About 800 Ministry of Education specialist staff who work directly with children to support their learning needs will strike next week, saying they have been forced to walk off the job after the Government made them collective agreement offers that didn’t address their issues.
NZEI Te Riu Roa union members who work as field staff (including speech language therapists, early intervention teachers, occupational therapists, psychologists, kaitakawaenga and advisers on deaf children), service managers and support workers will strike for two hours from 10am on Tuesday 22 July.
They will picket the Ministry of Education’s Wellington headquarters and other Ministry offices across the motu. The following day service managers and field staff will begin working to rule for a month.
Conor Fraser, a speech language therapist and member of the NZEI Te Riu Roa governance group, says she and her colleagues feel they have been left with no option but to take industrial action.
“We have children sitting on waiting lists for too long, the staffing is inadequate and we’re doing too much overtime. While dealing with all of this, we tried to negotiate our collective agreement and received an offer that didn't address our issues.”
Fraser says they would rather be working with children than on a picket line, but they feel the Government isn't listening to what is happening on the ground.
“We want to be at work doing what we love and think is so important – supporting tamariki with additional needs – but we have to get our message across: children need more support, and so do we.”
During their month of working to rule, service managers will refuse to work more than 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week and they will stop assessing requests for support.
Field staff will work a maximum of 7.6 hours a day and 38 hours per week and will not take on any new cases.