Late last year officials of the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) and the Labour Party–led coalition government agreed to a pact which would have given teachers a 3.5 per cent wage increase over two years. The deal included provisions aimed at relieving teachers’ increasing workloads. In February 56 percent of teachers rejected this agreement in a national vote.

On March 1 teachers held a one-day national strike, following this up in April with region-by-region one-day rolling stoppages.

Around 100 teachers participated in a May Day march in Auckland, and teachers played a prominent part in other actions marking the labor anniversary around the country.

In mid-May the government announced that a new deal had been reached with the PPTA national officials. It included a 5.5 wage increase over three years. The government offered a special allowance to compensate teachers for the extra work they are required to perform in implementing the National Certificate of Education Achievement, a new system of assessing students which replaces national examinations.

The proposed agreement, which was portrayed as a "settlement," came on the eve of the May 18–19 national conference of the Labour Party, and was widely viewed as having been pushed through to avert protests by teachers at the gathering. With Labour registering more than 50 percent support in opinion polls, there have been growing rumors that the date of this year’s general election will be moved up to July or August.

Many teachers, however, greeted the supposed "settlement" with anger. Over the following week teachers at 50 schools staged spontaneous one-day or half-day strikes. In Wellington, 200 teachers marched to parliament to protest as finance minister Michael Cullen presented the coalition government’s budget. In Auckland, 100 teachers supported by a dozen students from Northcote College (high school) held a picket at the office of local Labour Party MP Ann Hartley.

At a picket of 30 teachers outside Rangitoto College May 28 Kaine Hansen, the secretary of the PPTA branch, told the Militant that the government’s latest pay offer doesn’t keep up with inflation. "It’s effectively a pay cut," he said. In a statement distributed at the action the PPTA branch explained that "our members have decided to walk off the job four afternoons this week in order to send a strong message to the government."

Students from the school streamed past the picket on their way home. One group waved and called out, "Yea, go the teachers!" Hansen said that most students and parents supported the teachers’ action.

However, news coverage of some of the "wildcat" teachers’ strikes has featured comments from students opposing the actions. Television cameras followed a student at the Rangitoto picket line who asked to interview Hansen as part of an assignment for her journalism class. The student asked the teacher why they were striking when the PPTA had reached an agreement with the government. Had teachers considered the effect of their repeated actions on students’ education? she asked.

Hansen replied that while it is it true that teachers feel let down by their union’s national officials, they believe that students would also benefit if teachers succeed in getting a better deal.

"The disruption of secondary schools in this teachers’ pay negotiation round has gone on far too long," whined an editorial in the May 30 edition of the New Zealand Herald, Auckland’s big-business daily.

Ross Wilson, the president of the Council of Trade Unions, the national union federation, told the Herald that the "wildcat" strikes run counter to the democratic process of offer and counteroffer. "I am very concerned," he said, "because I’ve never seen this happen before, and I’ve operated in some very tough environments on the waterfront and railways over a period of 25 years."

Reflecting this concern, the government has waived a requirement to give 14 days’ notice of paid stopwork meetings so that the PPTA can arrange more rapid meetings for its 14,000-strong national membership to vote on the proposed settlement.

Public education, like health and other sectors, has suffered from a decade and a half of assaults on the social wage by successive governments. Many state-run schools, which are supposed to provide free education, now require parents to pay up to $500 in yearly fees, euphemistically called "contributions" or "donations" (NZ$1 = US 49 cents).

Many schools actively recruit overseas students, particularly from Asia, who pay annual fees of $10,000 or more. A recent Herald report entitled, "Overseas students keeping state schools afloat," cited Auckland’s Rutherford College, where fees from overseas students contribute around $350,000 to the school coffers, compared with the government’s annual operations payment to the school of $1.1 million.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home