Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blames unions for ongoing strike action

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is accusing unions of driving an increase in industrial action by prioritising politics over its priorities.

Secondary school teachers across the country are to strike from Tuesday after stalled collective agreement negotiations.

They'll also take part in a mega strike next week, involving more than 100,000 education and health workers.

Luxon told Morning Report the disruption is a shame and he believes workers want to reach a pay deal.

"It's a shame, really. I think people are getting sick of unions prioritising the politics over patients, or kids in education and parents being mucked around," he said.

Luxon said he acknowledges the difficult environment teachers are dealing with, which he said is why the government has put a lot of focus on education.

"We are doing everything we can to get our kids back in school," he said.

"I get it, it's a tough job but the way to deal with that is not to go on strike."

The strike action involves about 21,000 secondary and area school teachers. Teachers will refuse to teach certain class levels, from Year 7 - 13, on certain days next week, take part in a full day national strike on 23 October, carry out a ban on extracurricular activity on 29 October and will take part in a full, national, two-hour strike on the afternoon of Wednesday, 5 November.

Luxon said the strike was "preordained", as the union refused to take the offer to members after an offer was put together after a day of negotiating on Friday.

"Kiwis suffer when unions take this sort of action rather than getting around the table and bargaining and continuing to negotiate - which is what they should be doing."

However, Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) president Chris Abercrombie said the "last-minute" offer from the Government was "worse than the other offers we have received".

Abercrombie said the offer included two pay rises - 2.5 percent after settlement and 2 percent 12 months after that - but no more until after the next bargaining started.

He said that would probably mean up to 24 months with no further pay rises.

He also said the offer effectively removed the hours of work from teachers, meaning teachers could be working 24 hours a day, Monday to Friday.

"We are really disappointed we have to take this action," Abercrombie said.

He said parents had been supportive of the strikes.

"They know how hard teachers work, they know the extras they do, but they also know that they want the best teacher in front of their child," Abercrombie said.

The Public Service Commissioner said it's misleading for the PPTA union to say that they were given a last-minute offer before their meeting to decide on whether to strike, and the union knew what was going to be in the offer.

The commissioner, Sir Brian Roche, said that they had worked tirelessly with the union last week, and did their best to respond to the union's concerns.

"I think it is manipulative around the information and grossly misleading. Chris knew exactly what was going to happen," he told Morning Report.

"We had worked tirelessly over the course of last week, met with him, we talked on the phone on Friday, and we absolutely did our best endeavours to respond to each of the issues that he had raised with us."

He said the timing of when the offer landed is a coincidence and irrelevant to the substance of the issue.

He said it raised serious questions in his mind.

"Why would we be incentivised to disrupt them at the last minute? It makes no sense. Of course, we were always wanting to work over the weekend. We said that we would do that," he said.

"We asked for this week's strikes to be stopped while we went through that work. They chose not to. That is on their conscience."

Sir Brian also rejected the notion the offer was worse than the previous one.

"We asked them at the beginning of last week, what are the major issues you need us to address? We addressed each and every one of them and then we put it in writing. I don't know what more I can do.

"Bargaining is about trade-offs. Not everyone is going to get exactly what they want. We went above and beyond, and we have taken some things out, which we were told were highly provocative to their members.

"As I said, we have done our best. We've done that in absolute good faith and we'll continue to do that in absolute good faith. But the union has to be prepared to make compromises, and I haven't seen any evidence of that."

He said bargaining is about trade offs, and he said the union needs to be prepared to make compromises.

Luxon said settlements need to be "affordable and responsible".

"We don't have a bottomless pot of taxpayer money, but together they need to work through that with government employers and unions," he said.

Abercrombie said negotiating teams are willing to meet with the ministry to avert the 23 October strike.

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