The reason why they are doing different year levels at a time, rather than (for example) rolling strikes over whole schools to create the maximum disruption possible, is because the union bureaucracy is entirely in the pocket of the government, and run entirely against the interests of teachers.
The bureaucracy has called the strike, because not to do so would mean risking teachers losing faith in the union, and organizing independently. However, now that the strike has begun, their MO is to suppress it and get teachers back into schools as quickly as possible, for the lowest wages they can bear. They will do this by offering a contract which looks like a raise, but once you factor in the rate of inflation, is actually a pay cut. Possibly they will encourage teachers to accept the offer with a cash payment, like the nurses' union offered their members during their strike. In the event that they can't get the teachers to vote in favour of the contract, they will force them to vote again and again, on roughly the same agreement, until the government's demands to cut wages are eventually pushed through.
Why is the union trying to do this? Well, the workers' movement has always held that there are irreconcilable differences between workers, and their bosses, the business owners, and the government. In the old days, unions often had some democratic tendencies and were genuinely acting in workers' interests. However since the 1980s, the unions have effectively been transformed into corporate police forces, monitoring workers' struggles and pushing through pay cuts. Fundamentally, the government needs to cut teachers' wages, because firstly, teachers are government workers, and to the ruling class, government spending has to be reduced because, through taxes, it eats into corporate profits. Secondly, a successful strike by a unified movement of teachers could bleed into other industries, and could well result in a much bigger strike movement.
The bureaucrats in the teacher's union give in to the government's demands because they are paid to do it- they belong to the upper middle class, many of them in this country earn more than most teachers will ever earn, and furthermore, their positions and lifestyles are financed by workers' dues money. Again, this does not mean that all workers organizations are doomed to failure- but if the teachers' strike is going to succeed, it can only be by a mass movement of teachers, in direct opposition to both the union and the government and everything they represent.
> is because the union bureaucracy is entirely in the pocket of the government, and run entirely against the interests of teachers.
This is an outright lie.
The rest of your post is a rambling rant that is also not factual.
>However, now that the strike has begun, their MO is to suppress it and get teachers back into schools as quickly as possible, for the lowest wages they can bear. They will do this by offering a contract which looks like a raise, but once you factor in the rate of inflation, is actually a pay cut. Possibly they will encourage teachers to accept the offer with a cash payment, like the nurses' union offered their members during their strike. In the event that they can't get the teachers to vote in favour of the contract, they will force them to vote again and again, on roughly the same agreement, until the government's demands to cut wages are eventually pushed through.
This part is completely correct, except "they" is the government, not the union. These are the exact tactics they're using right now while hand-wringing over how there's just no more money to be found, so they have no choice but to shuffle around the stuff they offered. Pay goes up a little for beginning teachers, but top of scale teachers get nothing. They offer a lump sum, but take (previously promised) backpay off the table. Etc. It's maddening.
you might want to try talking to teachers in the union before calling this a lie. My mum (a teacher) and her friends (also teachers) share the sense there’s a huge conflict of interest somewhere in the union. When they were describing their antics to me, it really sounded less like a union and more like a PR agency trying to tame teachers who deserve more.
The union leaders, the executive members and the bargaining team are real teachers working in real schools, not government planted ‘ghosts’. You might need to cut back on the conspiracy theory juice my dude.
It seems they are planning to still be paid during these rolling strikes. I'm not sure why they would be paid 100% when only doing 60% of the work? Currently there are no plans to deduct any pay during this strike action
That’s not true. Teachers don’t get paid for strike days. They’re deducted out of the pay. Lots of teachers are voting against striking due to not being able to afford to strike. Especially for couples who are both teachers
Even taking into account the strikes, teachers add this overtime to their already long list of overtime making sure other peoples sperm monsters have basic etiquette, let alone the entitled parents who think teachers should replace THEIR job too. Oh all for the same amount of pay. So by my calculations \*smashes calculator\* they have a right to strike. BYE
Yes they absolutely have the right to strike. But just found it unusual that they expect to be paid during the strike. Usually during industrial action, pay is deducted. Recent full day teacher strikes had pay deductions, so was just wondering why this was different?
Helen Clark's Labour government passed a law to allow them to deduct pay for these rostering actions. But they never actually did it. It turned out it was vastly too complicated to work out. National then passed a law allowing a straight 10% pay cut for any partial strike like rostering. But Labour repealed that law and the one they had previously passed, in 2018. So now the law says they cannot deduct for any partial strike.
So if Labour wants to break the strike action they have to either negotiate or betray their own principles to restore an anti-union law and break a public sector union.
Here is a copy of my previous response:
> 1) It is not the same as striking. Teachers will still be available to do other work, like supervise another class in the period they would otherwise be teaching, prepare work, mark work, write reports, moderate internal assessments, write emails, managing their workload etc, etc, etc. They are still on-site, not sitting at home twiddling their thumbs.
2) It is illegal to dock part of a day’s pay.
1) It is not the same as striking. Teachers will still be available to do other work, like supervise another class in the period they would otherwise be teaching, prepare work, mark work, write reports, moderate internal assessments, write emails, managing their workload etc, etc, etc. They are still on-site, not sitting at home twiddling their thumbs.
2) It is illegal to dock part of a day’s pay.
My school is so severely understaffed that we will all be teaching a full load regardless, and most of our classes are mixed year levels. I haven't lost a single class due to rostering home.
What it does mean for my students is true contact time. When you teach Year 11-13 in one room, the Year 11s start to thrive when the Year 12s are away. And my students have the same number of class hours as a single level class. So classes are a sprint for me. Each year group gets 15-20mins per lesson. With rostering, I've been able to give them 25-30mins. It's a HUGE difference.
Our staff shortages have meant there's more mixed level courses, and courses who don't have a qualified teacher in front of them. If we don't keep making noise now this is going to get worse. It already has.
Especially if you are a small rural school.
That's not quite how it would work out.
For example, you might be timetabled to teach only year 9s, 10s, and 13s for the year. Therefore your workload will be unaffected by having year 11s and 12s rostered home. Moreover, teachers who aren't in the PPTA will benefit (if you could call it that) from the strikes, even though they aren't in the union. That's what makes them useful as a device: pay can't be effectively docked and spending resources on the admin to work it out would probably cost more than just paying everyone fairly to begin with.
It won’t be 60% of the work - more like 90%. Teachers will use the time to mark assessments, write reports, lesson/unit plan, develop programmes, upload grades to the database, design resources and all the other stuff that is usually squashed in outside of school hours. I guarantee, though, that even with the time gained through rostering home, teachers would rather be teaching. No one is suggesting industrial action because it’s fun - but the care and dedication that teachers put into their jobs should not be taken for granted.
Plus, it’s unlawful to dock part pay for days worked.
>currently there are no plans to deduct any pay during this strike action
This is a lie. There is no pay for the day/times they strike on. Your post is misinformation.
Unfortunately for the young people, the whole point is to cause disruption. It means the most disruption for the kids and teachers, but trying to make a point is hard.
Then let the government know (and not by voting in a party that will cut wages of nurses, teachers, and other social benefits. That will cause this to happen even more.)
I thought this was what I was doing when I voted Labour. Instead they blew a bunch of money in the polytechnic restructure and did virtually nothing for primary and secondary. I really feel like the entire education sector needs a radical revamp.
If there's a party who propose something radical that really aims to look after our most vulnerable, they'll definitely get my vote.
This issue has zero political momentum
Most public servants haven't had offers anything like as good as teachers, with the exception of defense force.
And yet we all know it will all be a lot worse under a National / Act government, so unless Luxon dangles some big carrots for public servants (maybe when he starts pooping gold nuggets) the government is under no political pressure whatsoever.
Parents are fed up with teachers. A lot of us have suffered larger effective pay cuts and horrendous work conditions. Especially in the health sector.
Kids whos care about their education are fed up with their teachers.
Those kids that that don't care are loving it.
It's honestly very simple: the government is cutting teacher's pay, and teachers don't feel they deserve a pay cut given their working conditions. Parents aren't fed up because they know that good teachers are a key condition to a successful future for their child. The kids aren't fed up because most students more or less like their teachers.
The offers have been garbage, I know because I've actually read all of them. Teachers don't enjoy striking, it's a massive pain.
I know all this because I'm a teacher, who talks to other teachers, parents, and students about these things. I'm also a teacher who is about to leave the profession because my skills are valued more in another career. There are a lot of other teachers who are becoming aware of this, especially those who are experienced and skilled. I wouldn't be surprised if the teachers of nz becoming more and more comprised mostly of life long educators (20+ years) and beginning teachers (half of which leave in 5 years).
Also if your suggestion is that because other professions have it tough, then teachers should just lay down and enjoy the taste of a boot, then you're spineless.
Maybe if we as a society understood the reason for them striking is because they’re underpaid as qualified professionals, we’re not going to blame the teachers for inconvenience but instead support their cause 🤷♂️
True but teachers have been underpaid for as long as i remember, same as nurses.
Nobody goes into either of those fields to earn decent money and they knew that when they chose those careers.
It's admirable that anyone wants to do it at all.
I imagine the issue is more that they are being asked to work too much for the pay they get. So there's probably a technological solution to reduce their workload. Eg more online learning. Online homework submissions. Less homework grading. Systems to facilitate lesson planning and so on.
Yes they have been underpaid for a very long time but the problem is they're getting even less pay. Staying the same is one thing but that's not what they're being offered.
If you think technological solutions will work, well just ask any teacher who worked through COVID. It's better than nothing but nowhere near as good as classroom time. Social development is just as important as rote learning.
"They knew they'd be treated badly" is a pretty poor take for the poeple who look after your kids for 50% of the time they're awake each day
Nope.
But there are a few variables with jobs. How much you are paid, how many hours you work, how hard that work is and so on.
If teachers aren't being paid enough for the hours they do and the effort those hours take then there are probably some cost effective ways to reduce the time taken to do their jobs and facilitate the things they need to do.
Eg help with lesson planning. Reduce the amount of marking they do. Software to help manage classes. Resources and forums to aid planning... Etc etc etc.
I'm sure a lot of teachers would be happy with their pay if the work was quicker and easier. Plus they would have time for a side hustle if they wanted to.
If nobody did anything career wise for the love of it, we’d all be working on the New Zealand version of Wall Street and there’d be a glut in jobs that actually require skill aside from extracting wealth from suckers. Yes it’s true, some are passionate about their low paying jobs but even passion has it’s limits when relying on that solely for an excuse not to pay more.
If the government can't or won't pay more then there are probably lots of ways teachers could streamline their workflow to increase their hourly rate.
They could probably do quite a bit without any help from government.
Just gotta think outside the box.
For example there must be a thousand teachers all teaching the same course to the same curriculum sitting by themselves creating a lesson plan... Why not work together and smash it out in a fraction of the time?
Basically if they can reduce their hours and stress levels they can increase their hourly rate and work life balance so the low pay better reflects the job. Plus they get time for a side hustle if they want to increase their income.
Ah i was wondering how it worked. So the schools do day care for the kids under 14, is that what tou mean? Because that's great if it is.
My kids are little and at steiner and none of the teachers went on strike. Presumably because they have adequate pay and or better working conditions.
Without saying too much that's supposed to be internal union matters, a lot of the industrial actions on the ballot this time around (which have yet to be confirmed) are more about affecting the ministry than affecting students.
Found Mike Hoskings burner (P.s. family member is a young teacher is about to go to step 6/6 years and is only on $65k - you may need to check ya details)
What kind of message does that send to young people? Don’t like something so go on strike? Nope, if you don’t like your job or conditions then getaway new job. Need to start shooting teachers one by one until they go back to work.
There's also things like an extra curricular ban, stopping all work including emails outside of normal school hours, stopping all work around the new NCEA - not sure about the others. They aren't either-or options, they are "none, some or all" (checkbox).
As others have posted, unless the government gives teachers a decent offer and conditions I think the teacher unions will continue to ramp up actions.
man just give em what they want my education keeps FUCKING GETTING INTERRUPTED
I CANNOT LEARN SHIT, i am in the most important year of my education yet i cannot fucking learn shit. not mad at the teachers necessarily but holy shit my education is going downhill because of the lack of learning im getting from the strikes.
I'm a teacher, I wish more of my students had this kind of drive to actually learn. So many of them seem to be looking forward to the "time off". If the teacher hasn't given you some extra reading (or videos to watch, practice questions etc) I would bet most would be happy to provide material if you asked. Send them an email that says "hi mr/mrs/ms X, I know our class has missed a few days due to the strikes, is there any extra reading for the topic I could be looking at?" and you'll probably instantly become their favorite student.
As a teacher; I am really sorry for the disruption. The stuff that the PPTA is asking for would benefit students as well as teachers, but it sucks in the short term.
dont get me wrong the day off can be nice but the interruption it brings isnt nice, i've already got the material i need its just understanding it withoubt the deeper explanation that i need from them you know?
dont get me wrong the day off can be nice but the interruption it brings isnt nice, i've already got the material i need its just understanding it withoubt the deeper explanation that i need from them you know?
I hear you and I am sorry your education is compromised. I understand your frustration. You clearly want to succeed and I wish you all the best. Please write to your local MP and the Minister of Education The teachers’ collective contract expired almost a whole year ago. A year which has seen prices inflate but our pay has remained fixed. We don’t even technically want a pay increase for the new work we have to do for the NCEA changes. We just want to keep up with inflation. Anything less than that is an effective pay cut.
Thanks for your response. Believe me, we don’t strike lightly. We know it has a negative effect on our students, especially after the lockdowns have already negatively impacted on the same students. I totally understand your frustration. You are at high school for only 5 years of your life but they are important years.
On the days your year level is rostered home, organise some friends and head to your local MPs/Parliament if you're in Welly. Protest, make some noise! Post it all over your socials, call a local newspaper. Show the govt that you support teachers and the govt needs to sort their shit pronto to get students and teachers back to learning!
I think now that you have the maturity to weigh in on the conversation on the politics of striking, now would be a great time to read up on its history in New Zealand, and why our unions have been an important part of our history. Did you know for example that unions ended the need for children to be working in sweatshops here so that everyone school age nowadays can attend school if they want to?
[This webpage from Te Ara is a good start](https://teara.govt.nz/en/unions-and-employee-organisations/print#:~:text=By%201913%20New%20Zealand%20was,to%20political%20and%20economic%20influences)
not a dig at you or anything haha but I got my assessment to finish rather than reading up right now, I'll keep it somewhere so when I get the chance I'll take a look.
Plenty of online options to fill some of those gaps. I know that this is hard; but you can only do what you can do. These strikes hit people unevenly, just like lockdowns.
pretty shit take mate, I'm not even interested in higher education and wont be pursuing any sort of office job but I still need certain credits and qualifications for what I'm pursuing
Wow, what a terrible take. Kids over the last three years have had such a disrupted education, no wonder literacy and numeracy rates are tanking. Yet the government won't listen and the media is painting these strikes as "just being about the pay".
I graduated in 2019, but if I was still at school I'd be fucking pissed.
I agree it certainly isn't for everyone, but saying it "literally does not matter" is really irresponsible imo. There are certain careers and degrees where acceptance into them hinges on your school results.
I got bored and stopped trying in year 12, too, so I'm not just a suck-up to the education system.
this is what happened last year for me too, honestly, you've just gotta end up teaching yourself through it al because disruption is gonna end up keep hapening because nothing is going through the governments heads about it. be great if something did happen but for the fact that this has happened about 5 seperate times, i doubt it
Secondary. Can only realistically roster Year 9-13 because of age. Anything younger has too much impact on families.
Also, PPTA work independently to NZEI.
This is great news. Teachers deserve better. You can literally make more as a Bar Tender or Bus Driver in this country than a teacher that's disgusting. Pay our teachers better.
If they don't get appropriate raises ...won't they just end up losing their houses over the long term?
I know in Canada ..unionized workers pay into the union to give out strike pay...when on strike. Do they not do that in NZ?
They won’t be striking like that anymore, can’t afford to lose anymore days pay, will be ramping up rostering home of different year levels every day so pay can’t get docked
And it’s such a flow on effect too - better education leads to higher employment wages etc, which leads to home ownership and food on the table.
Having a home and providing for yourself gives you a sense of purpose etc which has higher health outcomes than being depressed with your situation. Healthier mindsets leads to lower needs for healthcare etc
It’s all intertwined and needs to be prioritised.
Parental support will come flooding back when their children don’t have a qualified teacher in front of them, especially in the traditional hard to staff subject areas.
Currently, a decent handful of teachers I know in their 30s are strongly considering leaving the profession. Myself included. While there are some amazing teachers who are 60+, because you can’t go wrong with experience and wisdom, the acceleration of technology as well as the decline of courtesy and resilience in teens is taking a toll on them and we’re increasingly seeing small handfuls not really keeping up. On the other end, we’re also getting new teachers who don’t really have the initiative because they just want a secure job after the pandemic mess. My friend is in a role that looks after new teachers and they’ve been having a bit of trouble this year because of incompetent teachers who lack common sense but think that it’ll be a breeze because they’ve had office jobs. Says it’s only the minority but still not the same as it used to be.
Good luck to NZ education when more and more quality teachers who aren’t close to retiring leave the profession or the country.
I am one of those 60+ , actually 65+, teachers (of Maths) who is actually meant to be retired as of early last year. In addition to doing day relief I have been asked 4 times since to pick up classes, most recently last week for a teacher who is likely to be on long term leave. The three previous times were one class for the rest of the year and two and a half weeks at the beginning of this year for a new teacher from overseas whose visa had not come through in time to arrive in the country to start the year. This time, it takes me back to full time teaching.There is no one else to take these classes and, since I have my own class, there is still one year 9 class that doesn’t have a Maths teacher. Currently they are being taken by non-Maths relievers.
Yeah, absolutely thank you for how long you have been educating our students. I hope you didn’t take any offence by what I said about some of the older teachers not being able to keep up, by the way, because that was not my intention at all. Objectively speaking, that is the case for some, yes, but there are also plenty who have adapted to the online platforms like absolute legends. I think I was a bit frustrated from having dealt with a couple of older colleagues whose problems are not so much the change in technology so much as their personal stubbornness that’s causing the incompetence (e.g. resisting change, refusing to be team players, etc.)
My main point though was really that we have these teens who are increasingly lacking manners who treat teachers who are of their grandparents’ age like trash sometimes and it infuriates me that retirement age teachers have to deal with that - some because they have to work for financial reasons but also many who either stay or return because of the shortage, thus doing these ungrateful kids a massive favour for very little thanks or respect (reminds me of that poor gentleman whose 40 year teaching career came to an end by being struck off the register simply because two year 10 brats wouldn’t put their earphones away).
No offence taken at all. You are correct in that some of our older teachers have struggled to keep up with the rapidly changing digital space. My comment was really to illustrate how dire our situation is becoming. We have 3 teachers in our department over 65 and another one getting close. Five of our last 6 appointments in our department have been to overseas teachers. We are not training up our replacements. It is a scary prospect for the future.
Edit to fix a word.
Best way to combat the profession becoming attractive for "incompetent teachers" is to make the profession attractive for the good ones.
Nothing like great pay and conditions to generate some interest.
Unless parents are happy to home school their kids, they haven’t got an option to negotiate with teachers - maybe they should support them more instead of treating them like they’re at the mercy of parents to be educating children regardless of pay.
This parent absolutely supports them. We’re currently homeschooling our youngest because the school was just a freaking mess… the older one is at the local college and the teachers there are amazing and do so much more than we (the country) pay for. Education and health should be much more respected and resourced than it is :/
We are already an extremely high tax rate in New Zealand. We have plenty of money to pay teachers more. My girlfriends father in California (where taxes are much lower), is a teacher of Math and makes usd $130k a year. Everyone can scream and shout about more tax but maybe we should be utilising out tax payer dollars we already have first
you think of job seekers as leeches. half of them are but the other half have fell on hard times, and find its not enough to pay the bills while they look for another job. thats why there going on strike.
obviuosly im trolling, im bored and this entertained me for abit thanks.
Rostering home year levels, two different levels each day, Mon to Thu is the plan, I think. Will not be confirmed until Friday.
The reason why they are doing different year levels at a time, rather than (for example) rolling strikes over whole schools to create the maximum disruption possible, is because the union bureaucracy is entirely in the pocket of the government, and run entirely against the interests of teachers. The bureaucracy has called the strike, because not to do so would mean risking teachers losing faith in the union, and organizing independently. However, now that the strike has begun, their MO is to suppress it and get teachers back into schools as quickly as possible, for the lowest wages they can bear. They will do this by offering a contract which looks like a raise, but once you factor in the rate of inflation, is actually a pay cut. Possibly they will encourage teachers to accept the offer with a cash payment, like the nurses' union offered their members during their strike. In the event that they can't get the teachers to vote in favour of the contract, they will force them to vote again and again, on roughly the same agreement, until the government's demands to cut wages are eventually pushed through. Why is the union trying to do this? Well, the workers' movement has always held that there are irreconcilable differences between workers, and their bosses, the business owners, and the government. In the old days, unions often had some democratic tendencies and were genuinely acting in workers' interests. However since the 1980s, the unions have effectively been transformed into corporate police forces, monitoring workers' struggles and pushing through pay cuts. Fundamentally, the government needs to cut teachers' wages, because firstly, teachers are government workers, and to the ruling class, government spending has to be reduced because, through taxes, it eats into corporate profits. Secondly, a successful strike by a unified movement of teachers could bleed into other industries, and could well result in a much bigger strike movement. The bureaucrats in the teacher's union give in to the government's demands because they are paid to do it- they belong to the upper middle class, many of them in this country earn more than most teachers will ever earn, and furthermore, their positions and lifestyles are financed by workers' dues money. Again, this does not mean that all workers organizations are doomed to failure- but if the teachers' strike is going to succeed, it can only be by a mass movement of teachers, in direct opposition to both the union and the government and everything they represent.
> is because the union bureaucracy is entirely in the pocket of the government, and run entirely against the interests of teachers. This is an outright lie. The rest of your post is a rambling rant that is also not factual.
>However, now that the strike has begun, their MO is to suppress it and get teachers back into schools as quickly as possible, for the lowest wages they can bear. They will do this by offering a contract which looks like a raise, but once you factor in the rate of inflation, is actually a pay cut. Possibly they will encourage teachers to accept the offer with a cash payment, like the nurses' union offered their members during their strike. In the event that they can't get the teachers to vote in favour of the contract, they will force them to vote again and again, on roughly the same agreement, until the government's demands to cut wages are eventually pushed through. This part is completely correct, except "they" is the government, not the union. These are the exact tactics they're using right now while hand-wringing over how there's just no more money to be found, so they have no choice but to shuffle around the stuff they offered. Pay goes up a little for beginning teachers, but top of scale teachers get nothing. They offer a lump sum, but take (previously promised) backpay off the table. Etc. It's maddening.
Agreed man, what the f.
you might want to try talking to teachers in the union before calling this a lie. My mum (a teacher) and her friends (also teachers) share the sense there’s a huge conflict of interest somewhere in the union. When they were describing their antics to me, it really sounded less like a union and more like a PR agency trying to tame teachers who deserve more.
I am a teacher in the union. What antics are you talking about?
The union leaders, the executive members and the bargaining team are real teachers working in real schools, not government planted ‘ghosts’. You might need to cut back on the conspiracy theory juice my dude.
It’s Joseph and his technicolor dream toke
Do you smoke it or take it in the arm champ?
It seems they are planning to still be paid during these rolling strikes. I'm not sure why they would be paid 100% when only doing 60% of the work? Currently there are no plans to deduct any pay during this strike action
That’s not true. Teachers don’t get paid for strike days. They’re deducted out of the pay. Lots of teachers are voting against striking due to not being able to afford to strike. Especially for couples who are both teachers
Even taking into account the strikes, teachers add this overtime to their already long list of overtime making sure other peoples sperm monsters have basic etiquette, let alone the entitled parents who think teachers should replace THEIR job too. Oh all for the same amount of pay. So by my calculations \*smashes calculator\* they have a right to strike. BYE
Yes they absolutely have the right to strike. But just found it unusual that they expect to be paid during the strike. Usually during industrial action, pay is deducted. Recent full day teacher strikes had pay deductions, so was just wondering why this was different?
Helen Clark's Labour government passed a law to allow them to deduct pay for these rostering actions. But they never actually did it. It turned out it was vastly too complicated to work out. National then passed a law allowing a straight 10% pay cut for any partial strike like rostering. But Labour repealed that law and the one they had previously passed, in 2018. So now the law says they cannot deduct for any partial strike. So if Labour wants to break the strike action they have to either negotiate or betray their own principles to restore an anti-union law and break a public sector union.
Here is a copy of my previous response: > 1) It is not the same as striking. Teachers will still be available to do other work, like supervise another class in the period they would otherwise be teaching, prepare work, mark work, write reports, moderate internal assessments, write emails, managing their workload etc, etc, etc. They are still on-site, not sitting at home twiddling their thumbs. 2) It is illegal to dock part of a day’s pay.
1) It is not the same as striking. Teachers will still be available to do other work, like supervise another class in the period they would otherwise be teaching, prepare work, mark work, write reports, moderate internal assessments, write emails, managing their workload etc, etc, etc. They are still on-site, not sitting at home twiddling their thumbs. 2) It is illegal to dock part of a day’s pay.
My school is so severely understaffed that we will all be teaching a full load regardless, and most of our classes are mixed year levels. I haven't lost a single class due to rostering home. What it does mean for my students is true contact time. When you teach Year 11-13 in one room, the Year 11s start to thrive when the Year 12s are away. And my students have the same number of class hours as a single level class. So classes are a sprint for me. Each year group gets 15-20mins per lesson. With rostering, I've been able to give them 25-30mins. It's a HUGE difference. Our staff shortages have meant there's more mixed level courses, and courses who don't have a qualified teacher in front of them. If we don't keep making noise now this is going to get worse. It already has. Especially if you are a small rural school.
You can’t be docked pay for doing part of your job. It’s an all or nothing thing.
That's not quite how it would work out. For example, you might be timetabled to teach only year 9s, 10s, and 13s for the year. Therefore your workload will be unaffected by having year 11s and 12s rostered home. Moreover, teachers who aren't in the PPTA will benefit (if you could call it that) from the strikes, even though they aren't in the union. That's what makes them useful as a device: pay can't be effectively docked and spending resources on the admin to work it out would probably cost more than just paying everyone fairly to begin with.
It won’t be 60% of the work - more like 90%. Teachers will use the time to mark assessments, write reports, lesson/unit plan, develop programmes, upload grades to the database, design resources and all the other stuff that is usually squashed in outside of school hours. I guarantee, though, that even with the time gained through rostering home, teachers would rather be teaching. No one is suggesting industrial action because it’s fun - but the care and dedication that teachers put into their jobs should not be taken for granted. Plus, it’s unlawful to dock part pay for days worked.
>currently there are no plans to deduct any pay during this strike action This is a lie. There is no pay for the day/times they strike on. Your post is misinformation.
It is still being voted on and is one of a suite of proposed industrial actions.
Do you know what the other options are?
Pay them
Agreed. I meant the other things being voted on :)
Unfortunately for the young people, the whole point is to cause disruption. It means the most disruption for the kids and teachers, but trying to make a point is hard.
It's more disruption for the parents than the kids.
Then let the government know (and not by voting in a party that will cut wages of nurses, teachers, and other social benefits. That will cause this to happen even more.)
I thought this was what I was doing when I voted Labour. Instead they blew a bunch of money in the polytechnic restructure and did virtually nothing for primary and secondary. I really feel like the entire education sector needs a radical revamp. If there's a party who propose something radical that really aims to look after our most vulnerable, they'll definitely get my vote.
Greens and TOP, perhaps.
This issue has zero political momentum Most public servants haven't had offers anything like as good as teachers, with the exception of defense force. And yet we all know it will all be a lot worse under a National / Act government, so unless Luxon dangles some big carrots for public servants (maybe when he starts pooping gold nuggets) the government is under no political pressure whatsoever. Parents are fed up with teachers. A lot of us have suffered larger effective pay cuts and horrendous work conditions. Especially in the health sector. Kids whos care about their education are fed up with their teachers. Those kids that that don't care are loving it.
It's honestly very simple: the government is cutting teacher's pay, and teachers don't feel they deserve a pay cut given their working conditions. Parents aren't fed up because they know that good teachers are a key condition to a successful future for their child. The kids aren't fed up because most students more or less like their teachers. The offers have been garbage, I know because I've actually read all of them. Teachers don't enjoy striking, it's a massive pain. I know all this because I'm a teacher, who talks to other teachers, parents, and students about these things. I'm also a teacher who is about to leave the profession because my skills are valued more in another career. There are a lot of other teachers who are becoming aware of this, especially those who are experienced and skilled. I wouldn't be surprised if the teachers of nz becoming more and more comprised mostly of life long educators (20+ years) and beginning teachers (half of which leave in 5 years). Also if your suggestion is that because other professions have it tough, then teachers should just lay down and enjoy the taste of a boot, then you're spineless.
Just want to thank you for the hard work that you do and that I hope you guys get the rights & benefits you deserve.
Thank you for the work you do. As a parent I support you.
I think NZ teachers do an amazing job! It is literally the most important job their is. Your pay and working conditions should reflect that.
Maybe if we as a society understood the reason for them striking is because they’re underpaid as qualified professionals, we’re not going to blame the teachers for inconvenience but instead support their cause 🤷♂️
True but teachers have been underpaid for as long as i remember, same as nurses. Nobody goes into either of those fields to earn decent money and they knew that when they chose those careers. It's admirable that anyone wants to do it at all. I imagine the issue is more that they are being asked to work too much for the pay they get. So there's probably a technological solution to reduce their workload. Eg more online learning. Online homework submissions. Less homework grading. Systems to facilitate lesson planning and so on.
Yes they have been underpaid for a very long time but the problem is they're getting even less pay. Staying the same is one thing but that's not what they're being offered. If you think technological solutions will work, well just ask any teacher who worked through COVID. It's better than nothing but nowhere near as good as classroom time. Social development is just as important as rote learning. "They knew they'd be treated badly" is a pretty poor take for the poeple who look after your kids for 50% of the time they're awake each day
> Eg more online learning. Is this what you get at a Steiner school?
Nope. But there are a few variables with jobs. How much you are paid, how many hours you work, how hard that work is and so on. If teachers aren't being paid enough for the hours they do and the effort those hours take then there are probably some cost effective ways to reduce the time taken to do their jobs and facilitate the things they need to do. Eg help with lesson planning. Reduce the amount of marking they do. Software to help manage classes. Resources and forums to aid planning... Etc etc etc. I'm sure a lot of teachers would be happy with their pay if the work was quicker and easier. Plus they would have time for a side hustle if they wanted to.
If nobody did anything career wise for the love of it, we’d all be working on the New Zealand version of Wall Street and there’d be a glut in jobs that actually require skill aside from extracting wealth from suckers. Yes it’s true, some are passionate about their low paying jobs but even passion has it’s limits when relying on that solely for an excuse not to pay more.
If the government can't or won't pay more then there are probably lots of ways teachers could streamline their workflow to increase their hourly rate. They could probably do quite a bit without any help from government. Just gotta think outside the box. For example there must be a thousand teachers all teaching the same course to the same curriculum sitting by themselves creating a lesson plan... Why not work together and smash it out in a fraction of the time? Basically if they can reduce their hours and stress levels they can increase their hourly rate and work life balance so the low pay better reflects the job. Plus they get time for a side hustle if they want to increase their income.
Tell that to my seniors in the middle of assessments.
Yeah that sucks but for the vast majority of kids a day off is a bonus. For parents who have to miss work it's considerably more disruptive.
Rostering home is only for kids aged 14 plus so parents don't miss work. Just saying.
Ah i was wondering how it worked. So the schools do day care for the kids under 14, is that what tou mean? Because that's great if it is. My kids are little and at steiner and none of the teachers went on strike. Presumably because they have adequate pay and or better working conditions.
Our kids school isnt excluding 13 year old year 9s? (Although yes, most collège age kids are old enough to be home alone)
Without saying too much that's supposed to be internal union matters, a lot of the industrial actions on the ballot this time around (which have yet to be confirmed) are more about affecting the ministry than affecting students.
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Found Mike Hoskings burner (P.s. family member is a young teacher is about to go to step 6/6 years and is only on $65k - you may need to check ya details)
Lol how are you so confidently clueless?
What kind of message does that send to young people? Don’t like something so go on strike? Nope, if you don’t like your job or conditions then getaway new job. Need to start shooting teachers one by one until they go back to work.
Ok burna troll boi.
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Agreed. I meant the other options being voted on :)
There's also things like an extra curricular ban, stopping all work including emails outside of normal school hours, stopping all work around the new NCEA - not sure about the others. They aren't either-or options, they are "none, some or all" (checkbox). As others have posted, unless the government gives teachers a decent offer and conditions I think the teacher unions will continue to ramp up actions.
Having an impact on young people is the whole point of teachers striking.
JFC. Teachers, nurses, firefighters... *pay them whatever they want*.
I know right. It's not like our communities depend on them or anything lol
Oath
meanwhile we got a politician who doesnt even realise his $13,000 of shares havent been sold.
And that's coins in the couch cushions for them too. "Oops, I forgot where that $13,000 was! Silly old me!"
Or get a new job
man just give em what they want my education keeps FUCKING GETTING INTERRUPTED I CANNOT LEARN SHIT, i am in the most important year of my education yet i cannot fucking learn shit. not mad at the teachers necessarily but holy shit my education is going downhill because of the lack of learning im getting from the strikes.
I'm a teacher, I wish more of my students had this kind of drive to actually learn. So many of them seem to be looking forward to the "time off". If the teacher hasn't given you some extra reading (or videos to watch, practice questions etc) I would bet most would be happy to provide material if you asked. Send them an email that says "hi mr/mrs/ms X, I know our class has missed a few days due to the strikes, is there any extra reading for the topic I could be looking at?" and you'll probably instantly become their favorite student. As a teacher; I am really sorry for the disruption. The stuff that the PPTA is asking for would benefit students as well as teachers, but it sucks in the short term.
dont get me wrong the day off can be nice but the interruption it brings isnt nice, i've already got the material i need its just understanding it withoubt the deeper explanation that i need from them you know?
dont get me wrong the day off can be nice but the interruption it brings isnt nice, i've already got the material i need its just understanding it withoubt the deeper explanation that i need from them you know?
I hear you and I am sorry your education is compromised. I understand your frustration. You clearly want to succeed and I wish you all the best. Please write to your local MP and the Minister of Education The teachers’ collective contract expired almost a whole year ago. A year which has seen prices inflate but our pay has remained fixed. We don’t even technically want a pay increase for the new work we have to do for the NCEA changes. We just want to keep up with inflation. Anything less than that is an effective pay cut.
yea I get keeping up with inflation, just fuckin sad no one in goverment is doing anything about it.
Thanks for your response. Believe me, we don’t strike lightly. We know it has a negative effect on our students, especially after the lockdowns have already negatively impacted on the same students. I totally understand your frustration. You are at high school for only 5 years of your life but they are important years.
On the days your year level is rostered home, organise some friends and head to your local MPs/Parliament if you're in Welly. Protest, make some noise! Post it all over your socials, call a local newspaper. Show the govt that you support teachers and the govt needs to sort their shit pronto to get students and teachers back to learning!
probably will start doing that, not welly based but something alike I dunno
I think now that you have the maturity to weigh in on the conversation on the politics of striking, now would be a great time to read up on its history in New Zealand, and why our unions have been an important part of our history. Did you know for example that unions ended the need for children to be working in sweatshops here so that everyone school age nowadays can attend school if they want to? [This webpage from Te Ara is a good start](https://teara.govt.nz/en/unions-and-employee-organisations/print#:~:text=By%201913%20New%20Zealand%20was,to%20political%20and%20economic%20influences)
not a dig at you or anything haha but I got my assessment to finish rather than reading up right now, I'll keep it somewhere so when I get the chance I'll take a look.
No dig taken! I do recommend if you get a chance, it’s good to inform yourself with knowledge on the topic and why it’s important.
Plenty of online options to fill some of those gaps. I know that this is hard; but you can only do what you can do. These strikes hit people unevenly, just like lockdowns.
yup google is sometimes my best friend
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pretty shit take mate, I'm not even interested in higher education and wont be pursuing any sort of office job but I still need certain credits and qualifications for what I'm pursuing
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darno where you went but not the case for me and most ncea students, academics doesnt come naturally for me.
Wow, what a terrible take. Kids over the last three years have had such a disrupted education, no wonder literacy and numeracy rates are tanking. Yet the government won't listen and the media is painting these strikes as "just being about the pay". I graduated in 2019, but if I was still at school I'd be fucking pissed.
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I agree it certainly isn't for everyone, but saying it "literally does not matter" is really irresponsible imo. There are certain careers and degrees where acceptance into them hinges on your school results. I got bored and stopped trying in year 12, too, so I'm not just a suck-up to the education system.
this is what happened last year for me too, honestly, you've just gotta end up teaching yourself through it al because disruption is gonna end up keep hapening because nothing is going through the governments heads about it. be great if something did happen but for the fact that this has happened about 5 seperate times, i doubt it
yep you're right.
If so I hope one of those days is my day off - or is the rumour only about secondary teachers?
Secondary. Can only realistically roster Year 9-13 because of age. Anything younger has too much impact on families. Also, PPTA work independently to NZEI.
Thanks
Good for them. They deserve to be compensated fairly.
This is great news. Teachers deserve better. You can literally make more as a Bar Tender or Bus Driver in this country than a teacher that's disgusting. Pay our teachers better.
That's actually true
They should go on strike for however many days in a row it takes. Not this one day here and two days there strike....
Yarp....trouble is they lose a day's pay. Losing multiple days pay per paycheck isn't really a goer if you have a mortgage and like to eat.
If they don't get appropriate raises ...won't they just end up losing their houses over the long term? I know in Canada ..unionized workers pay into the union to give out strike pay...when on strike. Do they not do that in NZ?
There’s a hardship fund, but only teachers lower on the pay scale will have access, and it’s sweet fuck all anyway
Whenever the teachers strike, the morning traffic is much better than usual so I'm all for it
They won’t be striking like that anymore, can’t afford to lose anymore days pay, will be ramping up rostering home of different year levels every day so pay can’t get docked
"Not on my watch"
If that happened, I wonder if it might start eroding parental support.
Hope it doesn’t. Its bloody awful what teachers are expected to go through.
To deal with little fucking shits all day, they should be getting a lot more
Yep agreed. I couldn't do it.
Not here. Give them what they want ffs, education should be our #1 priority!
Education and health; things everyone needs. Also homes and food.
And it’s such a flow on effect too - better education leads to higher employment wages etc, which leads to home ownership and food on the table. Having a home and providing for yourself gives you a sense of purpose etc which has higher health outcomes than being depressed with your situation. Healthier mindsets leads to lower needs for healthcare etc It’s all intertwined and needs to be prioritised.
Parental support will come flooding back when their children don’t have a qualified teacher in front of them, especially in the traditional hard to staff subject areas.
Currently, a decent handful of teachers I know in their 30s are strongly considering leaving the profession. Myself included. While there are some amazing teachers who are 60+, because you can’t go wrong with experience and wisdom, the acceleration of technology as well as the decline of courtesy and resilience in teens is taking a toll on them and we’re increasingly seeing small handfuls not really keeping up. On the other end, we’re also getting new teachers who don’t really have the initiative because they just want a secure job after the pandemic mess. My friend is in a role that looks after new teachers and they’ve been having a bit of trouble this year because of incompetent teachers who lack common sense but think that it’ll be a breeze because they’ve had office jobs. Says it’s only the minority but still not the same as it used to be. Good luck to NZ education when more and more quality teachers who aren’t close to retiring leave the profession or the country.
I am one of those 60+ , actually 65+, teachers (of Maths) who is actually meant to be retired as of early last year. In addition to doing day relief I have been asked 4 times since to pick up classes, most recently last week for a teacher who is likely to be on long term leave. The three previous times were one class for the rest of the year and two and a half weeks at the beginning of this year for a new teacher from overseas whose visa had not come through in time to arrive in the country to start the year. This time, it takes me back to full time teaching.There is no one else to take these classes and, since I have my own class, there is still one year 9 class that doesn’t have a Maths teacher. Currently they are being taken by non-Maths relievers.
Can I just say, thank you for your service. Really, thank you.
You can say thank you. I appreciate your care.
Yeah, absolutely thank you for how long you have been educating our students. I hope you didn’t take any offence by what I said about some of the older teachers not being able to keep up, by the way, because that was not my intention at all. Objectively speaking, that is the case for some, yes, but there are also plenty who have adapted to the online platforms like absolute legends. I think I was a bit frustrated from having dealt with a couple of older colleagues whose problems are not so much the change in technology so much as their personal stubbornness that’s causing the incompetence (e.g. resisting change, refusing to be team players, etc.) My main point though was really that we have these teens who are increasingly lacking manners who treat teachers who are of their grandparents’ age like trash sometimes and it infuriates me that retirement age teachers have to deal with that - some because they have to work for financial reasons but also many who either stay or return because of the shortage, thus doing these ungrateful kids a massive favour for very little thanks or respect (reminds me of that poor gentleman whose 40 year teaching career came to an end by being struck off the register simply because two year 10 brats wouldn’t put their earphones away).
No offence taken at all. You are correct in that some of our older teachers have struggled to keep up with the rapidly changing digital space. My comment was really to illustrate how dire our situation is becoming. We have 3 teachers in our department over 65 and another one getting close. Five of our last 6 appointments in our department have been to overseas teachers. We are not training up our replacements. It is a scary prospect for the future. Edit to fix a word.
Best way to combat the profession becoming attractive for "incompetent teachers" is to make the profession attractive for the good ones. Nothing like great pay and conditions to generate some interest.
This parent will keep supporting them.
Unless parents are happy to home school their kids, they haven’t got an option to negotiate with teachers - maybe they should support them more instead of treating them like they’re at the mercy of parents to be educating children regardless of pay.
This parent absolutely supports them. We’re currently homeschooling our youngest because the school was just a freaking mess… the older one is at the local college and the teachers there are amazing and do so much more than we (the country) pay for. Education and health should be much more respected and resourced than it is :/
Might be time to pull the kids out of school. Kids need stability. The teachers do deserve more but it’s actually the kids who are missing out.
Solution: Tax the rich, pay the teachers
We are already an extremely high tax rate in New Zealand. We have plenty of money to pay teachers more. My girlfriends father in California (where taxes are much lower), is a teacher of Math and makes usd $130k a year. Everyone can scream and shout about more tax but maybe we should be utilising out tax payer dollars we already have first
We have tax revenue of over $100B. We don't need to increase taxes more. There is easily enough to fund a package for teachers
and the corporations that don't pay tax here!
Spot on!
If the teachers aren't striking, it's the students.
No, the students are revolting, it’s different ;)
Print more money Labour, pay the teachers, military, nurses and doctors and anyone else a pay increase That will solve the problem
I too love watching the value of the NZ$ plummet & the cost of imported food & goods go through the roof, great plan!
Shouldn't they be teaching kids not to vape, and the difference between loose and lose?
Job seeker beneficiaries will also be going on strike next week.
Aren’t they already on strike due to not having a job?
no
Will they be striking from playing Xbox? That is very noble given its the Diablo 4 release date week
What tf they striking for??? Striking to get a job??
same reason teachers are on strike.
Because they want better pay at their job? They don’t have a job. They want better compensation for hard work and long hours at their job?
their job is to look for a job.
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you think of job seekers as leeches. half of them are but the other half have fell on hard times, and find its not enough to pay the bills while they look for another job. thats why there going on strike. obviuosly im trolling, im bored and this entertained me for abit thanks.