State government offers 28.3 per cent increase to avert planned school strikes
Updated ,first published
Victorian teachers, principals and education support staff will be offered a “landmark” pay rise of 28.3 per cent over the next four years by the state government as Labor tries to avoid school strikes planned for next week.
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 union will hold a meeting later Friday to consider the offer and next steps.
The Australian Education Union accused Labor of making an “anti-union move” by saying it would bypass them and go directly to employees, and emailed the state’s public teachers directly with the offer.
Education Minister Ben Carroll, who is also deputy prime minister, said it was important to engage directly in the workforce after a previously union-approved proposal was rejected by a vote of ordinary teachers.
“Last time I signed what they described as a really good deal with the Australian Education Association,” Carroll said on Friday.
“This time, after meeting with the union and presenting the proposal to them, I directed the secretary to email the proposal to every government teacher present.
“This is a landmark deal… When I talked to teachers they told me. They don’t want to go on strike. They want another offer and that’s what I’m doing.”
AEU Victoria president Justin Mullaly said the government should never have gone directly to members and if the government was “dead serious” about supporting teachers it would not have ignored school funding concerns for so long.
The revised pay deal also means teachers’ meeting hours must be halved from 80 hours a year to 40 hours a year, and teachers at the top of the pay scale will be given an annual lump sum.
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.
But one 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.
Victoria’s vocal union members planned to push for better conditions for education support staff, including a compatible pay deal 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.
Mullaly declined to be asked whether the group was undermining its efforts to reach a pay agreement for members.
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,” Walsh said.
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. “Let’s send the kids to school next Thursday.”
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Caroline Schelle is an education reporter and joined The Age in 2022. He had previously served in courts in AAP.Connect with: X or email.
