Teachers chose their profession; they shouldn’t complain

One of the great things about living in these United States is that we have choices.

We are all told when we are younger that we have the opportunity to have any profession that we want when we grow up. That doesn’t mean that our dream job pays what we would like, but we have to weigh income against benefits, hours and quality of life. If you pursue that profession, that means you accept those conditions. You don’t move next door to the dump and complain about the smell.

Teachers and other government workers think that they are on the same playing field as employees of private businesses, but they’re not.

If employees of a private business go on strike, the consumer has the choice to support their strike by not purchasing that product or service and to shop elsewhere.

“We the people,” the taxpayers, the customer, the client, don’t have a choice to shop elsewhere (when it comes to schools.) Sure, we can choose to send our children to a private school, but we are still being charged for a service we are not receiving because of a handful of people who refuse to go to work at a job they have chosen.

Also, teachers, you are paying union dues to a union to fight your battles for you – shouldn’t they be negotiating while you are working? Otherwise, why pay dues? Anyone can refuse to work; that’s a no-brainer.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but we are in the middle of a really bad recession, we are all working harder for less money. So please, if you think you can do better for yourselves by working for the private sector and have to worry about customer service, client retention, keeping your numbers up and actually have to answer to an employer about your production, please do that.

I’m sure there are many educated people who would love to do your job with your benefits, every imaginable holiday off, retirement, people volunteering to help you for free and having the same days off as your children.

It’s great to live in a country where we can our opinions and have choices we can make to better ourselves.

Ken Adams

Renton