AEU Conference: Around the states
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 128 , 21 July 2023, page no.25
The 2023 AEU Federal Conference heard from the Presidents of four of the AEU‘s branches and associated bodies, who provided a report on some of the latest issues and campaigns being undertaken in their states.
Meredith Peace (President, AEU Victoria) highlighted her union’s recent schools-sector enterprise bargaining campaign “It’s About Time”, which focused on giving time back to teachers and education leaders to undertake their core-business in rostered duty time.
Workload issues were at the heart of this campaign, which involved a letter-writing campaign, lobbying of politicians, a photo campaign that highlighted the workloads of their principal members, and industrial action. This resulted in improvements to non-contact time provisions, succeeded in getting some “time-off-in-lieu” provisions built into the agreements, and reduced face-to face teaching time.
David Genford (President, AEU Tasmania) outlined the issues the branch has experienced since the conservative state government legislated to move TAFE sector workers into the federal industrial relations jurisdiction (Fair Work Australia).
They were fighting to reverse the huge decrease in staff numbers in TAFE and to protect TAFE courses from the private, for-profit operators who are keen to take over this area of further education. As precedent shows, this would result in lower quality courses and inferior qualifications.
Tasmania has also run a “lifting learning” campaign in the schools sector, with a focus on educating the community on the work that teachers do and that teachers’ working conditions are the learning conditions of students. It was seeking reduced workloads for beginning teachers, release time for mentors, and improved incentives for remote schools, as well as increases to the allocation of leadership positions in some schools. It undertook strike action and held marches of thousands of teachers to the Tasmanian Parliament.
The AEU’s ACT Branch President, Angela Burroughs, outlined the reforms that the branch was pursuing via a campaign stating that there is no more time for “tinkering” around the edges of their agreement, that it is now time for reform.
While this branch was interested in making improvements to working conditions for beginning teachers and the lowest paid workers, they were also keen to ensure that this did not occur at the expense of the others within their system.
The NSW Teachers Federation President, Angelo Gavrielatos, gave an impassioned plea to the conference about the need to protect the profession from the attacks that public education is facing on a myriad of fronts.
He highlighted that the inequitable funding of education in Australia, the appalling lack of attention paid to the long-predicted teacher shortage, the unsustainable workloads, and the failure to pay teachers well and respect the profession have all been as a result of deliberate policy decisions made by neo-liberal governments, who have consistently failed to support public education.
This has resulted in a crisis that will see the residualisation of public education and a concentration of the most disadvantaged students being taught in the worst funded schools, unless we demand and fight for change. Angelo outlined that the most recent campaign, “More than just thanks”, saw a 10 per cent increase in membership, and the development of an impassioned collective teacher voice fighting to protect public education.