The additions are an ugly attempt first at union busting and second at funnelling even more public education money into profit-making education companies.
The Bill and new provisions are an abuse of good governance.
New Zealanders should be seriously concerned by the easy access of private companies to taxpayer funds at discount regulation rates.
The additions to the Bill are two-fold.
The first addition will prohibit unions from undertaking collective bargaining for members who work in charter schools.
These teachers will have to choose between a job and benefiting as a union member.
The Bill now also says that a state school employee will have to provide services to a charter school when their employer requires them to do so.
These are the services that support clusters of schools such as technology teachers, resourcing teachers and learning support co-ordinators.
The new provisions expressly override the Employment Relations Act and the employees’ current employment agreement.
These teachers will not have the protections they are entitled to under an agreement which they have, with their union colleagues, negotiated in good faith.
The government has made the argument that because education unions oppose charter schools they are to have their legal rights to represent their members legislated away.
The government said that legislating these rights away would provide charter schools with more flexibility, but you should read the word flexibility as a misspelling of the word power.
The Ministry of Education was required to write a disclosure document on the Bill outlining the impacts of the new provisions.
That disclosure document agrees that the changes will have significant impacts on employee rights.
The ministry says that not only will teachers be unable to refuse to serve charter schools, but employees will be prohibited from being employed under a MECA.
This is a deliberate and nasty attack on teachers and their unions.
It is also an attack on the right of freedom of speech of both.
If an organisation opposes government policy, government will use legislation to silence them.
If a person belongs to that organisation, that person will have their rights to representation legislated away.
The government is unapologetic about this attack.
And it is highly inconsistent.
This government has threatened to legislate that universities must have freedom-of-expression policies at the risk of losing their funding.
At the same time, the government is punishing unions for exercising their freedom of expression on behalf of their members.
And punishing teachers who are members.
These new union-busting provisions are also directly contrary to the paper on the Bill discussed by Cabinet in June this year.
The Cabinet paper describes staff rights when state schools transition into charter schools.
The paper says ‘‘Cabinet agreed that the legislation specify that employees will be transferred to a converted charter school on terms and conditions that are no less favourable ... to ensure that employees that transfer are not disadvantaged by moving to a charter school’’.
This reads like a clear protection for those staff that their employment arrangements would stay the same.
But the rest of the paragraph and the next six paragraphs in that section of the cabinet paper are redacted to ‘‘avoid prejudice to negotiations’’ and ‘‘to protect the confidentiality of advice’’.
It is difficult to imagine that Cabinet did not expect these two new provisions to be included.
Did Cabinet know in June that that these attacks on the employment rights of teachers and their unions were possible?
Was there a plan to introduce these changes late in the select committee process to limit public objection?
Did Cabinet discuss them and dismiss them?
Discuss them and delay them?
I am just asking questions here.
It is worth us all remembering that these attacks on teachers and education unions come at a time of rising unemployment, increasing financial stress on families and nationwide economic uncertainty.
Unemployment has risen to 4.3% at March this year and all the predictions are for even worse unemployment for families to come.
Teachers are our family members.
They work together in a union to improve the rights and wellbeing of all their members, their families and ultimately our children and grandchildren who they teach.
Attacking them attacks us as well.
■Metiria Stanton-Turei is a senior law lecturer at the University of Otago and a former Green Party MP and co-leader.
