I don’t think teachers should accept the Prime Minister fobbing off their pay request like he did today.

When he was asked about next week’s mega strike, he washed his hands: "Ultimately that's a matter for the Ministry of Education and the teachers to work through." 

Technically? Yes. Really though? No. 

The buck stops with him and cabinet.

The Ministry of Education can do what it can do with the money it has, and he and Cabinet decides how much money it has.

So, he calls the shots.

And he better bump up teachers’ pay in a big way.

Do you know how much a school teacher earns when they start out? $51K. 

Do you know how much someone who stacks shelves full time on the minimum wage earns? $47K. 

And yet —and no disrespect to the teenager stacking shelves— they don’t need a student loan to land that job. They don’t have to go home and prepare for tomorrow’s class, or prepare for the school outing, or learn the new curriculum. When they leave work they leave work. 

And yet a teacher has all of that extra mental load and only gets another $1.90 an hour for it. 

The Labour Government has made a real point of showing how much they value low skilled work by hiking the minimum wage by 44% in 6 years. 

They haven’t hiked teachers’ pay by that. 

Which can only lead you to think they don’t value teachers as much, because if they did, they would raise that pay.

Imagine if they’d hiked primary teachers’ pay by 44%? 

I'd like to see the same enthusiasm from this government in raising teachers’ pay as they’ve demonstrated in raising the minimum wage.

And teachers should accept nothing less than a massive pay increase.