Order lets teachers be suspended

Press, 24 February 1988, Page 1

Order lets teachers be suspended

PA Wellington The Government has issued an Order-in-Council to enable the Education Department to suspend teachers without pay if the school cleaners’ dispute closes schools, leaving teachers without work. The Minister of State Services, Mr Rodger, said suspensions would be at the discretion of the department’s director-general, and would not be automatic. Cleaners and caretakers at schools, polytechnics and technical institutes began striking on Monday after their pay talks collapsed. They will return to work today but will refuse to clean school toilets indefinitely. Many schools stayed open during the two-day strike but said they could not do so beyond today because toilets would be too dirty. Thousands of schoolchildren throughout New Zealand are on forced holiday because of unhygienic schools. Hopes for a quick solution to the cleaners’ strike are pinned on talks today aimed at bridging the impasse between the cleaners’ 9.13 per cent wage demand and the 7 per cent offer. Some schools have managed to keep their doors open, because parents have cleaned toilets themselves. But they may yet face a union backlash. The cleaners’ union’s national secretary, Mr Pat Kelly, said schools could be back to normal by tomorrow if the Education Department took up a union initiative to settle the dispute.

He would not give details of the proposal, b'ut said the union wanted to hear from the department by 1 p.m. today. The department’s acting assistant director-general, Mr Peter Atkinson, said the department would respond, but he did not know whether its reply would be enough to end the industrial action. Another departmental spokesman, Mr Ray Newport, said cleaners would be regarded as still on strike unless they resumed full duties today, including cleaning toilets. Mr Kelly said the morale of cleaners was good and they believed the strike had been an outstanding success. It had been well supported by school committees. He described the Government’s action yesterday as a reprehensible attempt to play off teachers against cleaners. The New Zealand Educational Institute’s acting national secretary, Mr Alan McKenzie, said teachers would fight against suspensions. “We have a strategy but I dare not tell you what that strategy will be because it would then be totally blown, but it is a legal recourse,” he said. Mr Rodger said in a letter to the Combined State Unions yesterday that the Government was issuing an Order-in-Council which allowed the department to invoke section 72 of the State Services Conditions of Employment Act. Further reports, pages 3,9; teachers’ dispute, page 8