Mega strike: The fiery exchange that derailed secondary teacher talks

Wednesday, 22 October 2025

A major breakdown in bargaining took less than 24 hours as the Public Service Commission (PSC) and secondary teachers’ union descended into a dramatic war of words over a late Friday evening offer.

The Post obtained documents under the Official Information Act revealing the behind the scenes meltdown as both unions got ready to walk off the job in Thursday’s mega strike. The PSC and the primary and secondary teacher unions are still locked in tense negotiations.

One key exchange underscored the rapid deterioration of talks.

A Friday afternoon email regarding a formal offer from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) ‒ to be presented that evening ‒ subsequently saw the union privately and publicly rebuff what the commission presented, dismissing it as “rushed and poorly thought out”.

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PPTA president Chris Abercrombie wrote to Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche and PSC workforce deputy chief executive Alex Chadwick ‒ known for her work on the sweeping public service pay adjustment negotiations ‒ on October 10.

The subject line was, ‘Potential Formal Offer’, thanking the pair for the work done on callback days, and saying any next steps would entail the PPTA seeing a formal offer and terms of settlement before any decision to pause industrial action.

They would then need to ballot members “as soon as possible on a potential ratification”. It was 1.48pm on a Friday. Abercrombie said the executive was meeting that night.

“If called, the first strike notification would need to go out tomorrow, so the timing is tight. However, if there’s a chance that the formal offer could be made before tonight’s meeting, Executive would take that into consideration during the meeting,” he wrote.

Abercrombie, talking to The Post on Wednesday, denied this was a request for a formal offer, saying, “we didn't actually ask for it, it's basically saying, ‘if you are going to give one, and we need to have these things in it’… then we didn't really hear anything back from them”.

Chadwick responded to Abercrombie on October 10 about an hour later - both she and Roche were travelling. The best they could do before the 7pm meeting is to provide a written, without prejudice offer for consideration.

“It is unfortunately not feasible within the time frame to produce a terms of settlement,” Chadwick says. “That said, if your executive is serious about reaching agreement and wishes to proceed, we are available over the weekend to discuss and formalise the offer and prepare a terms of settlement for signing.”

Chadwick says if they did issue a strike notice, the offer would go off the table and next steps would likely be facilitation.

Abercrombie responds, acknowledging the work that had gone into addressing issues, and reiterated they “must adhere to both our internal PPTA processes, and the legal requirements related to strike notices and formal offers”.

The offer gets to the PPTA executive at 6.50pm, alongside a text from Chadwick to Abercrombie saying, “we have worked incredibly hard this afternoon to get you the paperwork … we hope that the executive will consider this at your meeting this evening.

“We are happy to discuss aspects further with you and of course we don’t expect you to accept the offer outright this evening. But if you do wish to consider it further and talk to us about it, the key thing for us is that you do not announce strike action next week.”

Saturday morning descends into a war of words.

PPTA general secretary Kirsty Farrant writes back, calling the timing and nature of the offer “deeply problematic”.

Farrant says the 6.50pm offer was provided without further bargaining days and included a condition that would lapse if strike action was notified.

“You were aware that the Executive was scheduled to meet at 7:00pm to consider the outcomes of the strike ballots. Yet the offer’s conditionality effectively forced a binary choice: either issue strike notices or put the offer to members - but not both.

“This approach undermines good faith bargaining and places undue pressure on the union’s democratic processes.”

The executive had decided to notify of strike action.

Farrant details the issues of the offer, saying it represented “a step backwards in several critical areas”, including in working conditions, expense reimbursement and remuneration.

The PPTA goes public, issuing a strike statement with Abercrombie saying, “10 minutes before we were due to meet, the Government presented us with another offer for settlement… with a condition it would lapse if strike action was notified”.

'As we have not had any bargaining since early September, to present an offer in this way was rushed and poorly thought out on the Government’s part. However, Executive did them the courtesy of considering it. I’m sorry to say that in several ways it was worse than the previous offer, so we have proceeded with calling the strike action.“

Roche responds that afternoon, calling the contents of Farrant’s message, “deeply concerning” and a “significant misrepresentation”.

“I absolutely reject your assertion that we are acting in bad faith - and encourage PPTA to reflect on its own actions in that regard.”

Roche says the offer was in direct response to Abercrombie’s request - “to suggest otherwise is misleading and inaccurate.”

Farrant has been CC’d into the previous emails with Abercrombie.

Roche says the offer “was our genuine attempt to ensure that an informed decision could be made and reiterated our condition about strike action”.

He says for it to be characterised as “‘problematic’ is quite simply extraordinary”.

Roche says he thought it was clear the issues that were tabled were a basis for further bargaining and while they worked through that strike action would be paused.

“I struggle to understand why that has been misrepresented as us putting your Executive in a binary position, unless of course you were already committed to strike action - contrary to what you had communicated. I am either confused or feeling deeply misled by these actions and the subsequent public comments.

“While I remain personally committed to reaching a resolution to this bargaining, your recent actions have raised serious questions in my mind about my ability to have trust and confidence in your intentions to do the same.”

In an interview with The Post on Wednesday, in regards to the PSC email on Friday afternoon, Abercrombie said without a formal offer, “which includes the terms of settlement, includes the track changes, it's not a formal offer”.

“So that's why, when they said we couldn't do that, we're like, oh, well, then we're not getting a formal offer.

“It was quite surprising to get that offer at 10 to seven when they said we won’t be able to do it. And even then, what they sent us… didn’t include the track changes for instance.

“As you see clearly from the email from Kirsty, there's some significant issues with the offer, and that's why we talked about it being rushed, because there was odd errors, odd decisions made that didn't actually make sense.”

On requesting a formal offer, Abercrombie said, “well, people might interpret it that way, but I'll just be very clear, we did not ask for a formal offer“.

“And to be fair, we if that's the case, we've been asking for one for weeks then.”

Abercrombie described it as giving them a “binary choice”. Asked how it was binary when Chadwick had said they didn’t expect it to be accepted outright, Abercrombie said there was a legal requirement to give three-days’ notice for striking.

“We had to give notice on Saturday morning. We then could have called off that strike later.

“But the binary option that they gave us that if you issue a strike notice, this offer is off the table, well, it kind of stopped any discussion.”

Abercrombie said his understanding was that the PSC would potentially send through a written confirmation of an offer, and what they got “was a part of an offer because parts of it were still missing”.

“There was also errors in the terms of settlement and in that space. We didn't expect to get any of that, because what they told us is that they couldn't do that and and they were just going to give us a letter… basically outlining what they could do.”

Abercrombie said the PPTA would meet with the Ministry of Education bargaining team “today” if they wanted to meet.