Update: Teachers strike ends in Puerto Rico
March 5, 2008 by libertyisforme
The ten-day teachers strike in Puerto Rico ended. The union will continue to demand higher wages and better working conditions.
Mainstream media keeps portraying teachers in the island as being paid low wages in comparison to mainland salaries but media bias won’t tell you the whole story.
I did a little research and look, what I found out:
According to the 2006 American Community Survey, the average median income in Puerto Rico is $17,621 and the average salary of a new teacher in Puerto Rico is $22,164, above the median income of the average Puerto Rican.
So, teachers are bitching when in reality they are doing better off than the taxpayers who are supporting them.
This is a great post on an issue that hasn’t gotten the publicity it deserves. The salary figures you’ve discovered are quite revealing.
Two quick points that get overlooked during demonstrations like this:
1. There is no moral right to strike
2. Wages are prices and as such should not be changed arbitrarily
Any employee can choose to stop laboring for an employer they don’t like. Therefore, any group of teachers can come together to exercise this right together.
However, they have no right to prevent the employer from voluntarily interacting with other people, be it customers or other employees and potential employees. It is morally wrong to coercively prohibit people from voluntarily exchanging with other people. And this is what strikes are all about.
Wages, on the other hand, are prices that come from production and can only rise from an increase in productivity. Arbitrarily inflating prices, such as wages, will have all sorts of negative consequences.
I’ve been to Puerto Rico. Government jobs are some of the best paying around over there.
This is due to the low cost of living there vs gov’t pay scales.
I actually lived in Puerto Rico for two years… the cost of living is definately not low! The only thing that you will find that is cheaper there than here is gas (though sitting in rush hour traffic evens things out considerably). Everything else, food, housing, utilities, clothing, is more expensive.
“According to the 2006 American Community Survey, the average median income in Puerto Rico is $17,621 and the average salary of a new teacher in Puerto Rico is $22,164, above the median income of the average Puerto Rican.
So, teachers are bitching when in reality they are doing better off than the taxpayers who are supporting them.”
To use these statistics is laughable. Almost 50% of the population of Puerto Rico lives at or below the pvoerty line. I guess that would throw off the average salary a little. The average starting salary for a teacher in PR is not $22,164, but $19,00 (lowest out of any state and 1/3 less than the average in the US). That’s why when you pick up the classified ads there, you see teacher’s wanted ads from NY, Florida and Texas. In addition, the strike wasn’t about salary, it was about class size, renovations, etc.
Kevin,
I am sorry to break it to you but the AP figures are wrong.
Unfortunately, an arbitrary increase in the wages of teachers will actually hurt our island. This may sound counter-intuitive, but because it requires the government to spend more on every teacher, it will actually reduce the number of teachers helping our children learn and raise taxes. Simply put, when something is more expensive, people buy less of it. This is just as true for cars and clothes and gasoline as it is for teachers. Economists call it the law of demand.
In addition to the harm this will cause our children, it will devastate all of the teachers who can no longer find employment and the communities in which they live.
Currently, unemployment in Puerto Rico is 11.2 percent, above the natural rate of unemployment – 6 percent. If teachers’ receive wages that the economy cannot maintain, unemployment rates will increase, resulting in weakened communities and wasted productivity. This leaves Puerto Rico with more poverty and less wealth.
Make sense?