Teachers ‘disappointed’ by latest offers

THE primary teachers’ union says it is ‘‘disappointed’’ with a new pay offer and may hold a third national strike on April 3 if teachers reject it.

The offer includes two options which would either give teachers more classroom release time or bring part of their pay increases forward by a year.

But both options have stuck to a previous offer to raise the basic pay scale by 3% a year for three years and add a step at the top of the scale and a $500 oneoff payment — which the union says is only half of a $1000 cash payment being offered to secondary teachers.

Ministry of Education deputy secretary Ellen MacGregorReid said the latest offer stayed within a fiscal envelope of $698 million over the four years to June 2022 — the same cost as the offer made by the ministry in November.

She said the ministry told the union ‘‘before negotiations started that we would be staying within this amount’’.

The union, the NZ Educational Institute (NZEI), will put the latest offers to members at 247 stopwork meetings from Kaitaia to Invercargill in the week of March 1822.

A member of the NZEI negotiating team, Tute Porter-Samuels, said that while she was pleased to finally be able to bring a new offer to members, she was ‘‘disappointed with how little the ministry was willing to move’’.

‘‘The negotiation teams made it clear to the ministry that the new offers are disappointing. They do not adequately address the urgent need for more time and more pay so that we can attract and retain great teachers.’’

She said if teachers voted to reject the offers, they would vote on whether to join their secondary school colleagues in strike action on April 3.

They have already held two oneday strikes — a national strike on August 15 last year and a series of regional oneday strikes last November.

The Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) said last Saturday it would ‘‘publicly protest’’ on April 3 if it did not receive ‘‘a realistic offer’’ before then.

PPTA president Jack Boyle said last night the protest would not necessarily be a strike.

‘‘That is the day set aside, but we hope we won’t have to use it for strike action,’’ he said. ‘‘We would prefer to be using that date for our asking our members to ratify, hopefully, a settlement of the collective. We have got be hopeful, and there is a bit of time between now and then.’’

The PPTA and the ministry ended two days of mediation in Wellington yesterday. The PPTA executive meets this weekend. — NZME