Pupils sent home early

Press, 23 November 1983, Page 9

Pupils sent home early

Post-primary pupils in the northern Canterbury area were sent home at 2 p.m. yesterday while their teachers attended a stopwork meeting.

About 900 post-primary teachers reaffirmed their opposition to the State Services Conditions of Employment Amendment Bill at a meeting at Papanui High School yesterday. Only 100 teachers were exempt from the meeting, to supervise junior school examinations, said the Canterbury regional chairman of the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association, Mr David Ayers, last evening.

“Teachers will have great difficulty successfully negotiating a change in salary or conditions of employment unless they can show that there is a grave shortage of teachers,” he said.

New wording in the bill now made it possible for the Government to use recruitment and retention criteria to reduce salaries, he said.

The teachers had acknowledged the relaxation in the area of general adjustments of State pay, but the conditions under which negotia-

tions would take place were much tighter than at the moment, said Mr Ayers.

“The meeting also urged the Government to withdraw the clause banning industrial action that would impede electricity supplies because it maintained that

the Government already had the power to keep up essential services.” Mr Ayers said there had been no talk of industrial action at the hour-long meeting yesterday. The members had decided to continue putting pressure on their local members of Parliament.