Markets 
Updated ,first published
Victorian teachers, principals and education support staff will be offered a pay rise of 28.3 per cent over the next four years by the state government, as it tries to avoid school strikes planned for next Thursday.
The offer would bring support-staff pay increases into lockstep with teachers and includes an increase of 12.75 per cent for all by October 2026.
The revised offer to teachers is a slight advance on the government’s previous position of a 28 per cent increase over four years, but less than the 35 per cent over three years sought by union members.
The Australian Education Union has accused Labor of making “an anti-union move” by indicating it will seek to bypass the union and go straight to employees with the offer.
“A Labor government should know better – it is union members who decide,” an AEU spokesperson said.
The revised offer would see required meeting hours halved from 80 to 40 hours a year, and teachers at the top of the pay scale would be given an annual lump-sum payment.
The union will hold a meeting late on Friday to consider the offer and its next steps.
Education Minister Ben Carroll said Labor was making hardworking teachers, school leaders and education staff the best paid in the country.
“We said we’d listen to our teachers, principals and education support staff and that’s what we’ve done,” Carroll said.
The Allan government will hope the revised offer can stave off a mass walk-off that would disrupt learning at hundreds of government schools on July 23.
School staff voted for the 24-hour statewide strike and a ban on working unpaid overtime during a meeting of more than 100 union representatives this week.
The Australian Education Union will face significant pressure from within its ranks to return to the negotiating table, as members of its left faction push against compromising on key issues.
One vocal group signalled its intention to organise its own strikes if the AEU accepted anything less than what it called “our red lines”, before the revised offer was made.
They included a 35 per cent pay increase over three years for teachers, reduced class sizes and face-to-face teaching time, and a maximum of one hour of meetings per week.
The group of rank-and-file Victorian union members said it would also push for better conditions for education support staff, including a pay deal in step with teachers as well as paid lunch breaks.
A separate union group, the Keilor Downs College sub-branch, organised a rally outside Education Minister Ben Carroll’s office in Niddrie on Thursday.
AEU sub-branch president at Keilor Downs College, George Pattichis, said the rally was called because members “were tired of waiting for our union leaders to act”.
“Our leaders called off strike action in term 2 to come up with a completely inadequate agreement. We rejected that deal because it did nothing to address our unbearable workloads and left education support staff further behind,” Pattichis said.
Up to 35,000 teachers, principals and education support workers walked off the job for a day in March in pursuit of a better deal on pay and conditions, taking to the streets of Melbourne’s CBD in the state’s first mass teachers’ strike in 13 years.
Teachers had been planning to stop work again in May, but the rolling strikes were called off after the union reached an in-principle agreement with the government.
Keilor Downs College humanities teacher Liz Walsh said Thursday’s rally should send a message to the government.
“They are not only negotiating with the union leadership, they are negotiating with rank-and-file unionists, and we are in no mood to settle for a marginally better deal that fails to meet the needs of all school staff: teachers and education support workers alike.”
Carroll said the government is urging union leadership to put the revised offer to members and call off the strike.
“Students should be in classrooms and parents shouldn’t be left scrambling for childcare or losing a day’s pay,” he said.
Get alerts on breaking news as it happens. Sign up for our Breaking News Alert.
From our partners
Read the full article here
