Monday 21 May 2007

The mathematics of executive salaries

Last Saturday's Business Age contained an interesting article by Leon Gettler on executive salaries. The gist of the piece was about the disparity between the obscene amounts of money some chief executives earn and what ordinary wage earners earn.

Gettler used statistics to draw comparisons and this got me to thinking that teachers could get kids to investigate the figures and work out their own comparisons. For example, this paragraph about Macquarie Bank's chief executive Allan Moss:

On $33.5 million, Allan Moss is on a nice little earner, up 58 per cent on the previous year. As The Sydney Morning Herald pointed out, he's worth 446 construction workers, 669 graduate teachers, 335 GPs, or 747 times the average Australian worker.


So there you go, I wonder how many teachers you could get for Allan Moss's salary?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Now Sam,
this is one that gets RIGHT-UP-MY-NOSE.
Teachers wages are pathetic- an absolute bloody disgrace!

Incentive payments AREN'T the answer. They are divisive and far too subjective.

One, two or even five thousand extra dollars a year wouldnt cut it for me either!

Based on other sectors- and workloads as I see them- teachers pay scales should be:
Graduates $55,000
Top-of-the-scale $80,000
Leading teachers $95,000
Assistant Principals $120,000
Principals of large schools 180,000+

You might think this is far-fetched. BUT, my wife earnt DOUBLE my present salary 10 years ago working in a bank! Two year graduates in IT or Accounting are $70,000-$80,000.

My concern is that people simply wont go into teaching as a long-term career.

This is an accident waiting to happen, but I cant see anyone dealing in a pro-active way.

I'm going to eat haggus,get a kilt, and practice kyber throwing!