One of the questions as a result of the covid epidemic and the various mandates whether you agreed with them or not, was in light pf how workplace productivity changed and the experience people had with working remotely that turned out to be just as complicated as stopping the DVD player from blinking 12:00 once you finally did it, would the workplace and approaches to it change in light of what was learned especially about worker attitudes as many refuse to return to work unless old practices that were based exploitation as  grunts performed the work whose benefits are enjoyed only by the people at the top, not the workers who produce the profits.

 I was talking to a friend who has a new job.

He used to work at a downtown hotel, a boutique hotel, which had to close during the peak days of Covid and only recently began the reopening process. Many of its employees had found it necessary to move on to other jobs during the hotel’s closure, so that when the hotel began to reopen it did so on a limited capacity basis with other precautions added to the bar and dining room sections.

Obviously, the re-opening process had to begin with a skeleton crew to handle the limited capacity with many employees doubling up on duties until the hoped for applicants for jobs began to show up for interviews and get hired. Since there were few guests and few patrons in the restaurant and bar and assuming the situation was only temporary until everything was completely open, the bartender who has a view of the front desk was required to do the reception desk duty when activity at the bar was slow, and this often raised the question whether that person was a bartender covering the reception desk when needed or the reception desk person stepping in to the position of bartender when needed.

The employees were willing to double up with kitchen staff also doubling as waiters because it was their way of helping the hotel they felt good working at and hoped would recover.

Instead of learning what lessons they could have during the pandemic when it came to employees, the owners decided that they could save money by slowly increasing capacity while continuing to have employees serve multiple positions, something, it was assumed, they would adjust to over time so it would be a gradual, almost unnoticeable, creeping increase of duties that employees could ease into blindly as opposed an instant company practice change that would be too sudden and too obvious not to elicit a reaction.

Customers were inconvenienced by this practice, and some got angry at the staff for not being where they were expected to be for the purpose they were supposed to be there. The bartender faced the anger of people who had to wait for him to finish serving the ordered drinks at the bar before getting to the reception desk to sign them in, and then people at the bar got mad at the bartender because , instead of being at the bar and their beck and call, was, instead,  at the registration desks dealing with those coming and going or just needing a little concierge assistance.

Ownership thought it had found a way to get people to do multiple jobs so the company could increase profits as it was clear the replacement hirings were taking much longer than expected as interviews were not being held and the management kept things going under the new system.

They assumed the employees who returned would be grateful for the work and would not mind a little increase of duties with no increase in pay, but their assumption being wrong employees walked.

The hotel ownership had learned nothing and assumed they could mistreat employees perhaps more than in the past and it would just be allowed and accepted.

They were wrong.

Regardless that teachers have had to get a degree in their subject area, attend continuing education classes, and meet all state requirements for their certification, in spite them being experienced and knowledgeable professionals, they can only teach students in accordance with school district policies designed by people heavy on theory but lacking in any real classroom experience. The end result is that by ignoring teacher input, school districts too often institute policies that prevent a proper education as what is taught is often subject to the personal, religious, and political beliefs of those in charge with actual education playing a secondary role to their need to promote them.

I know a math teacher who had been named the state teacher of the year because of her extraordinary way of getting kids, even reluctant ones, to do well in math despite any dislike of math or difficulty with it that they had experienced in the past. Part of her job as Teacher of the Year was to hold workshops for other math teachers around the state to explain her method as an offered approached as opposed a requirement. After serving a year in that position, the school board and administration of her district came up with a new way to approach math because some “expert” recommended it, and she was no longer allowed to apply her method to instruction but had to use the new, unproven method. Her performance was not what it had been as she had to learn the new method and applying  it in the classroom as she did so, and between the double requirement of learning while teaching, she did not do as well with this method initially and was written up for unsatisfactory performance in her evaluation.

They stopped her from doing what they had agreed she had been successful at, having crowned her state teacher of the year, but now the board and administration just expected equal success with their chosen method and punished her for not meeting expectations.

She left the district and is doing very well in the district that is letting her use her proven successful methods.

Although most people associate teachers with all things related to school, the reality is that schools are run by elected people who choose leadership based on how close an applicant comes to agreeing with their personal, political, and religious beliefs, and while accepting praise for any success, their self-fulfilling failures are placed on the teachers whose position is often “comply or perish”.

Because a nearby school district did a disastrous job dealing with students for whom English is a second language, the federal government put the district under its control until such time as it had rectified its deficiencies.

As per usual, addressing the board and administration failures meant putting pressure on teachers to have this happen with the teachers being the ones harmed by the district leaderships failures.

Teachers, regardless of experience and effectiveness are required to take courses to get certified in teaching students for whom English is their second language and to do so at their own expense, with failure to do so resulting in a forced, involuntary transfer to a different school with the option of just leaving.

It is not so much the requirement, but that it was arrived at without any input from teachers who could very well have helped develop a better approach.

Between this, covid conditions in general, and some ill thought out approaches by people in charge who being as new as they were to this whole covid thing and knew everyone in teaching was too, still held teachers to impressive but realistically unattainable goals the district teachers for whom there were to many unrealistic expectations and requirements, just one too many things  put on teachers to repair the damage of others, left due to retirement or being tired of the treatment as hired help.

This put the district in a bind for the next school year.

They need new teachers, so they have instituted sign-on bonuses as bait.

For a few thousand dollars extra, you can sign up with the district that may or may not rectify its errors by better policies and practices that come from the classroom and not some isolated collection of non-classroom people in their own special building without any assurances that the district leaders will treat them as more than a person filling a slot to keep the number of teachers from being reduced further, and, most likely, will use them until their purpose is met and they can be discarded, or after having saved the district, treated like the help subjected to policies and practices a large number of which are counter-productive.

In spite of a recent labor dispute based on the threat of these involuntary transfers, a policy arrived at with no teacher input, the district is attempting to get fresh faced new teachers to enter the Disney Land of education when in reality they are entering a dilapidated, crumbling, and non-functioning on many levels amusement park and being required to make it Disney.

As if potential teachers are unaware of the district’s previous bad behavior toward teachers and a few thousand taxable dollars are going to bring people in without any assurances that the past abuses of teachers when it came to hours, wages, and conditions of employment will end and the district become more honestly collaborative.

As it is, teacher recruitment is going slowly.

It may not be a universal thing, but it seems these two entities, the hotel and the school district, have totally misread what working people learned during the pandemic.

The bosses need the workers, and the workers will not be quiet in accepting poor conditions and treatment because that has been the status quo.

Management needs to relearn the proper lesson.

Workers are neither desperate nor stupid.

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