State government offers 28.3 per cent increase to avert planned school strikes
Updated ,first published
The state government will offer Victorian teachers, principals and education support staff a 28.3 per cent pay rise over the next four years as it seeks to avoid school strikes planned for next Thursday.
The proposal would bring support staff pay rises in line with teachers and include a 12.75 per cent increase for everyone by October 2026.
The revised offer for teachers is a slight improvement on the government’s previous position of a 28 per cent increase over four years, but less than the 35 per cent union members were seeking over three years.
The Australian Education Union accused Labor of making an “anti-union move” by saying it would sideline the union and make an offer directly to employees.
An AEU spokesman said: “The Labor government should know better; it is union members who make the decision.”
The revised proposal calls for halving required meeting hours from 80 hours a year to 40 hours and giving teachers at the top of the pay scale a lump sum annual payment.
The union will hold a meeting later Friday to consider the offer and next steps.
Education Minister Ben Carroll said Labor had made hard-working teachers, school leaders and education staff the best paid in the country.
“We said we would listen to our teachers, principals and educational support staff, and that’s what we did,” Carroll said.
The Allan government hopes the revised proposal can prevent a mass school rollout on July 23 that will disrupt learning in hundreds of state schools.
School staff voted for a statewide 24-hour strike and a ban on unpaid overtime at a meeting attended by more than 100 union representatives this week.
The EEU will face significant pressure from its own ranks to return to the negotiating table, as members of its left wing oppose compromise on key issues.
A vocal group signaled its intention to organize its own strikes if the AEU agreed to anything less than what it called “our red lines” before the revised offer was made.
These included a 35 percent pay increase for teachers over three years, reduced class sizes, face-to-face teaching time and no more than one hour of meetings per week.
The group, made up of rank-and-file union members in Victoria, said it would also push for better conditions for education support staff, including a pay deal compatible with teachers and paid lunch breaks.
A separate union group, the Keilor Downs College sub-branch, held a rally outside Carroll’s office in Niddrie on Thursday.
Keilor Downs College AEU sub-branch president George Pattichis said the rally was called because members were “tired of waiting for our union leaders to take action”.
“Our leaders called off strike action in term 2 to reach a completely inadequate agreement. We rejected this agreement because it did not address our unbearable workload and left educational support staff even further behind,” Pattichis said.
Nearly 35,000 teachers, principals and education support workers walked off the job for a day in March to secure a better deal on pay and conditions and took to the streets of Melbourne CBD in the state’s first mass teachers’ strike in 13 years.
Teachers were planning to stop working again in May, but the rolling strikes were canceled after the union reached an agreement in principle with the government.
Keilor Downs College humanities teacher Liz Walsh said Thursday’s rally should send a message to the government.
“They’re not just negotiating with union leaders, they’re negotiating with rank-and-file unionists, and we’re in no mood to settle for a marginally better deal that doesn’t meet the needs of all school staff, meaning teachers and education support workers.”
Carroll said the government is calling on union leadership to present the revised offer to members and call off the strike.
“Students should be in classrooms and parents should not be left scrambling for child care or losing their daily wages,” he said.
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