1News reporter Kate Nicol-Williams looks at the future around teacher pay negotiations after strikes have disrupted the school year.
Mention the words “teacher strike” and families around the country will groan.
“They’re sitting life-changing exams and they’re missing out on all these days in class,” one mum said during industrial action earlier this year.
When you put the strike days together, high school students were out of class for up to a week.
That’s why teachers and the Government owe it to the public to act now on another recommendation from the independent arbitration panel and for the Ministry of Education and Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) to come to an agreement on how the negotiation process could be improved to reduce the risk of disruption.
The panel provided the 14.5% pay rise recommendation that was accepted by the Government and later teachers.
Other recommendations include urgently creating a committee made up of both parties with an independent chairperson to drive progress on issues between negotiation rounds.
The recommendation from an independent arbitration panel came after secondary students missed up to seven days of school this year as their teachers went on strike. (Source: 1News)
But there’s also a recommendation for a "more effective mechanism for the setting of pay and conditions" which is something both parties asked the panel to consider to reduce the likelihood of industrial action.
Employment relations academic Andrew Barney says trust between the groups has eroded and evidence-based guidance from a third party would be useful for assuring both parties. He said this approach could also work for other dispute-prone public roles too.
It’s not a solution for solving issues like teacher workload pressure though. Barney thinks it would be difficult for an independent group to address underlying “political” challenges like this.
“Where do we find the money to support nurses? Where do we find the money to support teachers? Where do we find the money to improve their terms and conditions?
“My real concern if we’re not able to do this, is we’re going to see constant and ongoing loss of staff into all these frontline positions; firefighters, police, nurses, teachers.”
Introducing independent guidance is a significant shift from how negotiations are carried out now, with the Employment Relations Authority encouraging parties to sort a dispute through mediation, or at least attempt to before they’re willing to take a look. For secondary teachers, the negotiation process dragged out more than a year including mediation, facilitated bargaining and an arbitration panel reviewing the case. The ongoing process meant more time for striking.
Any Government would be cautious of a new approach, especially after the independent review panel’s recommendation saw the education collective agreement spend jump to $4.4 billion.
We can look to the UK, where the School Teachers’ Review Body considers factors like the economy, teacher workforce numbers and evidence from both the education department and teachers’ unions and then recommends pay rates for teachers in England to the Government.
Last month the UK Government accepted the body’s recommendation for 6.5% pay rises and several unions called off strike action as a result.
Back here, the Education Minister and PPTA agree whatever’s created has to reflect New Zealand’s education context.
One PPTA negotiating member I spoke to has concerns about the UK example, citing “teachers in England are among the lowest paid in the English-speaking world.”
With teachers and the Government wanting to put this saga behind them and focus on the rest of the year (teachers) and the looming election (Government), it would be easy to put the recommendation in the ‘too hard’ basket.
But after years of Covid and now strike disruption, this is the time to make a lasting difference for students. The recommendations should be thoroughly explored with the potential to make negotiations quicker, build better relations between the parties and reduce industrial action.
The Education Review Office says missing school just two days a term is linked to lower student achievement.
Let’s not have a repeat of this year’s stop-start strike interruption in a few years’ time.
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