What do school support staff want? A fair deal NOW!
School support staff are skilled and committed workers who fill a wide range of functions supporting the education of our children. Support staff roles include teacher aide, librarian, special needs support, school secretary and technician. Over 1500 support staff marched up Queen Street to Myers Park yesterday protesting the 0% wage offer on the table after 12 months of negotiating with the Government.
These workers play a hugely valuable role for individual students, for their schools and for our community. Parents, teachers and principals are clear that without the work of support staff the quality of education would be lessened and our schools would not be able to function properly. And for this important work the wages can be as low as $12.94. That’s 44 cents above the minimum wage. This is a disgrace.
School support staff are predominately women and as a consequence their work is undervalued. Yet the important pay equity investigation being undertaken for them was scrapped by the Government.
I am hugely impressed by the determination of the ‘pink army’. These workers know they are not being treated fairly and like other low paid workers in the public sector being offered 0% they know the Government is effectively requiring them to take a pay cut. They are not standing for it and neither should we.
The Government’s focus on the privileged and their lack of concern about the real financial pressure on the majority of New Zealanders is not right. We all have a responsibility to let the Government know that we don’t agree with their priorities – tax cuts for the rich and more funding for private schools rather than responding to just claims like those of school support staff.
would have been nice if they could have planned it to coincide with the day of action on friday. what a shambles.
Are you for real Tom? Actually, they were probably doing what they are employed to do and love doing most – providing essential support in the schools – it was after all a normal school day on Friday. Stop the criticism of their weekend action and support them.
Logie97 is right on the button – most of those on the Friday rally were on strike so no issue of release from work but the school support staff weren’t so Saturday was the only option. This is the first time Auckland school support staff have taken a big action of this kind. They had local rallies and school-based solidarity actions all over NZ on Friday – check out http://www.fairdeal.org.nz to see some of the pics
So true Julie and logie97. As a member of the over 13 thousand strong support staff workforce we chose NOT to disrupt schools at this very busy time of the year, but to instead take action at schools with our colleagues support and then turn out in FULL force on Saturday.
We love our jobs and the students we work with so did not want to disrupt them. Members of NZEI did attend the rallies and marches on Friday as well, in support of our fellow low paid workers. We are not alone in this struggle and we are united.
As Julie has already stated we were NOT on strike. Thanks to Labour and The Greens for their support at our march of over 1500. Solidarity forever!
And thanks Carol for your speech on Saturday, twas much appreciated!
At the risk of hogging this thread, here’s a link to my brief thoughts and a few pics about Saturday’s march too:
http://thehandmirror.blogspot.com/2009/11/0-wont-pay-rent-school-support-staff.html
Thanks for this post Carol. It was really great to have the support of local Labour MP’s and Labour candidates at the rallies.
Our members in Timaru were heartened to know that there was public support for their position and for candidates like Julian Blanchard to take the time to speak to the crowd and join in their action meant a lot.
On the suject of the timing – some of our members have the minimum half hour break and so it was really difficult for them to be at the rally for a good length of time, if they could get there at all. Many were there on Friday, either by getting an extended lunch break or because they weren’t working that day at all. If they couldn’t be there they certainly were in spirit.
It was great to see so many people come out on the weekend in Auckland, it really just extended the Friday rally by a day
The more days of protest around this issue the better!!!
$12.94 p/h is not too flash. For how long have they been getting paid at a level just over the minimum?
Still no word about the Huntly Miners strike?
Hate to break up the Labour-luv-in here, but haven’t these school support staff been paid such low wages all through the last 9 years of Labour govt? I recall election 2008 debates where school support staff urged Labour candidates to raise their wages – and they got the mumble, mumble fudge from Labour. No pay rise either.
If Labour is to have credibility, they have to implement improvements when in power, not just turn up to rallies when in opposition to criticise National (who deserve it) for the exact same things Labour did in power.
Ditch the hypocrisy, Labour… Start by acknowledging your failure to raise school support staff wages in the last decade!
With three children at school I appreciate the fine work that the teacher aids and additional support staff undertake (caretaker, administration etc). I acknowledge that their pay rates are very low. I understand that they would want more money – who would not. But the reality is that the skill sets these jobs require are relatively low and therefore the ability to fill these roles is relatively easy. That being the case in the simple world of supply and demand – and being paid accordingly, these jobs are and always will be low paid.
In case you had not noticed there is a severe deficit at present. $250m per week in fact. While saying these people should be paid more, please also consider and advise where the cuts can occur to fund the pay increases you desire for what are probably your own constituents . Should we cut some more health spending? Or maybe ACC (oh wait National already have to do that) – what about the $1.5b that is being invested in Cullen’s Trainset? Tax the Rich more (great they will head off overseas lowering the tax even further)
Hard decisions – and I look forward to your response. There are no more surpluses – Thanks to Labour only deficits as far as the eye can see.
@bob – not true about no pay-rise for support staff. They had steady pay increases throughout Labour’s time in government and Helen Clark made an explicit election promise for a “pay jolt” for school support staff, using the same mechanism Labour funded to give school cleaners and caretakers and hospital service workers a significant pay increase in 2008.
Labour was tackling low pay in the state, and in state funded areas – unfortunately, the election of a National government stopped it in its tracks.
Darien .. Carol has said they are just .44cents over the minimum wage … “They had steady pay increases throughout Labour’s time in government” .. can you please define steady?
Jabba, school support staff are paid on an ascending scale system. On an annual basis, they move up a grade and thus get a payrise each year until they reach the top of the scale. ‘44 cents over the minimum wage’ only applies to those who are starting at the bottom. The scales go up to something like $30 an hour. There is of course no restriction on schools on paying an employee more than the amount determined by the pay-scale.
When Carol says there’s a 0% wage offer on the table, it doesn’t mean they’re not all getting payrises. They are. They have a better deal than many in the private sector. The enforced payrises can make it difficult for schools when the employee’s longevity means they are on a rung of the pay-scale that doesn’t equate to their skills.
Bea pleae don’t pretend they all go thru to the top rate or anything like it. To get there one has to be in restricted job type.
thanks for that Bea .. good to know someone is getting a payrise especially those at the lower end of the scale and not by way of a benefit.
Hang on a sec, how exactly are they all getting pay rises? The lowest grade, Grade A Associate(there are three, and two occupational groups as well) has only four steps, the lowest being $12.94 and the highest is $13.80. So if you are talking about annual increments (i.e. you go up a pay step every year) then all of those on Grade A Associate Step 4 are not getting any pay increase whatsoever. This is the same for those at the top of the other 5 pay scales within the agreement. And in actual fact in my experience many of those doing this work don’t actually get the right pay increments anyway – I’ve personally done pay tracks for members who have been owed literally thousands of dollars because their pay hasn’t been done correctly for years.
Quite apart from the fact that the increment recognises the extra year’s skills, knowledge and experience in the job, not the increasing cost of living or the increasing value of the work. I know there are a lot of people out there who aren’t on pay scales and thus aren’t familiar with how they work, but perhaps Bea could recognise that their statement is far from correct.
@Jabba – the minimum wage was moving during those years as well, and in fact caught up with a lot of lower paid workers during Labour’s time because the minimum wage moved faster than average pay increases. So each time the minimum wage increased, the numbers of workers included as minimum wage workers increased by thousands. “Steady” pay increases were around 3%, although school support staff got 4% in 2008.
I’m with Julie on Bea’s post. School support staff work only 40 weeks a year, so whichever way you calculate it, most of them are being paid less than $20,000 pa.
ok Darien .. they have been caught in the same way as “high income” workers passing into the top tax bracket got caught.
As a Support Staff worker I can tell you that we work very hard for our meagre pay. Supporting students in class or withdrawn in small groups working with language needs, disabilities, learning difficulties and behaviours that can sometimes mean coping daily with physical and verbal abuse that the class teacher cannot cope with so students are assigned a Teacher Aide and or other Learning Support Staff are needed to fill the need. They are at times the only constant support in some students day and can really make a difference. Don’t give us a hard time, value us, treat us well and hope we can make a difference to some of these students that will probably make their way into our prisons without some kind of early intervention. The system is far from perfect and has not been fair for some years now with little help from this or the previous government.
The ascending payscales referred to increase by around 20 cents each year, hardly anything to get excited about. When you then have to stretch your income out to cover school holidays things can become rather difficult for these people, especially over the six week Christmas break.
Your time would be much better spent coming up with a practical solution of how to assist us to gain recognised qualifications and provide career pathways so that we don’t lose the best people but support them and allow them to go on and become teachers, counsellors or specialist support staff in the education sector.
I am proud of my work as a school librarian, PMP Coordinator, Teacher Aide and feel frustrated by the lack of understanding of today’s role. We are no longer parent helper’s. I’m yet to hear of a well paid Teacher Aide, but I live in hope. Sign up for a day at a South Auckland School and then tell me the support staff don’t earn every penny. Give us a break, we need a fair deal.
The support staff collective agreement has been settled and it is now with members who will be voting on accepting or rejecting the settlement.
Thank you to all those who supported these low paid workers during a year long campaign.
There have been comments that increasing support staff wages will merely see their hours of work cut. While there is some truth in that it should not prevent these workers fighting for a decent living wage. The logical conclusion to that argument is that support staff should work for nothing, then they would not get the hours cut.
The real issue is the funding mechinism. It is the funding mechanism that drives the low pay and cuts in hours. Support staff clearly understand this and are determined to change the system.