Teachers’ Union Would Negotiate

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31769, 28 August 1968, Page 8

Teachers’ Union Would Negotiate

A national union of teachers would negotiate directly with the Government and would in this way gain much more for the betterment of the profession and for the welfare of pupils, according to an organiser of a proposed union, Mr P. J. Walsh, an intermediate school teacher from Palmerston North.

He is in Christchurch to organise and address a meeting of teachers tomorrow, in the Trades Hall. It is planned to form an interim committee as a step in the setting up of a national union. Mr Walsh said that there were several hundred potential members of the union in the North Island and an application was before the Registrar of Unions for official registration under the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act.

The union was open to primary, secondary, training college and university teachers, said Mr Walsh. Its formation was necessary because of the fragmentation of teachers’ organisations and the need to embrace the whole of the teaching profession.

The first and most pressing need was to reduce the size of classes, he said. The secondary aim was a better use of trained staff. Mr Walsh claimed that there was no shortage of trained teachers and said that according to figures supplied by the Wellington Education Board there were 1000 former teachers in the area who would be available for relieving if there was a change in the regulations.

At present a married woman who was a trained teacher could not teach for a morning or an afternoon because this was prohibited under the regulations.

Once conditions Improved many teachers who had left would raturn, Mr Walsh said. “My wife, who is a science graduate, accepted a loss of $BOO a year to leave teaching and work in a laboratory,” he said. “So many teachers are not prepared to accept discipline problems, large classes and sports and other supervision duties.”

With a change in staffing schedules allowing married women to opt out of sports supervision, many teachers would return to teaching.

Asked whether teachers regarded the formation of an industrial union unprofessional, Mr Walsh said: “I think teachers will get used to it. After all, we have the English Speaking Union and the Union of South Africa.” He said he was a member of the New Zealand Educational Institute, and the proposed national union would not set out to take over or compete with individual teachers* organisations.