‘Stand up, fight back’ was the chant from teachers, principals and support staff members of NZEI when they took to the streets of Ashburton last week following a stop work meeting.
About 100 members marched with placards from the meeting and stood along West St chanting ‘one per cent is not enough’, getting supportive toots from passing trucks and cars.
It was the second of two meetings by members in town that day.
After the first, about 14 members delivered a message to Rangitata MP James Meager in Ashburton.
They quietly marched down Burnett St with placards towards the MP’s office to deliver a message.
‘We are not happy with a one per cent offer’, they said.
It was passed on to his staff at the Ashburton office, as Meager was at Parliament in Wellington.
The meetings followed what they call ‘‘low and unacceptable offers’’ from government in their pay and work condition negotiations.
The action was the beginning of a two-week series of stop-work meetings nationwide as members discussed pay talks stalled on an offer of a 1 percent pay rise over three years.
The one-hour meetings were expected to close some of the country’s 1900 primary schools for several hours.
The union said principals, school support staff and Education Ministry learning support staff were negotiating separate collective agreements and also joined the meetings.
NZEI said it had planned the meetings so that schools and ministry offices would not have to close.
‘‘Measures include organising multiple meetings at different times so that members can split into groups and take turns attending different meetings, while others remain at school,’’ it said.
NZEI negotiator Liam Rutherford said members were due to discuss the possibility of industrial action, though any vote on that would be made at a later date.
He said the ministry’s pay offer to teachers had ‘‘gone down like a cold cup of sick’’ but it was not the only reason members rejected the offer.
‘‘Our members have been really clear that they don’t expect any pay increases to take them backwards.
“Cost of living is something that is still huge.
But alongside that, it was the fact that the offer from the government was really weak around the protection of Te Tiriti and any kind of day one solutions for a learning support system,’’ he said.
‘‘Everything just seemed to be promises into the future and so people saw it, they were pretty unimpressed. ’’
The ministry made the same offer to secondary teachers belonging to the Post Primary Teachers Association and they went on strike Wednesday last week and will begin rostering different year groups of students home from September 15.
~ Additional reporting RNZ
