Everyone knows, more-or-less, what the outcome will be before bargaining even begins. The education budget is fixed, so the government negotiator has very little room to move.
Typically, the ritual goes as follows.
The government negotiator makes an opening offer, which the unions derisively reject. They advise their members to vote it down.
Unions know the government negotiator operates within a fixed fiscal envelope. Their real objective, therefore, is not to radically increase the pay offer, but to achieve concessions on workload and conditions.
The fight usually lasts a few months, with offers and counter claims. Sometimes the unions call strikes.
Pressure mounts on the unions to settle. Their members don’t receive any pay increase until they do. Eventually, a settlement is reached, somewhere near the original offer, but with some of the concessions the union was seeking.
The current round, which began last year, is ongoing. The secondary teachers’ union settled in December, but the primary teachers’ union decided to fight on. That may be a decision they live to regret.
Instead of sticking to the choreographed moves, the Commissioner enabled school boards to increase the salaries of non-union members – about a third of the profession – by 4.7%.
The union had received the same offer in February. They rejected it without even taking it to their members.
Union spokesman Liam Rutherford said the Commissioner’s move was “a serious breach of good faith and undermined collective bargaining.”
Good faith or not, Rutherford is right about collective bargaining. But contrary to his view, undermining collective bargaining is a good thing.
Teachers’ unions have long used education reform as a bargaining chip in pay negotiations. Moreover, they insist that teachers be paid according to their length of service rather than how well they teach.
Teachers should have a four-tier career structure. Advancement should be based on evidence of quality teaching, judged by expert panels.
The top two tiers should attract considerably higher pay than any classroom teacher currently receives. Teachers at these levels should be curriculum leaders and train new teachers.
The Commissioner has disrupted the ritual. Now it is time to end it once and for all.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
Unions know the government negotiator operates within a fixed fiscal envelope. Their real objective, therefore, is not to radically increase the pay offer, but to achieve concessions on workload and conditions.
The fight usually lasts a few months, with offers and counter claims. Sometimes the unions call strikes.
Pressure mounts on the unions to settle. Their members don’t receive any pay increase until they do. Eventually, a settlement is reached, somewhere near the original offer, but with some of the concessions the union was seeking.
The current round, which began last year, is ongoing. The secondary teachers’ union settled in December, but the primary teachers’ union decided to fight on. That may be a decision they live to regret.
Instead of sticking to the choreographed moves, the Commissioner enabled school boards to increase the salaries of non-union members – about a third of the profession – by 4.7%.
The union had received the same offer in February. They rejected it without even taking it to their members.
Union spokesman Liam Rutherford said the Commissioner’s move was “a serious breach of good faith and undermined collective bargaining.”
Good faith or not, Rutherford is right about collective bargaining. But contrary to his view, undermining collective bargaining is a good thing.
Teachers’ unions have long used education reform as a bargaining chip in pay negotiations. Moreover, they insist that teachers be paid according to their length of service rather than how well they teach.
Teachers should have a four-tier career structure. Advancement should be based on evidence of quality teaching, judged by expert panels.
The top two tiers should attract considerably higher pay than any classroom teacher currently receives. Teachers at these levels should be curriculum leaders and train new teachers.
The Commissioner has disrupted the ritual. Now it is time to end it once and for all.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
5 comments:
Yeah and if the teachers don't like it they can always go to Australia, oh hang on...
Problem would be who comprise the expert panels. NZ has an extremely low Expert Bar and the panels would be politicized, no doubt half Maori, etc. How does one measure quality teaching? Those who consistently lower the bar often push through more students--and are deemed great teachers.
Hmm who makes up membership of the teachers union?
The whole ideology of our current system is based on social engineering not academic achievement . The Unions are not the slightest bit interested in education as we know it. We need Trumpism here to close down the Ministry of Education . In the days of the Education Deapartments prior to 1980 many decisions were still made by master teachers not ideologues and theoreticians. The average functioning adult with a good secondary education couldn't do worse than the ideologues that emerge from all our so called educational institutions now. Most of those who have attended the colleges of miseducation are thoroughly brainwashed and have no idea on how to actually perform an effective instructional programme .No wonder we have a shortage of secondary teachers . Who wants to teach a class of rude and badly behaved students, also the product of the current ideology of constructivism - child centered nonsense ? To concentrate only on pay and conditions the unions never address the elephant in the classroom -a pervasive and iniquitous ideology. Purging that would make teaching a respected and valued profession again even having a pay comparable to a parliamentary back bench-er as it used to be. Gaynor
Just today the AEC( Aotearoa Educationalist Collective ) have declared the latest curriculum changes are more like a manifesto than a curriculum.
AEC are on principle against anything the current government does because, in line with the unions, they are staunchly progressive in ideology.
Many of the changes are based on science and happen to be also traditional ideas of pre 1950s so in the past AEC thinks our education system was being shaped by Marxism ? Gaynor
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