Variety of teachers paid below minimum wage, union reveals

AUCKLAND: Teachers recruited to help fill New Zealand’s desperate teacher shortage are being paid below the legal minimum wage, their union says.

The union, the NZ Educational Institute (NZEI), has referred three cases to the Labour Inspectorate’s migrant exploitation unit and says at least 60 NZtrained teachers are also being paid below the minimum wage.

The Ministry of Education has confirmed ‘‘there are a small number of teachers who are being paid below the minimum wage’’ because their qualifications and experience are still being assessed to determine their correct pay rates.

It told the union the day before Easter that the problem would be fixed and all affected teachers would receive back pay to their correct pay rates by May 8.

But one of the affected teachers, Singaporetrained Xijuan (Regine) Hou, said she was shocked at the way teachers were treated in a developed country like New Zealand.

Hou, aged 33, has a psychology degree and a teaching qualification and taught in Singapore for six years before coming to New Zealand in 2016 with her husband, a lawyer.

She was told that her Singapore qualification was only considered to be Level 5 on the NZ qualifications framework, two levels below a degree, so last year she did a postgraduate teaching diploma at Victoria University in Wellington.

Despite all that, she is being paid just $1245 a fortnight before tax on the ‘‘untrained employee’’ pay rate as a fulltime classroom teacher at Arahoe School in New Lynn.

That’s just $622.45 a week, or $15.56 an hour for a 40hour week — $2.14 an hour below the legal minimum wage, which increased on April 1 from $16.50 to $17.70 an hour.

NZEI campaign director Stephanie Mills said teachers ‘‘absolutely should not be in this position’’.

‘‘This is not just about correcting payments, this is about the ministry breaching their obligation to pay above the legal minimum wage.’’

The ministry’s head of infrastructure service Kim Shannon said ‘‘the great majority’’ of teachers were paid on the correct rates.

‘‘A small number of the teaching workforce have been impacted as a result of the new minimum wage rate applying from April 1.’’ — NZME