SCHOOL STRIKES
What’s next?
Education Minister Chris Hipkins has accused primary teachers of increasing their demands every time the Government makes a concession. He told reporters at Parliament that he was concerned at the way the NZ Educational Institute (NZEI) kept demanding more in the lead-up to this week’s regional strikes.
Primary teachers at one of 30 strike meetings in Auckland yesterday supported advice from their leaders to reject the Government’s latest offer in the hope of reinforcements when secondary teachers are ready to strike, too, in the first term of next year.
Hipkins said the ability to negotiate with secondary teachers was being constrained by the action by primary teachers.
“As this process has worked through, we have been increasing the offer to NZEI and they have at the same time been increasing what they are asking,” he said.
Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) members are in the middle of a round of stop-work meetings ending on November 23 on what action to take after rejecting their first pay offer — 3 per cent pay increases every year for three years, or 9.3 per cent by 2020, the same deal accepted by nurses and police.
The national executives of the PPTA and NZEI will meet in Wellington on Friday to co-ordinate plans.
NZEI president Lynda Stuart told a strike meeting for central Auckland schools at Alexandra Park that rejecting the latest offer would mean more strikes in 2019.
“What we are asking you to do today is to consider: do you want to accept this offer and move on, or hunker down, make it to the end of the year, and come back in 2019 for the fight of our professional lives?” she said.
“If we decide to show the ministry that their tactic of drawing it out won’t work, we will have some strength coming. Our PPTA colleagues will most likely join with us in term one of 2019.
“Our national executive are meeting with theirs at the end of this week. We have their back and they have ours. For the first time ever, we would see professional unity with primary and secondary simultaneously committed and mobilised.”
Dan Young of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School in Epsom, who spoke from the stage before media were excluded, said the Government could afford to pay more if it chose to.
“The Government has said there is no more money. To win, we will need to force the Government to change the fiscal rules they have committed to,” he said.
But Hipkins said there was no
more money on the table for primary teachers, and while the package could be rejigged, no more money would be offered.
“This is a very good offer,” he said. “These are not insignificant sums of money we’re talking about.”
It was a balancing act — what went into primary teachers didn’t go into special needs or to early childhood education.
“We’re not going to continue to increase the amount of money indefinitely.”
Hipkins said any changes to staffing entitlement which helped determine teacher: student ratios was outside the bargaining process.
“No government has ever included
it. If teachers want more classroom release time then the pay part of the offer will be affected. It is for NZEI to negotiate if they want to reshape the offer, but there is no more money available.”
Stuart denied NZEI had increased its claims through the bargaining process and said the union has asked from the start for action on workload and class sizes as well as pay.
Balmoral School teachers Suzanne Preece and Lesley Payne said the pay offer was welcome, but the ministry had not offered anything to reduce their workload or class sizes.
Preece said she was taking a term off next year after teaching for 15 years because she was burnt out.