PPTA Brings On More Industrial Action

11 June 2002

The Post Primary Teachers’ Association has placed an immediate ban on its members carrying out extra and co-curricular activities following the rejection of the Government’s latest pay offer.

Secondary teachers have also been instructed to start rostering home students from next Monday and to attend stopwork meetings next week to discuss a revised claim and vote on further action in terms three and four.

This industrial action follows the reinstatement of other low level industrial action brought on yesterday at the announcement of the rejection by our members of the proposed collective agreement.

PPTA president Jen McCutcheon said today that members would also be balloted next week on deferral of the implementation of Levels 2 and 3 of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement.

“All industrial action will continue until a settlement is achieved. The details of the rostering home – where different year students are rostered home on different days – are still to be finalised,” Mrs McCutcheon said.

“However the extra and co-curricular ban is now in place and covers all unpaid activities carried out by teachers in their own time. These include sports, cultural, fundraising and recreational activities, school camps, sports day, swimming galas, inter-school competitions and any other activities that extend past the school day.

“Extra and co-curricular activities are a large part of school life and take up a lot of teachers’ own time. This action will demonstrate just how extra work teachers are required to do in their own time. We are saying enough is enough. Secondary teachers need a life too and they are sick of providing their services for free.”

“There are huge recruitment and retention problems in secondary education at present. Our members are struggling with the workload associated with the introduction of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement and a lack of recognition of that by this Government,” Mrs McCutcheon said.

“We need a decent settlement for our members. We urge the Government to come up with a decent settlement. It has the ability to stop this industrial action by coming up with a decent settlement for our members,” Mrs McCutcheon said.
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