Secondary teachers meet to consider pay claim

Monday 6 August 2007

Secondary teachers meet to consider pay claim

Almost 17,000 secondary teachers from Bluff to Cape Reinga will hold regional paid union meetings (PUMs) over the next fortnight to discuss their collective agreement claim.

The PUMs are being held to seek PPTA members’ views on its current claim, an alternative claim and a course of action to support either claim.

The alternative claim would be based on high profile items such as pay and class size controls.

PPTA president Robin Duff said the PPTA Executive believed the offers presented by the government fell well short of what was needed to make secondary teaching a first choice profession, both in terms of pay and conditions. The updated offer presented last week was “merely a rearrangement of the candles on the same sized cake”.

“The government’s offer does not keep secondary salaries competitive, and fails to address the critical issues of excessively large classes, teacher recruitment and retention, or the need for more time for heads of department to do jobs made increasingly complex and intensive by the NCEA.

“The Ministerial Taskforce recommended in 2003 that salaries for teachers had to continue to be competitive. In 2004 it was agreed that median increases in labour costs informed the rate and PPTA has used the same mechanism to underpin its claim this time.

“The government has not only walked away from the long-term, taskforce approach with its miserly offer but also deliberately set out to portray secondary teachers’ claim as unrealistic for a rate of increase that merely keeps them in line with other professions.

“It’s hypocritical of the government to deny teachers a similar process when politician’s salaries are also set objectively. “

Mr Duff said the Ministry of Education’s approach to bargaining this round had also been to “return to the style we hoped we had moved away from after 2001”.

“The inability of the Ministry to engage in progressing the Taskforce’s professional recommendations is a sad indictment on it, the education minister and the government.”

The paid union meetings are part of teachers’ legal entitlement under the Employment Relations Act (part 4, sec 26). Meetings are not open to the media, and results will not be released until the national PUMs programme is completed. However, regional representatives will be available for general comment.

ENDS

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