Understanding the Increment Freeze: A Teacher’s Perspective
Many teachers are not happy about G.O.B.’s proposed ten percent salary cut and increment freeze. They have taken to the streets to protest these proposals because they feel that they will be giving up a lot and that other measures should be explored. But just how will these proposed measures affect teachers? One teacher has come up with the tables and created an easy to understand video. News Five’s Andrea Polanco reports.
Andrea Polanco, Reporting
Miguel Bonilla is a teacher at the Mount Carmel High School. He made a video to explain what an unfrozen salary increment looks like versus how the salary increment freeze will affect teachers – not just for the next four years but for the duration of their teaching years. In this example, Bonilla starts by showing how a teacher’s continuous increment looks over the duration of his teaching years versus what a four-year freeze would like. This example is of a twenty-eight-year old teacher who has twenty-seven more years until he retires – so someone who is very early in his teaching career. This teacher is on pay scale sixteen point one. He earns a yearly salary of thirty thousand one hundred and seventy one dollars. His yearly increment stands at one thousand three hundred and ten dollars.
Miguel Bonilla, Teacher, Mount Carmel High School
“When he started working at Mount Carmel – let us assume that he started working there last year. His starting salary was thirty thousand one hundred and seventy one dollars. As the year went by he should have in a normal year increase his salary to thirty one thousand four hundred and eighty one dollars and then the subsequent year, according to the table, it would have increased and again and again – over the course of his lifetime he would have earned one million two hundred and ninety two thousand eight hundred and eight dollars. A lot – right? Almost two hundred thousand would have gone in income tax.”
Now, Bonilla explains what a teacher’s salary would look like if government’s proposed four year increment freeze is implemented.
Miguel Bonilla
“In the first year, the salary didn’t increase. In the second year it didn’t increase; in the third year it didn’t increase; in the fourth year it didn’t increase and now in the fourth year which the government is proposing it didn’t increase. Now let us look at the second scenario which is the actual scenario being proposed. His earnings would have been one million two hundred and eighteen thousand one hundred and thirty-eight dollars. If you notice there is a profound difference between what he should have gotten in a normal year to what he is getting in a pandemic year.”
According to Bonilla, this example shows how a four-year increment freeze would short this teacher over seventy thousand dollars over the duration of his teaching career.
Miguel Bonilla
“According to the government, over the four years he should have lost approximately five thousand two hundred and forty dollars however if you minus over a lifetime what he lost you will end up with a total of losing seventy-four thousand six hundred and seventy dollars. So, that is the profound economic impact of a salary freeze over four years.”
Reporting for News Five, I’m Andrea Polanco.
