Burnout & Teachers’ Rights
Burnout is a syndrome in response to chronic work stress. Are there protections in place for teachers?
They say if you love what you do, you won’t work a day in your life.
If only!
As one teacher put it:
“I did what I love. No amount of liking my profession prevented years of underpaid slog, years of thankless paperwork, countless adversarial encounters with people wielding power over me and my time, and crippling mental worry over the consequences of not being perfectly excellent in the classroom every single day, without fail.”
Chronic works stress causes burnout, a syndrome comprised of the physiological toll of excessive work hours and work tasks, combined with psychologically harmful pressure from work worry.
A climate of hostility and unfairness impacts all aspects of healthy functioning. The first aspect of which is sleep. When work is all one thinks about, because there is so much of it, sleep is the first casualty. Adequate rest is essential to cognitive health, as is time for relationships, hobbies, exercise and nutrition.
Inhumane workloads suffocate necessary down-time, resulting in illness.
What can teachers do about this?
The key is to engage our workplaces and our workloads. There is no easy fix, but knowledge of workers’ rights is the first step:
We all have the right to fair labour practice. Secondly, we all have the right to organise. That is, to join a teacher union. Unions advocate for us, and help to safeguard rights. We also have the right to occupational health and safety, and to be treated with dignity.
In our personal capacity, the LRA (Labour Relations Act) makes provision for the “grievance procedure” - that is, your legal right to raise a grievance pertaining to working conditions and/or harassment or any unfair treatment. This is not an adversarial mechanism: on the contrary, it is a conflict resolution strategy that you can use to address your situation.
The grievance procedure is simple! It’s a fancy term for writing a letter of concern to your boss, explaining your predicament and asking for relief.
Handing in a letter requesting help is a powerful protection against work abuse, for if you submit a grievance letter, your employer is obliged to respond. Failure to do so reflects poorly on them, and bolsters your case. We are entitled to raise concerns in the workplace, provided we do so in the correct manner.
(It is illegal to get fired for submitting a grievance so don’t feel intimidated!)
If there is no record of an employee flagging ill-health as a result of overwork or other negative workplace event, the CCMA cannot assist. They require evidence to adjudicate accordingly.
Crucially: employers can’t remedy what they don’t know. Inform them of the challenges you face, suggest solutions, and invoke your rights.
Insist on better treatment by charting your declining health as well as noting every attempt you made to solve it. Look for ways to network with colleagues who are suffering the same conditions, and formulate a plan. Ask for meetings with management, petition your SGB, start the conversation.
It’s in every school’s interest that teachers are treated fairly. It’s in your best interests to document your burnout from the get-go.
Drawing attention to conditions that undermine teacher health, is an important part of teacher training. If you have any comments or corrections on this topic, or any others raised in TTL blog posts, please email: www.teachertraininglab@gmail.com.