Source: Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA)
Bargaining is now under way for all of the collective agreements that PPTA Te Wehengarua negotiates. Here is an account of where the various agreement negotiations are at
PPTA Te Wehengarua and Ministry of Education STCA negotiatiors met kanohi ki te kanohi for the first time in late September.
PPTA Te Wehengarua has received – and rejected – an offer from the Ministry of Education for settling the Community Education Collective Agreement (CECA), which would include coverage of the Out of Hours Music and Art (OOHMA) members.
While the Ministry of Education has agreed in principle to most of PPTA’s claims for the CECA, the sticking points are around remuneration, in particular cost of living increases across all rates, and a failure to fund all the hours actually worked by community education and OOHMA workers.
Secondary Teachers’ Collective Agreement
The Secondary Teachers’ Collective Agreement (STCA) bargaining teams met for two full days of negotiations in late September. Previously, all the negotiation sessions had taken place online, but on Wednesday 21 September, the first in-person session was held at PPTA national office. The focus of this meeting was the culturally responsive claims. These include community liaison allowances for teachers working with Māori and Pasifika communities, adjustments to the Māori Immersion Teacher Allowance to reflect the value of a management unit and recognition of the workloads of kaiako matatau ki te reo Māori me ōna tikanga.
Teams from the Ministry of Education (MoE) and NZ School Trustees’ Association (NZSTA) were welcomed with a pōwhiri. PPTA Te Wehengarua Kaihautū Māori Angela O’Donnell-King and Te Huarahi Māori Motuhake member Daniel Hāpuku gave passionate and powerful presentations. They highlighted the overwhelming workload expectations for kaiako Māori, indicating the additional workload expected to fall on these members due to government and Ministry priorities and initiatives (such as Ka Hikitia, Mana ōrite mō te Mātauranga Māori and new NCEA subject pilots.)
Negotiations are reaching the end of the presentation, clarification and discussion stage. The bargaining team anticipates it will need only one or two more days of negotiations to ensure that each of PPTA’s 39 claims has been covered fully. After all of the claims have been presented, it is expected that the Ministry will begin preparing an offer.
Area Schools Teachers’ Collective Agreement
Area school bargaining teams also held two days of negotiations in September. As the Area School Teachers’ Collective Agreement is a multi-union collective agreement the negotiations take place with NZEI, the primary teachers’ union, representing their members as well.
All of the claims have been presented with supporting evidence. Discussions have focused on talking about the specific context of an area school and how the claims would support teachers and students in these schools. The next expected step is to hear back from the Ministry with an offer.
Principals’ Collective Agreements
Secondary Principals’ Collective Agreement negotiations started in August, followed by Area School Principals’ negotiations in early September.
The Ministry has shown an interest in the wellbeing claims, in particular the professional supervision / coaching claim. PPTA’s bargaining team outlined the coaching and supervision pilot that it ran. The team also spoke about the results of PPTA’s principal and senior leader health and wellbeing survey to support the wellbeing claims.
A written proposal on incorporating the professional growth cycle into the collective agreements instead of the performance management process has been presented. However we have struck some roadblocks with this, as NZSTA and MoE have quite a different understanding of what “removing appraisal” means for principals.
A further two-hour Zoom session was held in late September to consider a MoE proposal on secondments, and to discuss changes that could be made to streamline the sabbaticals process.
Negotiations for the secondary principals’ and area school principals’ agreements will continue over the team break and into Term 4.
