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Internal criticism of the leadership of the state’s public school teachers union is growing ahead of a crunch meeting on Friday in their ongoing dispute over wages and conditions with the Allan government.
The Department of Education is expected to offer a revised wage deal late on Thursday to the Australian Education Union (AEU), which will gather its governing branch council on Friday morning to discuss the fresh proposal.
But teachers at dozens of schools – including the selective entry Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School – have voted to condemn the union’s approach to bargaining and its suspension of half-day strikes planned across the state’s 1570 government schools in May and June.
Union activists representing five AEU districts – Werribee, Inner City, Broadmeadows, Inner West, and Latrobe/Plenty – representing hundreds of schools, also voted against the decision to suspend the planned strikes, taken without wide consultation of members.
The rebel sub-branches warned the union that they will not accept a deal that falls too far below their log of claims for a 35 per cent pay rise over three years and a raft of improvements to workloads and conditions.
Educators at Princes Hill Secondary College were among those in revolt against the union’s leadership, calling for a resumption of strikes and demanding greater transparency from the AEU hierarchy.
“The AEU must publish everything the government offered … before any further negotiation proceeds on its basis,” a statement from the Princes Hill group read.
“Members can’t assess what’s being traded on their behalf without seeing terms.”
The union has not responded to a request for comment, but a source close to the organisation, but not permitted to speak publicly, pointed out there were about 40 union districts and more than 1600 sub-branches around the state. Motions critical of the leadership had failed to pass at some districts and sub-branches, the source said.
In March the union rejected a government offer of a 17 per cent wage increase for teachers and principals, but only 13 per cent for education support (ES) workers.
That offer fell well short of the union’s demand of 35 per cent over three years for the entire workforce, with sweeping changes to working hours and conditions.
A government intention to improve its offer to teachers to 28 per cent over four years was leaked to the media.
A union briefing on Monday for education support workers further raised the temperature, with dissident union members saying they were told that by senior union officials at the online gathering that some key demands for the assistants were now “off the table”, leading to claims the AEU was preparing to “sell out” the 35,000-strong ES workforce.
Longtime union activist Lucy Honan, who helped lead a “strike now” ticket that won 37 per cent of the vote in union elections in 2024, conceded on Thursday that only a minority of sub-branches and districts had passed motions critical of the leadership.
But Honan said the union hierarchy should heed the warning of its more active members, who were reacting badly to the proposed 28 per cent figure.
“They [the leadership] are ignoring the canary in the coal mine,” Honan said.
“You’ve got your organised sub-branches and regions, which you depend on for maintaining the momentum of the campaign and recruiting, essentially the hard edge of the union, telling you that they cannot sell this to members.”
Honan urged her fellow branch council members to reject any “shoddy deal” on Friday.
Education support worker Belle Gibson, who attended Monday’s online meeting, said the leadership told attendees that an equal pay offer for teachers’ aides and another key demand, for paid lunch breaks, were “off the table”, and were not expected to feature in the impending government offer.
Gibson, part of the Socialists in Schools group that is preparing to campaign for a vote against the forthcoming government offer, told this masthead that ES workers’ own union was now disrespecting their vital role.
“We do crucial administrative work, and work closely with some of the most vulnerable students. It’s clear we are extremely undervalued by the government and our own union,” Gibson said.
The group is urging members to emulate the state’s nurses, who in 2024 dramatically rejected a negotiated government pay deal – worth 23 per cent over four years. They eventually won a deal worth more than 28 per cent.
The office of Education Minister Ben Carroll was contacted for comment.
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