Nine months of no and counting
Education Minister Erica Stanford announced on 11 March that school boards could immediately offer non-union primary teachers a 2.5% pay rise from 20 March 2026, with a further 2.1% on 28 January 2027. The move bypasses NZEI Te Riu Roa, the primary teachers’ union, which has rejected three consecutive collective agreement offers over roughly nine months of negotiations.
The existing collective agreement expired in mid-2025. Every other education sector union has settled. NZEI is the sole holdout. And while it holds out, roughly 10,000 non-union primary teachers, about a third of the primary workforce, have been stuck without any pay adjustment at all.
The government decided that was no longer acceptable.
The Public Service Commissioner put his name on it
This was not a ministerial stunt. Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche personally defended the strategy, telling media “of course it’s legal” and offering a line that will either become a precedent or a punchline: “May be unusual, that doesn’t make it wrong.”
Roche framed the decision as one of fairness to workers, not hostility to unions. “There are 10,000 non-unionised teachers who have been deprived of a settlement,” he said. “I got to the point where I could no longer justify withholding an offer.”
He also acknowledged the strategy was “risky” and that he feared unions would “go hardline” and “take the strikes.” That candour matters. This is not a government that stumbled into confrontation. It calculated the risk and proceeded.
The money is not unreasonable
The government’s third offer included total pay increases of 4.5-4.7% over the agreement term. For non-union teachers, the individual offer translates to roughly $50 to $76 per week, against an average primary teacher salary of $94,354.
Teachers not at the top of the pay scale also receive annual service-based progression of between $2,503 and $6,960, meaning total remuneration growth for many teachers significantly exceeds the headline figure. This is not a starvation offer. It is a reasonable settlement that one union has decided, three times, is not enough.
NZEI went straight to court
NZEI primary teacher leader Liam Rutherford called the move “a serious breach of good faith” and accused the government of “employing divisive tactics to undermine teachers’ fight to get fair recognition.” The union filed urgent legal action in the Employment Relations Authority.
The Council of Trade Unions went further, calling it “an outright attack on tens of thousands of teachers” and accusing Roche of trying to “turn teachers against each other.”
Labour’s education spokesperson Ginny Andersen argued the individual offer was “a short-cut that gives them less money and not as good conditions” than a fully negotiated collective. That may be true. It is also true that the fully negotiated collective does not exist, because NZEI keeps rejecting it.
What this means for every employer in New Zealand
The ERA ruling will answer a question private sector employers have been asking for years. Does good faith bargaining require indefinite patience when a union repeatedly rejects offers that every comparable group has accepted? If the authority upholds the individual offers, employers will have significantly more room to engage directly with non-union staff when collective negotiations stall. If it strikes them down, the message is that collective process takes precedence regardless of how long it drags on.
For businesses dealing with their own union dynamics, this is the case to watch. The Public Service Commissioner, the most senior non-political figure in the state sector, has wagered his credibility on the proposition that 10,000 workers should not be held hostage by a negotiation they are not party to. Whether the law agrees will shape labour relations in New Zealand for years.
Sources
- RNZ: Primary teachers’ union angry over government offering individual pay rises (2026-03-11)
- RNZ: ‘May be unusual, doesn’t make it wrong’: Public Service Commissioner responds to legal action filed by teachers union (2026-03-12)
- Kerre Woodham: Is the primary teachers’ union causing friction? (2026-03-12)
- Ginny Andersen on the government offering non-union teachers a pay increase (2026-03-12)
- RNZ: Legal action filed after pay rises offered to non-union members (2026-03-12)
- Primary Teachers’ Collective Agreement Negotiation
- Teacher and principal remuneration and demographics
- Primary Teachers’ Collective Agreement 2023-2025