Pay Parity for Part Time Teachers

If you believe in equal pay for equal work, then you need to insist that part timers get pay parity in the next pay claim. This means that their paid for non contact hours (1 hour for every 4 hours of teaching time) are included as part of the settlement, and are paid for by the Ministry out of the general salaries account.

So, what non contact time are part time teachers currently entitled to? According to the current contract, all part time teachers get an 11% loading on their teaching time to compensate them for any extra duties they need to perform as part of their job. This is the equivalent to 1 hour of non contact time for every 9 teaching hours. This is what the ministry pays for. Schools also need to "endeavour" to provide additional hours so that these teachers do have pay parity. This time allowance is not guaranteed. It is up to inidividual schools. The key word here is "endeavour".

Any time allowance that schools do decide to give must come out of the schools operating account, not from the Ministry. This is not fair on the school's principal, Board of Trustees, teachers or students. In these tight economic times it is completely within the schools rights for prinicipals to say to part time teachers, "Sorry, we just can't afford to pay you for the extra non contact time you need to give you pay parity with other teachers."

The current 11% loading provisions hark back to the times before full time teachers gained 5 guaranteed non contact hours. Back in the days when teachers would regularly teach 22 hours a week. And at that time the 11% loading was fair. It isn't now.

To put this into perspective, if a school is not providing the additional non contact time out of their own pocket then a part time teacher who teaches 16 hours a week gets paid 71% of a full time salary despite teaching 80% of a full time teaching load. Where is the equity in that?

Additional non contact time for part time teachers needs to be included in the contract as a right, as proposed by the working group that the Ministry set up over 4 years ago, and then conveniently decided to ignore. It shouldn't be left up to individual schools to decide. And individual schools should not have to find the money for this out of their own pockets.

At least the current contract removed the loop hole where schools could employ a teacher part time for 21 teaching hours and pay them 93% of a full time salary!

Sharon Henry
Wellington High School PPTA member