Hint of action on pay-docking

Press, 9 August 1980, Page 6

Hint of action on pay-docking

The docking of secondary teachers’ pay after last week’s stop-work meeting might become a matter for industrial action, according to a national executive member of the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association, Mr lan Jackson.

The Education Department has ruled that the 1000 teachers who took, part in the Canterbury meeting will have an hour’s pay deducted. Mr Jackson said yesterday that the move “has no merit,” and could have implications -if and when more time was lost through future industrial action.

“I myself have continued to teach so that nothirig was missed because of the stopwork and have made up the time,” he said. Not all teachers’ work was generated by class-contact time; over all, they had just as much work to do, in spite of the break.

The P.P.T.A. was concerned that if the State Services Conditions of Em-

ployment Amendment Bill became law, and more industrial action resulted, the question of losing money for the time lost to the classroom could become an issue.

Mr Jackson said the argument was not with local department heads, but with the Director-General of Education (Mr W. L. Renwick) and the Minister of Education (Mr Wellington). “We have lots of important fights coming up,” he said. “We have enough problems without worrying about one hour’s pay. There i» no statute of limitations on this. We can take it up next year if we want - to, ■ but it will be a decision of the national executive,” Mr Jackson said.

The district senior inspector of secondary schools (Mr A. W. Gilchrist) said that the decision to dock wages had no overtones of punishment. For the department, it' was simply a question of adhering to its legal obligations..