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One of our teachers (whose position is assistant teacher) is going to take a regular teacher position at another school. It sounds to me like she'll be taking a net loss in her income and benefits, since the new position is part time, but she wants that teacher title.
I'm taking the assistant teacher position that she's leaving, which entails a drop in pay over what I was making before the layoff (but not what I was making during the independent contractor period). Also, part of the desperate attempt to stay afloat after Even Start was defunded was that everybody got cut from 8 hours to six and a half, which means, altogether, when you add the cut in hours and the cut in hourly together, I'm taking about an eighteen percent pay cut. But I'll get my benefits back in a while (I have to go through the whole rehire thing with the ninety days till benefits thing, I think). There's some program with the state called "workshare" which allows unemployment benefits for people who work at places where everyone's hours are cut, which I am not eligible for because at the time that the program was set up for the employees at our center, I was not on the payroll, being an independent contractor at the time.
The overall cut in hours doesn't bother me as much for myself as for everybody -- because I personally do not like eight hour days and will cut my own hours whenever we're low in numbers and I don't have a big project to do. So I shouldn't complain about that part. And the cut in hours was done to avoid a complete loss of health coverage. Well, it wasn't billed as a complete loss. There was some fiddle-faddle about a health care account, into which the center would put a minuscule amount of money and the employees could put whatever they wanted on top of that, and that would be expected to cover all your health costs. Right. Fortunately, my boss's boss told the board that was unacceptable. Our insurance is going to erode a lot, but that's mostly from the insurance companies, which are raising the costs and cutting the coverages across the board. We're changing over to some HMO that makes my boss grimace to name it, but even though I haven't seen the details I know it could be a lot worse.
The smallest cut that any of our workers is taking is a ten percent cut in wages. If you ask me, this constitutes a raise in taxes -- since our wages are public money, paid for out of our own pockets, and it has been taken away from us to fund wars, torture, giveaways to wealthy criminals, and luxuries for their mouthpieces.
I read that the sticking point for the republicans in the house of representatives in voting for John Boehner's vindictive mess was that there was money in it for Pell grants. Pell grants are the thing that allows poor kids to go to college. It's just breathtakingly mean to object to them. But every single dog-damned detail of the whole mess, from the Tea Party ravvings to the Koch Brothers to Obama, is breathtakingly mean and evil Avedon Carol said something a while back -- I wish I remember her exact words, but she said that all this hardship and degradation isn't an accidental byproduct: it's what they want us to have.
When it wasn't so wildly flagrant, when it wasn't so maniacally destructive of everything of any use or beauty in western civilization, you might have been able to say it was because they hadn't learned anything about economics or politics in the last two centuries and they sincerely thought they were going to improve their profits this way. But they've gone so far beyond what could improve profits in any sustainable way that I am forced to conclude that they really don't believe they will be here in ten years and it doesn't matter how bad it gets because the obscene inflation of their wealth at the expense of the rest of us is all there is.
It's a pyramid scheme on a global scale, is what it is. We're all paying everything back to the tip of the pyramid: even our great-grandchildren are.
But, anyway, as of August 15, dog willing and the creek don't rise, I will have a regular job again. It will be in the toddler room instead of the infant room, which has its advantages and disadvantages.
And next week Emma's working fifteen hour days for six days straight, last I heard: and Frank is coming on Wednesday to spend most of August here. So life goes on.
I'm taking the assistant teacher position that she's leaving, which entails a drop in pay over what I was making before the layoff (but not what I was making during the independent contractor period). Also, part of the desperate attempt to stay afloat after Even Start was defunded was that everybody got cut from 8 hours to six and a half, which means, altogether, when you add the cut in hours and the cut in hourly together, I'm taking about an eighteen percent pay cut. But I'll get my benefits back in a while (I have to go through the whole rehire thing with the ninety days till benefits thing, I think). There's some program with the state called "workshare" which allows unemployment benefits for people who work at places where everyone's hours are cut, which I am not eligible for because at the time that the program was set up for the employees at our center, I was not on the payroll, being an independent contractor at the time.
The overall cut in hours doesn't bother me as much for myself as for everybody -- because I personally do not like eight hour days and will cut my own hours whenever we're low in numbers and I don't have a big project to do. So I shouldn't complain about that part. And the cut in hours was done to avoid a complete loss of health coverage. Well, it wasn't billed as a complete loss. There was some fiddle-faddle about a health care account, into which the center would put a minuscule amount of money and the employees could put whatever they wanted on top of that, and that would be expected to cover all your health costs. Right. Fortunately, my boss's boss told the board that was unacceptable. Our insurance is going to erode a lot, but that's mostly from the insurance companies, which are raising the costs and cutting the coverages across the board. We're changing over to some HMO that makes my boss grimace to name it, but even though I haven't seen the details I know it could be a lot worse.
The smallest cut that any of our workers is taking is a ten percent cut in wages. If you ask me, this constitutes a raise in taxes -- since our wages are public money, paid for out of our own pockets, and it has been taken away from us to fund wars, torture, giveaways to wealthy criminals, and luxuries for their mouthpieces.
I read that the sticking point for the republicans in the house of representatives in voting for John Boehner's vindictive mess was that there was money in it for Pell grants. Pell grants are the thing that allows poor kids to go to college. It's just breathtakingly mean to object to them. But every single dog-damned detail of the whole mess, from the Tea Party ravvings to the Koch Brothers to Obama, is breathtakingly mean and evil Avedon Carol said something a while back -- I wish I remember her exact words, but she said that all this hardship and degradation isn't an accidental byproduct: it's what they want us to have.
When it wasn't so wildly flagrant, when it wasn't so maniacally destructive of everything of any use or beauty in western civilization, you might have been able to say it was because they hadn't learned anything about economics or politics in the last two centuries and they sincerely thought they were going to improve their profits this way. But they've gone so far beyond what could improve profits in any sustainable way that I am forced to conclude that they really don't believe they will be here in ten years and it doesn't matter how bad it gets because the obscene inflation of their wealth at the expense of the rest of us is all there is.
It's a pyramid scheme on a global scale, is what it is. We're all paying everything back to the tip of the pyramid: even our great-grandchildren are.
But, anyway, as of August 15, dog willing and the creek don't rise, I will have a regular job again. It will be in the toddler room instead of the infant room, which has its advantages and disadvantages.
And next week Emma's working fifteen hour days for six days straight, last I heard: and Frank is coming on Wednesday to spend most of August here. So life goes on.
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