Teachers in many countries, including the developed ones, are resorting to strikes to force the government to increase their wages. They complain that their current salary is no longer enough to cover the rising cost of living due to high inflation.

A major teachers union in the United Kingdom plan to stage a walkout next month and July if an ongoing pay hike negotiation doesn’t conclude in their favor. Other teachers groups in the country are also planning strikes in autumn if their similar demand for salary raise is ignored.

The unions were not satisfied with the 4.3 percent salary increase, which translates to £30,000 (P2 million) per academic year, offered by the government.

Other teachers are switching to jobs that pay higher wages. A kindergarten teacher from Wuhan, China has resigned and became a full-time vlogger after earning so much in one of her classroom videos that went viral in Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

In the viral video of the teacher with the surname Huang, she is singing the Chinese nursery rhyme “Planting Flowers in the Garden” live. The video received over 100 million views, the Malaysian news outlet Oriental Daily reported.

Many viewers flooded Huang with cash gifts amounting to more than her 3,000 yuan (P23,000) salary as a teacher.

In the Philippines, the minimum wage of a public school teacher is P27,000. Huang’s live streaming earnings were 16 times that.

Her cash earnings were also greater than American teachers’ minimum salary of $33,000 (P1.8 million) per academic year and British teachers’ pay of 30,000 pounds (P2 million) per school year.

Huang herself was shocked to receive 450,000 yuan (P3.5 million) in cash gifts from viewers.

“I’m so happy, I live streamed for a day and earned more than 10 years’ worth of my salary. Thank you, everyone,” Huang told her viewers, according to Oriental Daily.