Part-time teachers fight for equal pay

Part-time secondary school teachers and the Post Primary Teachers’ Association are lodging a claim asking for equal pay for parttime teachers.

Under their current collective agreement, part-time teachers do not get the same guaranteed noncontact hours as their fulltime colleagues.

It’s the latest claim to be made in an effort to gain pay equity in female-dominated sectors, and follows a win for caregivers in the aged-care sector.

There are about 3380 teachers working part-time in New Zealand.

In the case of Lisa Hargreaves, one of the four teachers taking the action with the support of the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA), it meant while she was teaching 16 hours a week, she had a non-contact workload of two to four hours for each of the four classes she took – which she essentially was not getting paid for.

Her salary did cover things done outside the classroom but was not enough to fairly reimburse her for the time she spent marking and doing other administration.

Students are usually timetabled to attend classes for 25 hours a week. A fulltime teacher teaches 20 hours in the classroom and is paid five hours in salary for noncontact time in a school week.

The Havelock North High School teacher said she was only paid for the hours she was teaching, so many hours of work went unpaid.

PPTA president Jack Boyle said the union had negotiated with the ministry to get paid non-contact hours for fulltime teachers in the early 2000s. He said the part-time workforce had become more predominantly female. While about 57 per cent of teachers were women, 75 per cent of the part-time workforce was female.

The Ministry of Education’s deputy secretary of early learning and student achievement, Ellen MacGregor-Reid, said non-contact time for part-time teachers was identified as a potential gender issue in 2008, and subsequent agreements between the PPTA and ministry had not included a fix.

Secondary school teachers employed for 18 hours or more had to get non-contact time within the weekly timetable, and all part-time teachers were given an extra 11 per cent payment based on their total hours employed.