SALARY SCALE

Waikato Times, Volume 195, Issue 22467, 30 September 1944, Page 4

SALARY SCALE

SECONDARY TEACHERS

INCREASE HELD INADEQUATE Yesterday secondary school teachers in the Waikato received the increases in salary authorised in the new scale recently introduced by the Education Department. They range from £BS down to £lO and average £37, a rise of less than 8 per cent. This, it is considered, compares unfavourably with increases in other classes of work.

An official of the Secondary Schools’ Association said that in 1939, when the new scale was first considered, teachers rejected it as inadequate. It is felt that stabilisation has been made to apply unfairly to a state of affairs that called for redress long before stabilisation was introduced. The last adjustment in the salary scale was a reduction in 1922 of a scale introduced in 1921.

Branches have been instructed by the executive of the New Zealand Secondary Schools’ Association to inform their boards of governors that the increases are accepted without prejudice to further negotiations with the Government, and that this qualified acceptance is in no way an acknowledgement that the increases are adequate. Teachers' Reactions

One senior teacher with over 20 years’ service who has been drawing £565 annually for some years and who has been advanced to £6OO pointed out when interviewed that all rises were the first which had been granted since 1921. “Twenty-three years is a long time to wait for £35,” he. said.

By contrast a single woman who was congratulated on achieving a £3O rise commented, “It sounds all right but the Education Department has removed my first cost of living allowance of £l3; thus my net rise is £l7 and of course taxation comes off that.”

Further inquiries revealed the fact that several teachers who had had cost of living allowances because their salaries were below £335 per annum had lost the allowances which were cancelled because the new rises put them just over the £335 margin. The net result is that the members of this group are not much better off. Woodwork Teachers

Two woodwork teachers were jubilant. “We used to be regarded as trade teachers, in some way inferior to academic people, but now that the secondary and technical divisions have been merged I have gone up by £6O and my assistant by £4O; still I am sorry for some of the others,” said one.

On the other hand a single woman who teaches English has risen by £sl, while another single woman who teaches both English and music has advanced by only £ll. All married men have had the married alowance increased a little but in various ways their advancement is more apparent than real. For instance a childless married man in one school whose wife is engaged in war work has gone up by £45, while three married men in the same school with wives tied to housework and several children dependent on them have been granted salary increases of only £5 or £lO a year. As one of these remarked, “It is just as well the Government has promised a commission of inquiry to go into the whole thing or we might take a leaf out of the wharfies’ or coalminers’ books. Besides which no teacher can do his best if he is constantly worried by the financial problem of trying to make both ends meet.”