Secondary and area school teachers around the country will strike again next week in a bid for better pay and working conditions.
The PPTA said members voted overwhelmingly in favour of more industrial action, including a one-day national strike next Wednesday, in support of their collective agreement negotiations.
In the second week of next term, they will put in place a plan to roster different year levels of students home on various days for four weeks.
On top of that, in the third week of Term 2, rolling strikes will be held where teachers will strike on different days in different regions starting at one end of the motu and finishing at the other.
Also from the first day of the next school term, PPTA Te Wehengarua members will not attend meetings outside school hours.
Members will also continue to refuse to give up their scheduled planning and marking time to relieve for absent teachers or positions that are vacant.
This follows the country’s largest-ever teachers’ strike last week where an estimated 50,000 kindergarten, primary, secondary and area school teachers, along with primary and area school principals took to the streets in protest.
”PPTA Te Wehengarua members have shown they are serious about getting a new collective agreement with salaries and conditions that will stem the worsening secondary teacher shortage throughout the motu,” said Chris Abercrombie, acting president of PPTA Te Wehengarua.
“Teachers would much prefer to be teaching in a settled environment this year, rather than taking extensive industrial action.
“However, we cannot stand by when the future of secondary education is at stake.”
Abercrombie said the PPTA wanted a commitment from the Government that students would have specialist teachers for every subject as well as pay and conditions that will keep teachers in the profession and attract new teachers.
The PPTA and Ministry of Education had been in mediation over the last week and were meeting again today.
Abercrombie said if the executive believed there was a genuine pathway to an agreement that members would vote for, they would consider calling off the strikes.
The Government has offered a $4000 pay rise for each teacher this year followed by about another $2000 next year.
The PPTA said that equates to an increase of 4.4 per cent this year and 2.1 per cent next year. Taking into account the time the current collective agreement has been expired and inflation, the offer came to a 10 per cent pay cut in real terms, the union said.
Secondary teachers are also calling for more guidance staff to work with the increasing number of students with mental health issues and controls on their workload.
They were offered about a third of the guidance staff required and a working group to look at their workload after the agreement was signed.
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www.nzherald.co.nz...
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Poll: As a customer, what do you think about automation?
The Press investigates the growing reliance on your unpaid labour.
Automation (or the “unpaid shift”) is often described as efficient ... but it tends to benefit employers more than consumers.
We want to know: What do you think about automation?
Are you for, or against?
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9.5% For. Self-service is less frustrating and convenient.
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43.4% I want to be able to choose.
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47.1% Against. I want to deal with people.
Even Australians get it - so why not Kiwis???
“Ten years ago, if a heatwave as intense as last week’s record-breaker had hit the east coast, Australia’s power supply may well have buckled. But this time, the system largely operated as we needed, despite some outages.
On Australia’s main grid last quarter, renewables and energy storage contributed more than 50% of supplied electricity for the first time, while wholesale power prices were more than 40% lower than a year earlier.
[…] shifting demand from gas and coal for power and petrol for cars is likely to deliver significantly lower energy bills for households.
Last quarter, wind generation was up almost 30%, grid solar 15% and grid-scale batteries almost tripled their output. Gas generation fell 27% to its lowest level for a quarter century, while coal fell 4.6% to its lowest quarterly level ever.
Gas has long been the most expensive way to produce power. Gas peaking plants tend to fire up only when supply struggles to meet demand and power prices soar. Less demand for gas has flowed through to lower wholesale prices.”
Full article: www.theguardian.com...
If even Australians see the benefit of solar - then why is NZ actively boycotting solar uptake? The increased line rental for electricity was done to make solar less competitive and prevent cost per kWh to rise even more than it did - and electricity costs are expected to rise even more. Especially as National favours gas - which is the most expensive form of generating electricity. Which in turn will accelerate Climate Change, as if New Zealand didn’t have enough problems with droughts, floods, slips, etc. already.
Dry cleaners mt Roskill
Hello our fellow neighbors I was hoping someone would know where the old dry cleaners we had up at the lights on dominion road have moved to?? I was out of town and when I came back they were gone .... I had some items that I would really love to get back but if only I new where they moved to or how to get In Touch with the owners to see what they did with our clothes if they closed down or moved elsewhere? Any updates or news about it would be amazing neighbors. Have a great day
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