Strikes seem to be everywhere and the influence for me is close to home. First, it was the Teacher’s strike in Minneapolis. Now, it is the Nurse’s Strike. Soon it is predicted to be BNSF (railroad). Two teachers are married to my own kids. Two of my kids work in health care. The railroad is the most cost-effective way to bring resources to the upper midwest. The consequences are immediate.
One of my daughters is a physical therapist with a practice specific to the physical damage done by childhood cancer and chemotherapy. She was very upset last evening being pressed into service to help in the child cancer ward to substitute there for the nurses that would normally care for these children. These are the same children and families she works with as a therapist. I don’t know if physical therapists have a union or not, but she was not pleased with the attitude of those in the nursing union who thought they should have a 30% increase in salary over the next three years and how they decided to pressure the hospital to respond. I understand the hospital offer to be about half of that amount. She cares for the same children, goes to the same funerals for some of her patients, and is a dissertation short of her PhD. (Not DPT) so I respect her opinion on the situation.
I have done a great deal of thinking about the recent circumstances that have impacted who are commonly called essential workers. Are essential workers taken for granted? I suppose so. Are they underpaid? Perhaps more accurately, are they underpaid because they are essential. I don’t know and this is what I have been trying to work out for myself. Clearly, nurses working in critical hospital settings can argue that their labor is essential. Does this type of work warrant more money because it is essential? Ask parents how they considered the absence of teachers to care for their children during the pandemic or during a strike. Aside from the obvious mission of educators to educate, one could argue that any productive engagement of children so parents can pursue their own occupations is essential. Part of the reason the economy was thrown into chaos during the COVID pandemic was the lack of care for children. This role in combination with the concern we now have for children being months behind when it comes to normal academic progress clearly justifies the label of essential worker for educators. I really think that many more occupational roles qualify as essential. How about the role migrant workers play in tending and harvesting crops or butchering chickens and turkeys? If you value fresh fruits, pork, and chicken, you should probably consider their labor to be essential.
Just what is fair when it comes to salaries? Working conditions are important too, but salaries seem to be the issue that eventually becomes the sticking point and what catches the attention of the general public. What should the role played by a union or the immediate impact of a job be on the functioning of others in influencing salaries? When is leverage acceptable to secure the salary you want?
I certainly don’t have the answers, but I have been trying to review the work of some economists whose work seems to focus on this issue. My investigation has been specific to K12 education because I have an interest in this vocation and because the data are available.
It is important to admit that I have no background in economics. I can read what economists write and I think I understand the logic related to the arguments they make, but I write this without knowing for sure.
One approach economists take is to compare the average salary for one vocation (educators) with the salary for comparable occupations. This makes some sense, but while this logic was explained in most sources I read online, my background always encourages the examination of the methodology applied in research. How are key variables operationalized? So what is meant by “comparable vocations”?
Finding the specifics was not easy, but here are a couple of examples.
The NEA offers some data on comparable salaries and in one study I located this list of vocations:
Accountants and auditors, Architects, Archivists, curators, and museum technicians, Clergy, Compliance officers, construction, health and safety, and transportation, Computer programmers, Conservation scientists and foresters, Counselors, Editors, news analysts, reporters, and correspondents, Human-resources, training, and labor-relations specialists, Insurance underwriters, Occupational therapists, Other teachers and instructors (excludes preschool, K-12, and postsecondary), Physical therapists, Registered nurses, Technical writers.
I would not include several of these occupations. I know, for example, that physical therapists and occupational therapists are now required to secure a three-year doctorate to be licensed in the states most familiar to me. You can at least begin teaching with a BA/BS. Comparing starting salaries given these different economical demands would not seem appropriate. What about computer programmers? Anyone can learn to program. I programmed in several languages during my career without ever taking a course. However, I also know that getting an undegrad degree in computer science is challenging and while it may anger some I will suggest that getting through such a CS program is more difficult than meeting the requirements for a teaching certificate.
Here is a different list. This is the collection used by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) I find it more reasonable.
“ …workers with comparable skill requirements, including accountants, reporters, registered nurses, computer programmers, clergy, personnel officers, and vocational counselors and inspectors …”
Both the studies conducted by the NEA and the EPI concluded that teachers were paid less than those in comparable occupations.
Here is a related argument I find most convincing. Comparable occupations may be difficult to define in a way that does not involve opinions about competitiveness and difficulty of getting through qualification requirements (e.g., what proportion of entering college freshmen have the aptitude in a given major). However, trends should be informative if comparable groups are compared over time. From this perspective, K12 educators are losing ground. Whether it be starting salary, average salary, etc., the gap between educators and comparable vocations is growing. So avoiding arguments about whether groups being compared are similar, it seems to me that the gap should not be increasing if fairness was really being applied.
If you are interested in specifics, here is an interactive page allowing users to select their state from a map and obtain data on teacher salaries.