The latest Teachers strike and threat of more Teacher strikes shows real problems not only for the new Government but also for Industrial Relations in NZ.
These public sector union bosses would not fart without John Key’s permission for 9 years, this gutless cowardice meant none of the genuine grievances by public servants were addressed and have built into a crescendo that now needs to be fixed by the new Government.
If this type of Public Union spinelessness when National are in power compared to when Labour are in power continues, it means Labour will be left to clean up National’s messes every time they regain power and help National built a narrative that Labour are too weak and held hostage by their Unions.
Expecting Labour to fix 9 years of underfunding in 9 months seems absurd but that’s the position the Public Union Leadership have placed the Labour Party in.
Perhaps front line nurses and teachers and public servants might want to start demanding what the fuck their Union Bosses have been doing all this time because waiting for Labour to gain power isn’t how you negotiate better pay and working conditions.
They could easily fix the pay issue if they ditched their self imposed fiscal straight-jacket.
And then you would accuse them of being fiscally irresponsible.
You got the Gosman fly well and truly profiled.
Good spotting. No pun on fly’s.
I would that is true. But you think my economics are wrong so what do you care what so think?
The National led government of the past three terms could have easily resolved the issues by keeping pay increases to levels that are both fiscally sustainable and that provide enough for increased demand due to population growth and so forth.
Why blame this government for it all, when they have only been in Office about nine months?
I agree. It all seems just to coincidental to be an accident.
And as someone said on an earlier post , there are many middle class people who are National voters in these unions and they will happily hold their hands out for a pay increase while sticking it to Labour at the same time.
Same goes it seems for closet neo liberals embedded in the union leadership in some cases,… it suits their purposes to have all hell break loose when a Labour govt comes to power.
Its time the unions got a little introspective and started weeding out some of these ‘ moles’.
Nine years of meek neutered silence under John Key with Key shitting all over them and thus directly over the workers ?
No way.
That’s no accident.
Yes. A good old fashioned leftist purge of counter-revolutionaries is what is required.
We could have a Tweet party! Just like Trump…
We already have a party of rich Twits.
It is called National.
Yeah go back to Joe’s days and call everyone a pinko, eh mate.
Good grief.
well I think john and his lot undermined the unions and our unions are now a bit weak/meek just like our public services are run down and disfunctional that was johns purpose to destroy the welfare state and any government owned enterprises just privatise and sell them. And one more term of those bastards and it would have been all over rover for us.
Now we have been saved but the saviours have to fix the big bloody mess and where do you start and all this fixing takes time and is difficult when people have been played of against one another. Many state servants have been bullied, abused and lost their jobs all under the guise of johns better public services bullshert that never happened and never was going to happen it was all just spin.
Give residents (foreigners) 12 months to gain citizenship, with failure to do so requiring them to sell all their properties. Award cheap properties to key workers (nurses, teachers, police etc.).
Anyone refusing to recognise the housing (and immigration) crisis as fundamental to the loss of key workers should sell all their properties and go retrain to become a teacher.
Alternatively, do nothing and tinker around the edges while bracing for civil conflict.
Nah just fuckin fix it. Same applies to foreign land sales and importing cheap labour and giving away water rights.
Fuckin fix it.
Leadership or lose.
I agree, where were the union leaders during the National years. But what has happened now is obvious, the new government did not address the expectations of the nurses and teachers in the budget, they therefore have no alternative but to strongarm to get what they want, or they will be left high and dry. Is that true tho? Is Jacinda to be believed when she says Rome wasn’t built in a day and they will get their due if they but wait. I guess the unions don’t believe that will happen. So they are striking. Its not as if teachers and nurses don’t deserve better conditions and pay, most people will agree….so why didn’t the new government put teachers and nurses at the top of the list, instead of way further down where they currently sit? And I don’t think addressing their concerns should be at the expense of foreign policy either.
The unions and their leaders were powerless under the ruthless regime of Key. key and his party immediately dis-empowered unions by creating policy to stop strikes i.e. you go on strike and you don’t get paid. Given National gave no increases and given that no one could afford to strike, unions were almost completely dissolved. All the Labour government have done is given ordinary New Zealanders the freedom to basically claim expenses for the past 9 years of the dictatorial regime. If you think this is wrong, why did Key gratefully accept increases to ministers salaries over 9 years?
Just perhaps Labour should end the cycle involved and fix in a set of pay relativities that binds National when they return to office.
Thus they will not be in this position again after the next National term in government.
The MW will be $20 an hour in April 2021 (roughly $40,000).
From then have fix the starting wage for teachers and nurses at 50% above this ($60,000), and then the steps above this to the top rate.
Then with each MW bump each year an automatic bump in teachers and nurses wages under a National government.
Well, that’s one side of the equation yet it does nothing for stemming the relentless creep of cost of living.
And why is the cost of living relentlessly creeping? Could be relentless status seeking and the baubles of office and all those not so nice human attributes.
Meanwhile at the bottom, in the murk, are the beneficiaries with no hope of employment, pensioners on a single source of income, sole trader enterprises with half a nostril above the waves.
It takes a very long time past the rising costs and the pay settlements for any debt aleviation to pass, whizz! hi-g’bye, through the accounts of those people.
Just a fiction and no poverty or straitened living conditions have been eased long term at all.
Great, eh?
one of various dirty little secrets in this is that a lot of public servants vote bloody national! and the public sector union tops are well aware of that too
but, to be fair, teachers held the line pretty well against national standards and charter schools, no thanks to the union leaderships, who hide under ‘political neutrality’ to avoid applying a class analysis or struggle method–they prefer “partnership” whereby wage movements are applied rather than fought for
It’s an example of how much the general public (which includes nurses, teachers, police, etc etc) are apathetic and uninformed about politics – you hear it all the time “I’m not interested in politics, politicians are all the same” they say with some pride. It takes time and effort for the average person to follow the facts around social issues and the NZ corporate commercial profit-driven media are largely responsible for discouraging any useful, factual investigation and discussion about politics and what the various political parties actually stand for. If people are not engaged, democracy is at risk and becomes just another ignorant mob.
This article is based on an unfortunate misconception.
Teachers were always going to strike this year if contract negotiations didn’t work out, because it was always this year that teacher contracts were coming up for re-negotiation- no matter which party was in power.
Look into things first – don’t just judge them by the way they first appear.
I wish them good luck teachers are treated like garbage across the nation and are expected of things that are mostly out of their control and no one was on their side. It is unsurprising the teaching world is bleeding blue blood.
Perhaps if we get some much needed disclosure on what the various Union Bosses rake in each year, we’d get a better understanding on the timing of these strikes (it can’t be coincidental they waited until we had a Labour government(?)). Do Union Bosses even vote Labour? Nothing to hide, presumably.
I agree with you 9 times out of 10, but this time you’ve missed the mark. My husband is a teacher (high school — but there’s a good chance they will be striking soon, too) and has had virtually no raises in the past 10 years, while rates, insurance, food prices etc have skyrocketed. Demands on teachers’ time, due to near constant report writing and the need to constantly readjust teaching plans due to years of policy chop-and-change means that, above and beyond his required work hours, he often spends several hours each evening working at home. Ask any teacher, and they will verify this! Martyn, you do NZ a great service with your blog, but please tell me…if not now WHEN? Teachers must insist on a significant pay rise NOW.
My issue is not that Teachers are underfunded. My issue is not that Teachers are paid a pittance. My issue is not that Teachers have had shit work conditions.
My issue is that a lack of backbone in the Union leadership for a decade has exacerbated this and the ability of all industrial relations will be scarred if the public service unions only strike when Labour is in power
Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think these strikes are designed to undermine the current Government. The Union Bosses want National/ACT back in power ASAP; their inexplicable silence during Key years was deafening.
As Sam has pointed out above, it was always going to happen this year because this is when the contracts come up for negotiation. Had John Key and National been in power, it would still have happened this year.
The Nurses as well? They all should have ganged up when the Jr doctor went on strike. Should have, could have, would have.
Easy, give them more pay, and tax higher income earners more, some of them will be teachers and nurses, thus little better off.
I once read an interesting piece that said once people earned a higher level of income they changed political spots, from Labour to National. Public servants, a few of whom I know, have made it clear they vote National. They earn large incomes, which proves the philosophy of ‘What’s mine is mine and I don’t want that upset by Them great unwashed wanting what they’re entitled to’. Public servants should not be allowed to vote at all if they’re involved in public policy-making which creates conditions that favour them.
Teachers, nurses, etc should sack their current unions and start their own, that have no affiliation to any political party. I know that at present they do – it’s the national party; it was made obvious in radio interviews pre-2008 election. It was made obvious how little they did to confront National during their 3 terms in office.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/106363019/cost-of-living-in-auckland-driving-police-officers-out-of-the-super-city
The last 3 terms of Tory rule throttled the unions and collective bargaining and brought individual contracts for those able to manipulate the system. Now we have the new government stuck in the position of righting those wrongs for those left behind. This is going to play into bridge’s hands, as he will scream about the government giving in to unions right up to the next election. This will appeal to the well off voters who have climbed over the average kiwi to reach the rich list. Hence the 40% voter support from the better off, who don’t want to see more equality in the workforce..
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/17/stress-is-just-huge-new-zealands-foreign-buyers-ban-brings-home-scale-of-crisis
“So this is where you are starting to see industrial action driven I think by the housing crisis. Why are workers striking? It’s because the rent is sucking the wallet dry when it comes to wages. And that’s when people are starting to break.”
The real reason the PPTA didn’t strike during the Key years was because the Nats would have used their response to a major pay claim as a trojan horse to introduce pay by results and other retrograde conditions. Its as simple as that Martyn
Spot on Martyn and others on this thread, the Teacher’s and Nurses and PSA workers strikes are taking any money and coverage away from those in need in our society, the underemployed, unemployed and casual workforce, whose families have suffered the most under the Nats. Sure the housing crisis is a big part of this conflict, but families on 2 salaries are way better off than the rest of us, and workers who have been working for years in their jobs. The rest of us remain locked out of the dream of full time jobs, secure housing and access to healthcare, and should be the govts priority. I too have seen middle class professionals who did not care about the misery the Nats were doing to their students and their families, their clients, and their families etc, as long as they got paid! This selfishness should not be rewarded by any govt. Higher taxes for those on $70k is a good idea, then $100k, then $150k, then $200k, would certainly help all the thousands who are forced to live on less than $20-$30k year after year! I also think we need to means test Superannuation pensions and assist the elderly on a sliding scale. Many other OECD countries do this, and it is too our detriment that we prop up people who do not need it. Sir Bob Jones springs to mind here, and taking away politicians perks, like paying John Key over $50k for the rest of his life, etc are ridiculous and corrupt. Multi millionaires do not need govt support, and neither do taxes and major corporations need govt subsidies, the Coalition govt can work on solving these mass injustices and change our future, hopefully asap.
The strikes now make me really cross we should have had some of these during the 9 years of those rat finks (apologies to rats). Why didn’t we – they would just have had to be staunch about it. To squeeze the government. It is all irritating – it is not that I don’t know that they all deserve pay increases, but I do wish they would all get up in arms about those living on benefits and the minimum wages, these are the people first and foremost who need a pay rise.
Nope, that’s what Labour’s voluntary acceptance of budget restriction rules has done. The unions — ‘Labour’ — are the face of the revolution needed to overturn the rule of the rich. This leadership is not coming from the half-neoliberal MPs of Labour, now or in the future, ‘as it was in the past’. Don’t upset the teacups is a policy people with teacups approve of.
Very sorry about the Flo Nightingale revering nurses giving in.
but they have enough money for ron marks toys, this government is all spin and no substance
Introduce a “Ward Rate” system. Like the have in oz.
Simple, can be done by lunchtime! Sack the union officials that are employed currently for all of these failed negotiations because like the employers, theyre incompetent.
both Parties are proxies & dont work for us.
Remember who sold out most kiwis/all the blue collar workers/ aka/all the working men? = the red party/poxy-proxies
Your argument against the primary teacher’s strike is topsy-turvy Bomber. You say the teachers are undermining the government. The teachers should hold back and support the government. But what about the government supporting the teachers? You’ve acknowledged the government is not stepping up to meet its education promises.
You are ignoring how staunch the education unions have been fighting for their members over the decades since the Employment Contracts Act weakened most union action. The secondary teachers union (PPTA) have been the most militant, even under the Nats. Don’t forget Helen Kelly moved from the tertiary education union to head the CTU. She wouldn’t have risen in the union movement if her union hadn’t fought hard for workers.
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