NZEI Te Riu Roa has delivered its oral submission in support of the Fair Pay Agreements Bill, outlining how it will benefit workers and improve the quality of early childhood education.
When the legislation comes into force the Union will be seeking a Fair Pay Agreement covering all workers in the Early Childhood sector.
“As we often say: teachers’ working conditions are children’s learning conditions. This means the only way we can provide genuinely high quality, culturally responsive, world-leading ECE is by ensuring teachers and support staff are supported to provide this education,” NZEI Te Riu Roa President Liam Rutherford said.
“A regularly renewed Fair Pay Agreement will be a key plank in making this a reality."
ECE teacher and NZEI Te Riu Roa member Megan White has seen many colleagues leave to work in primary education where they benefit from the national collective agreement, and sees an FPA as an opportunity to deliver similar benefits for the Early Childhood sector.
"The ECE workforce is in crisis. Teachers and other staff are trying as hard as we can to keep up, but the fact is we can’t unless something big changes. I hope that Fair Pay Agreements will be the thing, or at least one of the things, that will start to fix this sector,” Ms White says.
Ms White has also seen unqualified teachers and support staff, many of whom remain on minimum wage for years, leave the education sector entirely for better paid work.
In addition to pay, working conditions are also grinding down the ECE workforce due to the current funding levels not meeting the standard required to properly staff centres.
“It’s super hard to try and keep up with our obligations as professionals while ensuring our centres can continue to run smoothly – which means we end up taking a whole lot of work home or staying late, often for no extra pay,” Ms White says.
The Fair Pay Agreement process will be an opportunity for ECE workers to raise these issues using their collective voice.
NZEI Te Riu Roa also noted that, unlike in other sectors likely to be covered by Fair Pay Agreements, all submissions from the early childhood sector were in favour of the proposed legislation, which was pleasing to see.