Teachers protesting against Covid-19 mandates cross paths with police near Parliament in March this year. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Teachers protesting against Covid-19 mandates cross paths with police near Parliament in March this year. Photo / Mark Mitchell
A science teacher who was among hundreds of teachers who were either dismissed or left the job at the height of the Covid-19 response has so far failed to prove her own dismissal was unjustified.
The former Taupo Intermediate School science teacher and head of department, Marika Pretorius, did not want to be vaccinated and was dismissed under the rules of the Government-imposed public health response order at the time.
Pretorius was among 447 teachers in New Zealand recorded as having left a teaching job between November 2021 and April 20, 2022, because of Covid-19.
Not all were because of the vaccine mandate, according to Ministry of Education statistics released in June this year under the Official Information Act.
In November 2021, the Ministry introduced a payroll category for recording those who left for reasons that included the vaccine mandate, but also any other Covid-19-related reasons, such as health or family obligations.
Teacher Marika Pretorius believed among other things that the vaccination requirements breached her human rights. Photo / AP
The Employment Relations Authority said in a preliminary determination on December 15 that Pretorius had not succeeded in proving the dismissal was unjustified because the lawfulness of the order was outside the scope of either the employer or the ERA.
The Authority said Pretorius believed the vaccination requirements breached her human rights, were a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 and were contrary to the principles of the Nuremberg Code 1947.
“The Authority noted that these concerns were all outside the scope of the respondent to address, so they did not constitute the raising of a personal grievance claim,” ERA member Rachel Larmer said.
Pretorius must now pay $2250 in legal costs to her former employer, but her representatives say they now plan to take the fight further, with an appeal to the Employment Court.
Advocates for Pretorius, Erika Whittome and Karen Glass of the Number 8 Workers Union of New Zealand Inc, describe her as a specialised teacher who was wrongfully dismissed from her school after she raised health and safety concerns about the Pfizer vaccine.
A Statement of Problem was lodged with the ERA in May this year, alleging she had been unjustifiably dismissed by the Board of Trustees of Taupo Intermediate School.
Pretorius claimed that she had raised a personal grievance within the required 90-day timeframe but the ERA found she hadn’t. Her employment ended in January and the grievance was raised on May 27.
Whittome and Glass told NZME that the only reason the application failed at this juncture was that the school contended that the personal grievance was lodged out of time.
They said they had “never litigated the substantive issues and cannot do so until an appeal is made to the Employment Court of the ERA’s decision about what is required in order to raise a personal grievance”.
Pretorius worked at the Taupo school as a permanent full-time teacher from January 2020 to January 2022.
The school’s principal, William Clarke, started consultation with staff regarding the vaccine mandate in October 2021, after which Pretorius spoke with him about her concerns.
She was told that the vaccine requirements were simply the school following the Government guidelines in relation to the order and that if she wanted an exemption then it was up to her to seek that with her medical practitioner.
The ERA said none of the correspondence from Pretorius to Clarke, or communication with him raised a grievance or had anything to do with an unjustified dismissal claim.
Pretorius then advised the principal verbally on a number of occasions she would be seeking an exemption from the vaccine but never provided one to either Clarke or to the board.
In December 2021 Clarke gave Pretorius notice, on behalf of the board, that it would be terminating her employment in January this year because she was unable to comply with the public health order.
The advocates said the decision “has costs for the terminated teacher which is (sic) unjust”, and had destroyed the teacher’s happiness and livelihood.
Whittome said it was unclear at this stage whether Pretorius, who was expecting a child early next year, planned to return to teaching.
