Letters: Teacher’s strike, high living costs and co-governance

Teachers are planning to strike on Thursday, March 16. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Letters to the Editor

Teachers on the money

Yes, the teachers are on strike again, much to the annoyance of many. Working as a part-time secondary teacher at the top of the teaching pay scale, with over 40 years of work experience in and out of the classroom, and with three additional post-graduate qualifications my PPTA negotiated base pay is $69.04 a day. This is well above the rate of a large portion of the profession. This increases to $76.70 an hour with an additional 11.11per cent because I work part-time on a fixed contract. I teach one senior class a day, so in effect, I am paid $76.70 for an hour in the classroom. Hours actually worked so far this year, including planning, creating resources, administration and marking, total just over seventy, that’s 2.34 hours for every hour in the classroom. The rate for hours actually worked is currently $32.76 per hour. A laptop which is essential to this work is not provided. Ironically, the more I put into the job the less I earn per hour. A day relief teacher earns up to $70 an hour for each hour worked, more than twice my actual rate. The historical 11.11 per cent addition to base pay more realistically should be upwards of 230 per cent to compensate fully for time spent outside of the classroom working as a teacher. Is my $32.76 an hour reasonable? The minimum wage is about to increase to $22.70 an hour. The average bus driver earns $24.50 an hour with some earning up to $28 an hour with suggestions that this will increase to $30.00 for some. An office administrator may earn in the vicinity of $31 an hour. Legal fees for a lawyer can be upward of $250 an hour. If my experience is anything to go by, PPTA members have a point. Nick McMaster, Devonport.

Pay for parents?

Is this a possible outcome from the completely understandable teacher’s strike on Thursday all around New Zealand? Where both parents work to meet high living costs in 2023, will tens of thousands of parents need to take a day’s holiday pay on Thursday to stay home all day and keep their children safe? It is possibly needed with our high teenage and adult crime rates every day in New Zealand. Or, alternatively, will some caring employers allow their valued staff and employees with school children to have a day off on full pay and not lose part of their holiday pay credit? I really hope so. Murray Hunter, Titirangi.

ED wait times

The opposition parties obviously see the possibility of gaining political points by harping on about waiting times at emergency departments. What I would love to see is some analysis of why people are going to these departments in the first place. Obviously, there are genuine medical emergencies and people do get injured but I wonder what proportion of these injuries come from assaults, car crashes and other avoidable accidents. How many medical emergencies are the result of drug overdoses or alcohol abuse? These are all things a caring society would seek to eliminate. Perhaps then we would not need to monitor waiting times at all. Greg Cave, Sunnyvale.

Teaching standards

New Zealand’s medical crisis is the direct consequence of forty years of downgrading the teaching profession. Finland’s student achievement leads the world because only masters degrees can be teachers, and consequently, there are zero medical waiting lists. New Zealand school principals can’t prioritise curriculum delivery, instead appointing any applicant apparently stimulating enough to prevent teenage riots. Forget about subject expertise. We have become a nation of knowledge nincompoops accustomed to googling everything, including shortcuts to riches. Why can’t politicians see that waxing lyrical about all the overseas medical staff recruiting they’re trying to do is loudly screaming about the failure of our own education system. Jim Carlyle, (former HOD Science & Maths Western Springs College), Te Atatu.

System in ruins

Has New Zealand ever been in a worse predicament? Our health system is in ruins, our education system is in free fall, our serious crime rates are out of control, our child welfare system is a tragic failure, our housing is an abject failure, poverty is sky rocketing and now we face a massive rebuild after cyclone Gabrielle. Add to these, our deteriorating race relations and the distinct prospect, on current form, that the ABs won’t even make it out of pool play at the World Cup. It will require some masterful leadership to try and turn the nation around but sadly the style of leadership required seems to be sadly lacking at present. Let us all pray for some divine intervention. Jock Mac Vicar, Hauraki

The health system is in ruins says Jock Mac Vicar. Photo / John Borren, File

Basic survival

Steve Clerk’s “Back to basics” letter struck a chord with me. Indigenous peoples across the globe, until various European and Asian Empires “discovered” the countries they then claimed as their own, seemed to be doing very well prior to those who turned their lives upside-down. Australia’s first people, for example, after up to 50,000 years of habitation, taking care of the resources available and using just what they needed to live within the land they worshipped, suddenly discovered that they had been getting it all wrong since they had arrived. The new colonists brought greed for land, pillage, murder, disease and exclusion from the territories the natives knew as home for millennia, just to show these “primitives” how to behave properly and decently. This scenario has been replicated across the globe time and again by those seeking glory for themselves and their country, to the irreparable harm or indeed, the extinction of those first nations. The resultant damage to the ecology, people of all races, creeds and colour, environment, spirituality and ways of life for so many, through what is deemed progress, makes me wonder just one thing. Who, truly, are the most advanced people in the world and who, truly, are the barbarians? Those who over millennia have learned to live in harmony with their environment, or those who, over the last few hundred years have done their best to “conquer” it? I know where my sympathies lie. Back to basics is the only way we as Earth’s inhabitants and custodians will survive much longer into the future. Jeremy Coleman, Hillpark.

Putin can’t be ignored

Michael Kampkes would benefit from even a small bit of research into Russian-Ukraine politics. To say that Putin was “unprovoked” is to ignore hard documented evidence. I do remember the extreme reaction from America when Cuba allowed Russian missiles to be based 160km from the tip of Florida. Was it an overreaction by America? When a bear is continually poked by a stick it will eventually retaliate? Make no mistake, war is horrific and hard to understand in the 21st century. But to ignore the reasons behind Putin’s actions only increases the likelihood of further conflict. Diplomatic negotiations are still the best antidote to war but do not always work out as history demonstrates. Documentation clearly shows there are more than two parties involved in the Russian-Ukraine hostilities. Mark Lewis-Wilson, Mangonui.

A war of words

In Saturday’s Herald you quote the Russian defence ministry: “Russia’s military forces carried out a massive revenge strike ... critical elements of the Ukrainian military and energetic infrastructure have been hit”. The language here reduces their neighbours, the people of Ukraine, their towns and cities, their livelihoods, to mere things, things to be destroyed. Such is the measure of the degradation to which the Russian leadership has fallen. M. Howard, Mt Eden.

Government consultants

David Nicholson (March 11) wonders why National doesn’t praise the use of private sector consultants to do government work. They might have, if the government at the same time had cut the size of the public sector rather than increasing it by 28 per cent, and then held the consultants to account for timely and practical outcomes. Carl Bergstrom, Glendowie.

Short and sweet

On bank profits

Isn’t National and ACT calling for an investigation of high bank profits a lot like the fox wanting to review henhouse security? Jeff Hayward, Auckland.

On Hooton

Matthew Hooton penned an article headed “Election about policies not personalities”. Yet in all articles bar one on climate change, he prattled on about Luxon v Hipkins rather than their parties’ policies and his preference for one over the other. Gavin Baker, Glendowie.

On co-governance

Labour’s relentless pursuit to co-govern the nation and its citizens, including David Parker’s “regional planning committee” is a violation of our democratic rights. This is socialism out of control. Ian Doube, Rotorua.

On pleasing landlords

Before National reverses Labour’s policies on rental property it should consider the large percentage of renters, with that number growing as fewer people can afford to buy their own house. The flip side of pleasing landlords is punishing tenants. Susan Grimsdell, Auckland Central.

On clearing slash

Wonder if a leaf blower would work? Gary Andrews, Mt Maunganui.

On Russian wives

With the proportion of women in Russia now very high, it’s a good place to visit for men wanting a wife. Stay clear of the Army. Keith Duggan, Browns Bay.