"Gold plated" (sic) health care?

Tuck in your pants. Your bias is peeking out.

(Edit after being downvoted, in an attempt to be more constructive): Seriously, you seem to have an animus against teachers having decent health care. What's your problem with that, and why do you feel it's appropriate to label their quite average health care plans as "gold plated", as if they were unfairly receiving more health care than they are entitled to?

It's always easier to hate people in your own class who have fought for rights than to fight for those rights yourself.

Sorry, I have to get back to believing whatever the 1% wants me to believe.

According to the NEA, that's only scheduled hours, not actual work hours.

http://www.nea.org/home/12661.htm

That certainly matches the teachers I've known; they put in a ton of non-classroom hours, and often put in a fair bit of their own money.

A Gates Foundation survey puts it at 53 hours per week:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/survey...

And for teachers involved in extracurricular activities, the average is over 11 hours a day.

The numbers I cited are actual hours worked "last week" according to the BLS's American Time User Survey. It includes work performed "at a work location", "at home" and "at another location" (I assume this last one means starbucks).

You'd have known all this if you bothered to read even the introduction.

Did read it. I didn't see them resolve the scheduled hours versus hours worked question.

And since the Gates Foundation numbers better match what every teacher I've ever talked to says, I'm going to run with them.

Paragraph 2 explains that it tracks "activities that they engaged in".

Yep. Not convinced that they are really tracking what I'd like them to track.

38.5 hours is … unrealistic. It also ignores the fact that health care and benefits have been slashed heavily in recent decades so while there may be some older teachers enjoying the fruits of stronger unions, a prospective new teacher is looking at something roughly equivalent to what any software engineer would receive as far as benefits go. Salary is probably lower unless you're comparing a teacher in a very rich / urban area with a software engineer well outside of SF/NY/LA/etc.