government employment.

Federal, state, and local government budgets are under stress right now because of the financial collapse that triggered the Great Recession. As financial markets melted down and housing values plummeted, financial and construction workers were laid off wholesale, households stopped spending as much money and started saving so that they had some financial cushion if their family got caught up in the cascading layoffs. Faced with a drop in consumer spending and tight credit markets, businesses shelved expansion plans and did the opposite, laying off workers throughout the economy. Business profits tumbled, wage payments shrank, capital gains disappeared and were replaced with capital losses. The flow of tax revenues to federal, state, and local governments declined dramatically.

But governments still had to meet their usual obligations to put police on the streets, firefighters in fire stations, and teachers in schools. The federal government continued to face the cost of two wars and the world's mightiest military force spread across the globe. Local governments still had to plow the snow and repair the roads.


In addition governments at all levels faced the increased costs associated with supporting the unemployed, coping with rising poverty, hunger, and homelessness and helping communities and families weather the worst economic decline since the Great Depression, 70 years ago. It was those shrinking government tax revenues and stable or rising demand for government services that created the budget problems that plague governments at all levels.

It was not the wild spending of liberals or the wages and benefits of government workers who created the current budget problems. When the last Democratic president left office in 2000, the federal budget was running a surplus and most state government budgets were being balanced. It was not wild liberals who insisted on fighting two wars and expanding Medicare benefits while dramatically cutting taxes. It was a conservative Republican, George W. Bush. Instead of asking us to sacrifice to fund those wars and expanded benefits by paying higher taxes, he cut our taxes, started running massive deficits, and insisted that the most patriotic thing for citizens to do was to go shopping, assumedly using their credit cards.

Meanwhile, the deregulation fever spread and the economy lurched from one speculative bubble to another. We were all going to get rich, not by making more or better products, but by investing money in more and more risky financial gambles. The Las Vegas casino became our new economic model. The outcome was the near collapse of the nation's and the world's financial system and almost a repeat of the Great Depression. Instead, we "merely" got the Great Recession, the economic pain of which is likely to be with us for at least two more years.

It was not overpaid school teachers or police officers who brought this on us. It was outrageously overpaid financial speculators and corporate CEOs. Strangely enough, I do not hear Republican demagogues urging that the government take action against the real culprits behind the financial collapse and resulting Great Recession. The people who became hundred-millionaires in their high-stakes gambling with our livelihoods and homes go unmentioned. The fact that they are back at work wheeling and dealing and raking in their outrageous salaries, bonuses, and commissions is also ignored.

Instead the state budget deficits are blamed on underpaid school teachers and other civil servants. The fact is that the pay received by most state and local government workers, when adjusted for education, skill, and experience is notoriously lower that the pay in the private sector. Many local government workers actually qualify for food stamps.

It is true that politicians found it easier to make government jobs somewhat more attractive not by raising government workers' salaries but by offering expanded medical and retirement benefits. Like many large corporations, those politicians also did not adequately fund the pension promises they made to their workers. Those promises did not have to be paid for until some distant point in time when the politicians and corporate CEOs would be long gone. As the failure of corporate pension plans across the nation over the last two decades has demonstrated, such financial irresponsibility has not been limited to the public sector.

The attack on teachers, police officers, fire fighters, and other civil servants as the cause of the various states' budget problems is cheap scapegoating. Public employees did not cause the Great Recession that cutoff the flow of tax revenues to state government coffers. Very wealthy financial speculators did that. It is pure political demagoguery to use the fear and uncertainty generated by the current economic hard times to attack underpaid workers in order to pursue an unrelated political agenda, namely to renew the ongoing attack on workers' rights to collectively bargain in their workplace.

There is no doubt that there is more economic pain to come and that government employees are going to have to share in it. Most have offered to do so. That is a fact of life during a serious economic downturn. But blaming the hard times and budget deficits on those whose pay and benefits you are cutting and topping that off by unilaterally taking away some of their civil rights, demoting them to second class citizens, is hardly a way of bringing citizens together to weather, as best we can, these very difficult times. When we need to be pulling together as a nation, state, and community, this partisan scapegoating is simply making bad times worse.

The first problem I saw with this is in the first line..... University employee Tom Power. From there I had a hard time with credibility.
 

TSR

Well-known member
What's the problem? Both work for different universities in different states? Neither works for the U of Wisconsin. There's always 2 sides to every story.
 

Twister Frost

Well-known member
Tam said:
And don't forget that is not a 12 month year like the average worker they get the summer and all holidays off with their children. :wink:

Believe me, I am not forgetting at this moment that it is not a 12-month job---I'm pretty damn sure I put in my full twelve months in the nine months I am contracted. This is a fairly average night for me, since the majority of the teachers choose to use their fifty minutes with the students to actually teach, we take papers home. Since I am a two-jobber, and things are hopping on the ranch, that makes my nights extra long. And those three months out of the summer, I am doing one of two things with my free time: taking classes (on my dime--thank you very much) that the school and state say I need to have in order to keep my certification or rewriting lessons, since I've yet to have two classes that learn the same way and education is all about meeting the "individual needs" of each student in the classroom. Pretty sure that there are quite a few people in my shoes who have a "second" job during the summer, also. Your blanket, Miss Tam, just doesn't fit all of us! Not only that, but if people dislike working their summers and not spending it with their children, then I say thay have a choice they can make---go get their degree and become a teacher. I happen to feel pretty damn guilty during the school year for the fact that my school children always seem to come before my own, and I sometimes think I might have a choice to make, too. But, I certainly do not run the banker, or the hairdresser, or the waitress in the ground because they are not taking their work home with them. I made this choice, just as you made the choice to be what you are, and if we don't like it than we have the ability to change it at any given moment.

I do not for one second think that what is going on in Wisconsin is correct and right. I've worked for twenty years in "at will" states, I'm no different than the fry cook at McDonalds---I work at the will of my employer. Tenure does not protect me, if the numbers (kids) are not there or the money is not there, believe me my years of experience and longevity do not protect me. Tenure is another word that some idiot coined thinking they would make the profession sound like it was protected from the harsh realities of unemployment in order to draw young college students to the profession. You dislike having "bad" teachers in the classrooms, get on the rear ends of your administrators, because that is all it takes to get rid of a tenured teacher--a plan of action--two bad evals and they hit the door.
 

Steve

Well-known member
by dragging the "professions" into the budget battles with the "unions" was a play to stifle debate and drive a wedge between the sides..

I would honestly say.. 99.9% of teachers are good teachers..

the same goes for fireman, police and EMTs ( I can't quite say the same for the DMV, and other gov workers..

as the debate started it was a simple power play between the states (who are broke) and the unions unsatisfiable thirst for more no matter how little is left..

by putting the workers in the middle the union has made it look like a different battle line is drawn,.. and many conservatives fell for the bait..

I want Right to work, as it supports freedom,

I want school choice as it promotes freedom..

but today might not be the day to fight that battle, as the budgets crumble,

today, I want our governments to get their act together and fix what they can now, pick their battles carefully and move forward when we can..

Christie has lost the battle here, he just hasn't figured it out yet..

Walker will lose as well..

Because they forgot that the employee they raged against are just voters and working folk themselves.. and when you look at a government CEO he can still look like a cold heartless bastard even when he is just trying to save the state,
 

Mike

Well-known member
The Milwaukee teachers union has dropped a lawsuit seeking to get its taxpayer-funded Viagra back.

The union sued in July 2010 to force the school board to again include the erectile dysfunction drug and similar pills in its health insurance plans.

The union has argued the board's policy of excluding such drugs from the plans discriminates against male employees; the board has countered the 2005 move was meant to save money.

Court records indicate the union, the school board and the state labor commission agreed to dismiss the lawsuit on March 1. A spokesman for the state Justice Department, which is representing the commission, declined comment. Attorneys for the union and school board didn't immediately return messages.
 
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