Teachers roundly reject pay offer

Secondary teachers around the country have resoundingly voted down the latest government pay offer, it was announced this afternoon.

Post Primary Teachers Association members had voted over the past week over whether to accept the 5.5 per cent pay rise and a $3500 bonus for implementing the National Certificate of Educational Achievement, both to be paid over three years.

"This is a vote against the Government and its pay offer, not against the PPTA executive," union president Jen McCutcheon said.

"PPTA accepted it had a responsibility to take this package to members to vote on. Members have decided it's not good enough so we will be going back to the negotiating table."

The teachers voted 74.5 per cent (8346 members) against ratification with 25.5 per cent (2862 members) voting for acceptance.

The turnout was high at more than 82 per cent.

Education Minister Trevor Mallard told NZPA he was disappointed but not surprised by the vote result.

The Government would continue to negotiate, he said.

It would also consider a roll-over to preserve the collective agreement.

School Trustees Association president Chris France told NZPA he was disappointed by the offer's rejection but was not taking sides in the dispute.

"That process is between government and PPTA."

He called for the Government to set up a taskforce looking at underlying workload, teacher recruitment and retention issues.

"As an association on behalf of boards and everybody else I think everybody would be disappointed. It's given a lot of disruption to student learning and made teachers feel really bad they've had to take that sort of action. It's a been a lose for everybody that we think is really unfortunate."

He said negotiations were the only way to resolve the problem but a taskforce could look at the long-term problem.

Low level action that was in place before the proposed settlement was taken to members is expected to resume. That means the day relief ban, the out-of-hours meetings ban and non-compliance with National Certificate of Education Achievement would be reinstated.

Further escalation of action was being discussed at today's executive meeting.

Ms McCutcheon said the result was an indication of the level of anger and disappointment secondary teachers felt at the amount of money they have been offered.

"It really is a case of too little too late from the Government," Ms McCutcheon said.

"If they had offered this package earlier it might have been ratified but secondary teachers have had to cope with a major increase in workload with the introduction of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement.

"That has exacerbated what was already an intolerable workload. Secondary teachers are extremely overworked and underpaid."

"The PPTA executive is meeting today to decide the next course of action," she said.

"Naturally we would want to go back into negotiations as soon as possible."

- NZPA