Our pay equity campaign for educators
As educators, you play a vital role in the lives of tamariki and communities in Aotearoa.
Campaigning for pay equity is an historic opportunity to ensure that educators are valued for the work you do. The work of an educator is highly skilled, however, the pay and conditions don’t always reflect the levels of complexity and creativity within the various education roles.
The pay equity process is about addressing the historic and current undervaluation in both pay and status in roles that society has traditionally perceived to be ‘women’s work’. The process determines if there has been an undervaluation and if so, this is corrected.
Mana taurite means restoring balance to the imbalance. Pay equity means that your work is seen and properly valued.
Let’s come together, champion the work of educators and win the best pay equity settlements that we can.
Pay equity means that people are paid equally for doing work of equal value. It recognises that while on the surface two jobs may look very different to each other, they require the same or substantially similar skills and experience, responsibilities, degrees of effort or working conditions.
Pay equity is an attempt to ensure that pay and conditions for workers in female-dominated occupations are free of assumptions and prejudices about the value of that work because it is mainly done by women.
We’ll win pay equity by working together. We need to accurately illustrate to the government the wide-ranging work responsibilities of educators and build public support to ensure the government sees how important this issue is within our communities.
Seeing a pay equity claim through takes time, resources and expertise. As the largest education union in Aotearoa, we are best placed to initiate the pay equity process and bring it to a successful settlement. Winning will take all of us.
Take a look at our current campaigns and find out how you can get involved.
The pay equity settlement for science technicians has been approved and implementation began in term three of 2022. We’ve waited a long time for this – NZEI Te Riu Roa members raised this pay equity claim with the Ministry in 2018. We’re proud to have reached this moment.
The pay equity settlement for librarians and library assistants has been approved and implementation began in term three of 2022. We’ve waited a long time for this – NZEI Te Riu Roa members raised this pay equity claim with the Ministry in 2018. We’re proud to have reached this moment.