PPTA Te Wehengarua members will continue industrial action for the remainder of Term 2 after voting overwhelmingly to reject the Government’s recent offers for settlement of the secondary and area school teachers’ collective agreements.
“Members have given national executive and the negotiating teams a clear mandate to seek a better offer that meets the pressing needs of secondary education and the secondary teaching profession,” says Chris Abercrombie, PPTA Te Wehengarua acting president.
“When negotiations began more than a year ago we made it clear that secondary teachers needed a pay increase that matched inflation, simply to stop the value of our salaries falling further behind. And we needed some improvements to staffing and other conditions to enable us to concentrate on teaching and learning.
“We have a worsening shortage of secondary teachers – any school principal will tell you how increasingly difficult it is to fill vacancies. We cannot afford to let pay and conditions slide. Secondary education is the gateway to life opportunities for our rangatahi – it needs to be resourced and valued adequately.”
Earlier this week the primary teachers union, NZEI said it's members had accepted the fourth offer by the government. It would see teachers receive a six per cent pay increase in July, with two further increases in July and December 2024. A lump sum payment of $3000 would be made in July, plus an additional $1500 for union members. Classroom release times will also increase from 10 to 25 hours per term and mileage allowances are to go up.
Chris Abercrombie said he hoped the settlement of the primary teachers’ collective agreement would enable the Government to focus more sharply on the needs of secondary education and find a solution to the impasse with PPTA.
“Our members are increasingly frustrated at the fact that the demands on teachers are skyrocketing and many teachers are on the brink of leaving, but this is not being acknowledged by the Government in its offers to us.”
Ministry of Education General Manger of Employment Relations, Mark Williamson said MoE was disappointed the latest offer wasn't accepted.
"The offer that secondary teachers have rejected balanced the need to attract and retain teachers early in their career, provide a fair increase for experienced teachers, while also addressing the unions priorities for improvements to other conditions.
"The offer provided immediate one-off payments of up to $5,210 to support teachers right away. Teachers who are early in their career would have been paid between 26% and 35% more in 2025 than they were paid in 2022, when the collective agreement expired. Teachers progressing up the scale would have been paid much more than the expected rate of inflation for the coming two years."
In rejecting the latest offer, PPTA members also voted to continue the industrial action that started at the beginning of Term. It means members will not teach two-year levels per day for the final three weeks of the term.
PPTA members will not use entitled planning and marking time to relieve for absent teachers, and they will not attend meetings or respond to emails outside of regular school hours. Nor will those not involved with pilot programmes engage with work related to changes to NCEA, MoE or NZQA.
Williamson says facilitated bargaining has been arranged for next week in the hope of finding a breakthrough, but will need PPTA to agree to the latest round of negotiations.
"Industrial action which impacts student’s learning should not continue while bargaining is underway. Strikes and stopping our young people from learning and participating in school life will not help reach a settlement and only delays teachers from receiving the benefit of the considerable investment that our offer makes in remuneration and conditions."
