Kerre Woodham: Unions seem to have struck themselves into irrelevance

Back when I was a kid, you knew the school holidays were coming up when the Seafarers Union went on strike. Sure as God made little apples, a week before the school holidays, the unions would be all out, brothers and sisters, and then there'd be all night negotiations between the cloth caps and the capitalist overlords, while parents waited anxiously to see if the annual road trip —south in our case— would take place to go down and see the Christchurch rallies. Generally, at the last minute they would, so it was a mad dash to Wellington, over the Cook Strait to Christchurch for the school holidays. Every single time.

Mike's Minute: The teacher strike achieved nothing

As the teachers head back to school, like all the other strikes, nothing got achieved.

It never does.

For a strike to work you need to scare people, you need to bring a place to a standstill.

Michael Johnston: Teacher's Unions are not helping our best teachers get the pay they deserve

Last Thursday, most of New Zealand’s teachers were on strike. Teachers’ unions representatives say that the action was necessary to press their claim for better pay and working conditions. Prior to the strike, NZEI president Mark Potter asserted that, without striking, “we aren’t going to get the change that we need”.

It’s not hard to see why teachers believe they deserve more pay. Teaching is a profession with a high degree of responsibility. Teachers increasingly must deal not only with their core job of educating young people, but also with social problems in their wider communities.