The secondary teachers' union has slammed the Ministry of Education and Government for their latest pay offer describing it as a "'glittered turd".
It comes as industrial action from secondary school teachers resumed on Thursday, with Year 12 students around the country asked not to come to school.
The New Zealand Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) confirmed on Wednesday they had encouraged members to reject the Ministry of Education's latest offer saying it doesn't address the issues facing the industry.
"PPTA Te Wehengarua national executive met last night to consider the offers and we don't believe they are sufficient to address the serious shortage of secondary teachers that we are facing," Chris Abercrombie, PPTA Te Wehengarua acting president said.
"Every secondary student deserves to have a specialist teacher in every subject. Too many are being short-changed right now and the situation will only get worse if we don't have pay and conditions that keep people in the profession, attract great people in and encourage those who have left teaching to come back."
Year-level strikes resumed on Thursday, with teachers refusing to take year 12 classes.
- Thursday, June 1: year 12
- Tuesday, June 6: year 10
- Thursday, June 8: year 9
PPTA Auckland Regional Chair Paul Stevens told AM they had put their industrial action on hold for 10 days in a sign of "good faith" while the ministry worked "with urgency" on new pay offers.
Stevens said the offer the ministry came back with was "remarkable" and very similar to the previous one.
"They've come back with what's effectively the same offer. I don't know if I can say this in the morning, but it's kind of a glittered turd like they have quite literally come forward with what is effectively the same offer," Stevens told AM co-host Laura Tupou.
The Government's latest offer included a lump sum payment of $4500 for union members and three pay rises by December 2024, totalling between 11 percent and 15.5 percent.
Industrial action has been occurring throughout 2023, with the PPTA calling for better pay and work conditions.
When pressed on if the PPTA thinks they can get more money out of the Government and when the industrial action will end, Stevens said it's a question about the Government getting their priorities in order.
"I think this is actually a really important question that we need to be asking across the board ... we have got nurses striking, we've got junior doctors striking. We've got these issues across the public sector, quite frankly, we want to have the public services of a country in Europe while paying the tax of Texas," he said.
"We have to be realistic as a country and quite frankly, our Government need to figure out where their priorities lie. It's all well and good to be putting money into further support for young families to have early childcare. It's all well and good to build new classrooms. It's all well and good to support the continuation of the apprenticeship scheme, but you don't have an education system without teachers and we've been raising these alarm bells for a long time and they haven't been listening."
He believes the Government only listens to industrial action as during their 10-day break, it made "no demonstrable difference".
"I think the fact we've had our industrial action on hold for the last ten days and it's made no demonstrable difference to the offer being put forward shows clearly the only thing this Government is willing to listen to is industrial action and so that does bring us to where we are," he said.
"But I don't want anyone to get the indication we take industrial action as teachers lightly or that we take it because we don't care about students or we're really happy to disrupt their learning. That's not the case at all."
Despite ongoing strikes, secondary school teachers are yet to receive an offer they are happy with, and Stevens was questioned about what more they can do.
"If we were in France or we were in Canada, we would be out of the classroom and schools would be closed until we got the pay offer that was required to maintain the profession," Stevens told AM.
"We don't do that in New Zealand, so we are taking the rostering home action, which is a way of making sure that schools can still function and we can still be there for as many students as we can in any given day while sending a really clear message."
Stevens warned secondary school teachers are not backing down and if there is no further offer on the table from the Government, industrial action will continue.
"This is how these kinds of disputes work and historically they can get really messy, but what we also know from history is when we fight, we usually win," he told AM.
"When we are really honest with the public and with the Government about what the needs are, they actually do stay on our side and that's the way things are currently."
Watch the full interview with Paul Stevens in the video above.
