You know, sometimes when there are ongoing negotiations between Government and civil servants, it is easy to take the side of civil servants because most times they are underpaid even though in many cases I really can't say that they are overworked. Like many of us, I have been to the Government ministries and offices and seen the malaise.

I am especially sympathetic when it comes to teachers. My parents are retired teachers and all my life I had first-hand experience of what life is like for teachers on a teacher's salary. That sympathy extends to as far as but does not include what teachers want discussed in these current wage negotiations: four-month-long maternity leave with teachers getting paid for three of those months. Currently, teachers get three months maternity leave and get paid for two of those months.

That demand has been rejected by Government but the teachers want the matter looked into. My question is why?

There are so many things that teachers need. They need safer schools, better equipment, better training, larger classrooms, books, computers, and of course, better salaries but what they don't need is longer maternity leave and getting paid for three quarters of that leave.

summer holidays

First and foremost, teachers get paid an annual salary and they pretty much work for nine months out of every year. Many teachers don't like being faced with that fact but that is what it is, fact. They get summer holidays and all holidays off, for that matter, and they get paid for all that time that most of them aren't even in the classroom. Many teachers actually take on other jobs during the summer holidays. How many other professionals have that option?

If teachers were asking for teacher counsellors to be placed in each school to whom they could go and vent and put their issues into perspective considering some of the animals they have to come in contact with every day, then they would have my vote. If they were negotiating to have increased security at the schools that really need it to prevent armed thugs posing as students from inflicting harm upon the others who attend school to learn and the teachers there to teach, they would have my support.

If they are negotiating to be paid salaries commensurate with the additional responsibilities they now have in that they are in many instances forced to become parents to the children they teach, then they would have everybody behind them; everybody except those parents whose kids they have to be parenting.

But wanting more money for less time worked is just not cutting it, not in this day and age when more and more organisations are working off the principle of no work, no pay.

I agree that teachers need to be paid more and be provided with better working conditions but they are not helping their own cause when they come to the table with ridiculous issues that only serve to shift the focus from what it should truly be on.

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