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Work Emails After Hours Finally Banned in France (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Fortune:
A new French law establishing workers' "right to disconnect" goes into effect today. The law requires companies with more than 50 employees to establish hours when staff should not send or answer emails. The goals of the law include making sure employees are fairly paid for work, and preventing burnout by protecting private time. French legislator Benoit Hamon, speaking to the BBC, described the law as an answer to the travails of employees who "leave the office, but they do not leave their work. They remain attached by a kind of electronic leash -- like a dog."
The BBC reports that France already has a 35-hour work week, while Fortune adds that many European companies have already taken steps to curtail after-work emails. "In 2012, Volkswagen blocked all emails to employees' Blackberries after-hours," and "Daimler took the step of deleting all emails received by employees while on vacation."
The BBC reports that France already has a 35-hour work week, while Fortune adds that many European companies have already taken steps to curtail after-work emails. "In 2012, Volkswagen blocked all emails to employees' Blackberries after-hours," and "Daimler took the step of deleting all emails received by employees while on vacation."
The teachers do barely work.
I always love these statements. Perhaps you live near one of the few public schools in the U.S. where ALL of the teachers are lazy bums. When I actually worked in public schools for a few years (a little over a decade ago), working at least 8-9 hour days was standard, because there was no possible way to get your grading, planning, and other random administrative work done during school hours... unless you were a terrible teacher who never assigned anything or did anything in class. (And yeah, there were some of those people I knew who were out the door with the bell every day. Most of the other teachers looked on them as slackers. The only other teachers who weren't hanging around in their classrooms for at least a couple hours after school were generally those that coached afternoon sports and activities.)
Anyhow, sure, you can doubt me or maybe your school district is different or whatever. I'd just note that there are MANY states that have major teacher shortages -- estimates are that we're now short by tens of thousands of teachers nationwide. And attrition rate is HUGE -- roughly half of new teachers leave the field within 5 years, and ~2/3 of vacancies are due to "pre-retirement attrition," i.e., people who leave the field early in their careers.
So -- here's my question: if it's such a "sweet deal" to be a teacher, why do we have so much trouble finding them, and why do so many teachers leave the field so quickly? (And, by the way, the median salary for teachers in many states is much less than 60K -- in some states median salary is barely above ~40K. Starting salary in many states is frequently in the low 30s or even high 20s.)
My father was a teacher and he saw the changes over his thirty years teaching. Restrictions on discipline, not even talking about corporal punishment but not even being allowed to raise a voice or keep a student after hours because the parents would bitch and whine about it. Even grabbing a child to keep him from running into the street got the parents furious. Then the school hours got shorter and the classes got bigger. And the "experts" coming in and saying how everything was being done wrong, so that every couple of years there was a new set of curriculum and workbooks to buy. And a school board easily manipulated. And students more unruly, parents not caring, and so on.
On the other hand I still have people coming up to me telling me what a great thing it was to have been in my father's class. He earned more respect in one year teaching a student than I can ever earn in an office job.
The teachers do barely work.
Yeah. They totally don't spend all day with your children, all of their lunchtime and break time supervising your children. They don't prepare lesson plans after hours, or mark your children's exams on the weekend. They don't have a requirement for professional development, they don't supervisie your children multiple times a year for 24 hours a day while they are on camp. They most definitely don't spend much of their holidays preparing for the upcoming semester.
So behalf on my middle school teaching wife who works far longer than my 40h per week + on call roster, FUCK YOU.