Teachers and The Age

It's a match made in heaven, lefty teachers and The Age. Big union rallies are being held today, to what end I don't know. It's about a year from a Federal election, and there is no way rallies of whatever size are going to persuade the Howard government to retract its IR legislation after it just had its constitutional right to create it confirmed by the High Court. (Maybe that is the reason for the rallies, a pointless whinge about losing a High Court case.)

So, teachers today in many States are taking the day off to attend these rallies. Here's their justification from The Age letters today:

... I am obligated to stop work so that, hopefully, students at my school do not have to join a workforce where there is no job security, no basic rights and no collective agreements.

I look into my classroom each day and see a class full of students who have hopes, ambitions and dreams which would not be fulfilled under a Howard Government.

Maybe teenagers have changed since I was one, but I somehow doubt they dream all day of the fantastic collective bargaining agreement their union will win for them.

And from a teacher sympathiser:

WHEN teachers took strike action I would always keep my child at home. His absence note would explain that I kept my child at home because I did not want my child surrounded by teachers who were so selfish that they would not surrender a day's pay to fight against injustice or so dull that they could not comprehend the importance of fighting injustice. I encourage all parents to send such messages to schools and to John Howard.

Ohh..we don't want our child contaminated by all those unjust or dumb teachers who happen to take a different view of where the balance should lie in industrial relations, do we?

Look, I'm not saying people don't have a right to disagree with the Howard government's policies on IR and to fight tooth and nail to do the only thing that will change it - elect a Kevin Rudd government. (Beazley has only got to make one more slip of the tongue in the next 6 weeks and he is gone.) But what irritates me is the preciousness of the arguments on display here, that suggest the issue is so dire and immediate that teachers must attend (even when they are not personally affected, as no public sector teacher would be) and that the rallies are going to achieve something.