Mr Dunne says that the union's militancy and intransigence over a number of years has made it inevitable that the Government would seek to force the issue once and for all.

"The PPTA has behaved throughout less as a professional association and far more as a militant union in the pattern of the old Boilermakers or Cooks and Stewards Unions."

"That old style approach has no place in contemporary New Zealand," he says.

Mr Dunne says the PPTA is not telling the real story why it opposes bulk funding of teachers' salaries.

"Its opposition has nothing to do with protecting educational standards, but everything to do with protecting its power base as a union, which would be threatened if salary arrangements for teachers were decentralised," he says.

Mr Dunne says United believes that decisions about whether to opt for bulk funding are for school boards of trustees to determine, and should not be centrally imposed.

"However, school boards must have the genuine flexibility to make those choices, in what they see as the best interests of their particular school, without industrial blackmail from the PPTA."

"It will be a sad day if the Government compels schools to be bulk funded, but it will be an inevitable consequence of the PPTA's campaign of militant disruption."

"They will have only themselves to blame, and will receive no public respect for doing so," he says.

ENDS