Teachers lick wounds and fight on

By ANDREW LAXON

It didn't take long for secondary teachers to point out the obvious flaw in their new pay deal.

On the one hand they got $3500 over the next three years for their extra work on the complicated new national assessment system, the National Certificate of Educational Achievement.

On the other there was the pay increase itself - 5.5 per cent over three years. As many teachers have pointed out, that's an effective 1 per cent pay cut if the Reserve Bank's predictions of a 6.5 per cent inflation increase over the term of the contract are correct.

Last month, Post Primary Teachers Association president Jen McCutcheon - understandably wary of claiming victory too early - called the second attempted settlement with the Government "a significant step forward" in the 14-month industrial dispute.

The revolt started at Orewa College the next day. Teachers spent the afternoon on the picket line, braving rain and comments from frustrated parents picking up their children after school.

McCutcheon responded by saying she was fairly sure teachers would ratify the settlement this time round, despite their rejection of an earlier deal between the PPTA and the Government in December.

"I'm surprised at Orewa College's reaction and don't really understand it," she said. "Perhaps they don't have all the information they should."

It soon became clear that the Orewa teachers were not out of touch, just getting in early. Teachers at Onslow College in Wellington staged their own wildcat strike a few days later, followed by Havelock North High School in Hawkes Bay.

Within a week the deal was in ruins. As the Government proudly unveiled tertiary-level reforms for the knowledge economy in its Budget, teachers picketed the offices of Labour MPs and 200 marched on Parliament to shout their protests.

The next day students were sent home by half-day strikes at Westlake Boys High School, Papakura High School, Northcote College, Marcellin College and Glenfield College.

The Council of Trade Unions pleaded with teachers to wait for ratification meetings before striking. President Ross Wilson was worried. He had worked in some tough environments and in 25 years had not seen this kind of anger boiling over.

Some teachers began to target their own leaders as well as the Government. Lynfield College teachers passed a motion of no-confidence in the union executive.

And delegates in the Auckland region passed a "loss of confidence" vote in the executive in front of their president - an unprecedented move in the midst of a pay round.

The anger at McCutcheon stemmed not just from the inadequate pay offer. Throughout the dispute there had been rumours that the leadership of the PPTA - which has strong historic links with the party - wanted a quick settlement to avoid embarrassing the Government in election year.

The proposed settlement, just a few days before Labour's election-year congress in Wellington, saved the party from television coverage showing mass pickets by teachers.

And when McCutcheon turned up at the congress "as an interested bystander because I've never been to one before", claims were revived of a cosy deal between Labour and one of its closest allies.

McCutcheon angrily denied this but admitted she may have been naive. Later she came close to tears when she talked to the Weekend Herald about how the media attacks on her integrity had shaken her more than she had expected.

Then and now she has rejected calls for resignation.

Back in October when the strikes began, few teachers thought the situation would come to this. At Edgewater College in Pakuranga, science teacher Tony Turner - in his late 50s and nearing retirement - remembers how negotiations had started that March and dragged on for six months with no real Government concessions.

No one was terribly militant in those days, he thinks. The main motivation for the first one-day strike was to convince the Government that teachers were serious. But when that failed, even the moderates became determined to take a stand.

The dispute last year boiled down to two main arguments - pay and workload, with claims of looming staff shortages in the background.

On pay, the union wanted an across-the-board pay increase of $7500 over the next three years, giving a beginning teacher on $34,000 a 22 per cent pay rise.

The Government had countered with a 2 per cent pay rise, followed by 1.5 per cent from July this year. Over two years that meant an extra $1190 for a beginning teacher or $1760 for a teacher at the top of the scale.

The union also wanted more work preparation time away from students, compensation for work on the NCEA and more money to provide for extra teachers.

In the first round of negotiations, this last point loomed as a big issue. The PPTA's $110 million package for 1850 extra teachers would have put 5 1/2 more teachers in every secondary school; the Government's far more modest interim plan meant only half a teacher on average.

After a six-week impasse, both sides resumed talks in late November and came up with a proposed settlement in early December.

There was no extra money but the PPTA claimed victory because the Government had reluctantly agreed to provide three hours of non-contact time a week for each teacher, rising to four hours in 2004 and possibly five in 2005.

It also agreed to recruit the 1850 extra teachers in five years, not 10, as it had originally promised.

McCutcheon acknowledged disappointment with the pay deal but said her members had identified workload controls as their priority.

Turner thinks teachers might just have grudgingly accepted that deal if it had gone to a vote the next day.

Instead, they woke to headlines the following week that politicians had received a pay rise of up to 5.5 per cent, their fourth increase in two years. That didn't go down well in the Edgewater College staffroom.

The discontent festered over the school holidays and in February teachers narrowly rejected the deal by 56 per cent to 44 per cent. In Auckland the "no" vote was much higher at 77 per cent.

In March, the rolling strikes continued but PPTA members also stopped handing in marked NCEA work to the Qualifications Authority and began a ban on extracurricular activities, such as coaching sport.

Then the PPTA put forward a new claim, which it described as a compromise between its original claim and the rejected first settlement.

The proposal, supported by three-quarters of PPTA members, did not ask for a bigger rise on base pay. It concentrated on winning an allowance for teaching the NCEA, which peaked at $1500 after three years.

The deal would have taken a beginning teacher's pay to $38,700 and a teacher at the top of the pay scale to $55,576.

The Government counter-offered by cutting back the allowance to $3500 in total and adding a 2 per cent increase in the third year to the basic pay deal, taking it from 3.5 per cent over two years to 5.5 per cent over three years.

The PPTA executive, aware of the 75 per cent support base for the claim, thought its members would accept the amended offer. But they had got it badly wrong.

One upset teacher said last month the PPTA's new claim was "supposed to be a bottom line, not something to screw us down further".

Turner takes a wider view. He, like many observers, sees a glaring contradiction between the Government's refusal to pay teachers any significant increase while it boasted in the Budget of a $2.6 billion surplus.

Ironically, he thinks teachers would have welcomed yesterday's rejected deal as a victory if the Government had produced it last December.

Now it's too late. "People have got more and more angry."