strike affected South Island schools yesterday<\/a>\u00a0and was scheduled to move to the remainder of the North Island on Thursday.<\/p>\nPPTA acting president Chris Abercrombie told the rally at Parliament the teachers’ collective agreement negotiations were proving to be a long battle.<\/p>\n
He said teacher pay should be included in the government’s promised focus on “bread-and-butter issues” because pay rates were inadequate.<\/p>\n
“It is not good enough that in Aotearoa New Zealand we have teachers going to food banks. And I know this to be true because I’ve had to do it myself,” he said.<\/p>\n
Abercrombie said the ministry’s most recent offer was a slight improvement on the previous offer made in October last year but it did not meet the union’s claim for a pay increase that matched the cost of living.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A teacher in the crowd, Clare Preston, said teachers were unhappy to be striking again.<\/p>\n
She said the ministry’s latest offer was unappealing and essentially the same as its October offer but with one more year tacked on.<\/p>\n
“It essentially means that we’d be locked into this offer that we’re really discontented with, just for a longer period of time so in many ways it’s worse than the offer we had back in October,” she said.<\/p>\n
Another teacher, Paul Dyer, said teachers needed to show that what they had been offered was not right.<\/p>\n
We’re a united group of teachers who know what’s needed for the improvement of education in New Zealand which is good pay and conditions for the teachers,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We want pay that is keeping up with the rate of inflation and we want conditions so that we can give quality education to the students in our classrooms.”<\/p>\n
Members of the public watching the rally on Lambton Quay were generally supportive of the teachers.<\/p>\n
“They deserve everything they’re going for,” said one woman, a retired teacher.<\/p>\n
“I reckon teachers are amazing, we should be supporting them more,” another said.<\/p>\n
“It’s cool. I think they do deserve it. It’s hard work and important work as well,” a man watching the march said.<\/p>\n
Secondary and area school teachers represented by the PPTA and NZEI were planning to hold roadside pickets in Hamilton, Kaitaia, Tauranga and Auckland on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hundreds of striking secondary and area school teachers marched on Parliament today to protest for better pay and conditions. The rally was part of a series of one-day regional strikes which closed secondary and area schools across the North Island from Wellington through to Taranaki and Hawke’s Bay on Wednesday. The\u00a0strike affected South Island schools […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4354,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4352\/revisions\/4354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}