We seem to be being led astray somewhat by the PiS government with regards to the important issues in Poland. Everyday we are inundated with stories concerning the ever present drives of the government to de-communise Poland with now plans to removal street sings. However, have we not got more important things to be concerned about. According to many, the average pay in Poland is around 2,500 Zł. I hear this all the time and bulk at the though of this. It is a figure banded around all over the place but seems to be far off the mark by what is see all around me. The World Salaries website corroborates these figures and yet this just makes thinks worse for me. It says for example that gross pay for teachers is 2,811 zł. Yea right! In what world are these people living? The site says it gets its info from the Polish government, yet are we to assume that this is correct data. I know that there is an inbuilt problem with the representation of statistical data labelled as "average". Most average figures are taken from mean averages and thus skew the figures to give an over-inflated value of the statistics represented. I am sure that if a mode average or a median average taken we would see that the reality is far from this. I have two jobs and struggle to bring home much over 3,000 net. I am don't forget a foreigner and in some respects getting paid an inflated salary (which is greatfully taken) there for I can not see how the average person (may be typical person), can accumulate 2,500 zł.
The point of what I'm saying? Well, aren't there more useful things the government could be doing rather than designing ways to remove historical relics. I accept that i did not live here through communism and so may be can not appreciate the pain caused by it. However, shouldn't we be moving forward and not continuously be going backwards?
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I would say that figure for teachers is correct. When I first came to Poland in 1996 I worked at the university as a lecturer. Gross pay was 1800 zloty - plus some bonus's for weekend work.
My girlfriend's mum retired as a Russian teacher in secondary school four years ago. She was getting 1700 zloty a month as a teacher who had been teaching for 35 years.
Things is bad here, man.
When you take the fact that the difference between gross and net is around 33% then yes it probably is correct. Maybe that is why it is also missleading as people focus on the high figure and not the reality.
Which gross?
Remember there's dochód (roughly: taxable income, from which taxes are withdrawn before you get it) and przychód (roughly: taxable income and employer's expenses in employing you).
The higher figures are probably przychód and not dochód (and certainly not what you get w ręku).
What's surprising is that the government would quote figures that make things look less bad. Traditional Polish practice is to count ecnomic indicators so as to make things look as negative as possible ('unemployment' is a good example of this).
My girlfriend's mum has been teaching maths in primary school for 25 years and earns 2,500 gross. It's really fucking diabolical.
The young doctors had a catchy banner a few months ago on a strike: 'We speak English'. With a national strike of 1/3 of all public hospitals due to take place from this Monday coming and a teachers manifestation in the coming weeks (what date?) labour unrest is bound to be peeving off the ducks.
My girlfriend's brother's girlfriend's father (complicated stuff, I know) claims that Dr. G scandal was orchestrated so as to provide a mechanism for the CBA to root out trade union activity. When they came to his hospital he said they spent most of their time questioning hospital staff about labour agitators rather than corruption, etc.
What annoys me is that the contracts, tax info. etc. are only in Polish despite the fact that I work in the English teaching market. Does anybody know of links to sites where I can learn about the tax system here in English as my Polish is not good enough yet.
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