Strike planned by school caretakers

Press, 29 July 1989, Page 9

Strike planned by school caretakers

By

MARITA VANDENBERG

School caretakers and cleaners will strike for 24 hours from midnight on Wednesday. It is not known yet how many schools in Canterbury are likely to be closed on Thursday. Two further days of industrial action are planned. The strike was decided with a four-to-one majority by a national ballot after 75 stop-work meetings were held throughout New Zealand. It will involve about 6000 members of the Caretakers and Cleaners’ Union. The union is protesting against parts of the State Sector Amendment Bill which deals with personnel and industrial matters in implementing the Government’s educational reforms, which the union says is threatening its members’ jobs. The bill was introduced to Parliament yesterday. The union’s secretary, Mr Pat Kelly, said the union was having the bill analysed. “Some of our concerns have been allayed but we still have two major concerns if our analysis is correct.” The first is that money for cleaners and caretakers’ wages is not identified in the operational grant given to school boards of trustees. “There is no indication given to boards of trustees of what they can spend.” Mr Kelly said boards could choose to save their money by either using voluntary labour or by bringing in contractors

to do the work more cheaply. Mr Kelly declined to say what the second concern of the union related to at this stage. The union has been seeking continued separate funding of caretakers and cleaners’ wages and support for existing staff levels. It is opposing contracting out, reduced hours, the use of unpaid labour and any moves towards a redundancy agreement. During the last few weeks the union has been sending letters to school boards, patents, union members and all members of Parliament outlining the union’s concerns and asking for support over the issue. Mr Kelly said a letter from the Minister of Education, Mr Lange, had been received on Thursday. In it Mr Lange stated that boards had been allocated the necessary funds for cleaners and caretakers’ wages. “I think it is fair to say the Prime Minister expects that to happen but there is nothing in the way the grant had been set out to prohibit that money being spent elsewhere,” Mr Kelly said. The union had hand delivered a letter to Mrs Margaret Austin, the chairwoman of Parliament’s Education and Science Select Committee, asking to make a face-to-face submission to the committee. “We do not want to disrupt schools. If we can make sufficient progress no more industrial action will be undertaken,” Mr Kelly said yesterday.