Teachers reject 28% pay rise offer, more strikes possible

Education Minister Ben Carroll has blasted the leadership of Victoria’s teachers’ union as out of touch with their members, after public school teachers voted to reject a 28 per cent pay rise offer.

The Australian Education Union (AEU) confirmed on Friday morning that a ballot of its membership, believed to be about 60,000, voted by a margin of 57.7 per cent to 42.3 per cent to reject the union-backed draft proposal, agreed between the state government and the union’s leadership last month.

The vote comes after a bitterly contested internal campaign within the union, with a well-organised “no” camp urging union members to reject the deal they had been offered, arguing that 28 per cent over four years fell well short of their headline demand of 35 per cent over three years.

Those opposed to the deal on offer say the teachers should capitalise on the momentum generated by the mass walk-off in March, when 35,000 educators thronged the streets of Melbourne, and take more industrial action in pursuit of a better deal.

The union told members on Friday morning that the majority had decided that the government’s offer was not good enough.

“It is clear that despite the improvements to the state government’s March offer, the majority of members hold the view that the government’s May offer has not gone far enough to address their concerns,” the union’s state branch president Justin Mullaly told members.

“This is the message that the union will strongly convey to the state government.”

Education Minister Ben Carroll said the agreement “would have made Victorian teachers the best paid in the country together with the best conditions”.

He said the union’s leaders needed to explain why they had agreed to the deal in principle only for its members to vote it down.

“The AEU have a real disconnect with their members. The union… described this agreement as the ‘best ever’, and it’s been rejected by their members,” Carroll told reporters on Friday afternoon.

“It shows a real disconnect between what they’re saying and what their members are saying to them. They are out of sync.”

Mullaly said the key sticking points were around conditions like more manageable workloads, the lower pay offer made to the state’s 35,000 education support workers, face-to-face teaching arrangements, flexible work, and unhappiness at being offered a three-year rather than a four-year deal.

The union’s governing branch council, which endorsed the proposed deal and urged members to vote in favour of the proposal, will meet on Friday to discuss the next steps.

But delegates opposed to the deal, gathering at the union’s Abbotsford headquarters on Friday morning, said they were determined not to leave the room without securing commitments to further industrial action.

Long-time union activist Lucy Honan, a key figure in the “No” camp, said the vote showed that teachers wanted to continue to confront the state government.

“The mood has been there for major change for a long time, and this campaign really brought it out,” Honan told The Age.

“The mandate is now for pushing for huge transformations to public education.

“The rank and file is going to be expecting strike action, and we will be organising it, one way or another.”

The result has important political ramifications, just five months out from the election.

Acceptance of the pay offer would have allowed Carroll to sign a long-awaited agreement with the Commonwealth to eventually bring the state’s schools up to the minimum funding standard, potentially neutralising education funding as an election issue.

The union, a key Labor backer in the past two state polls, will be unable to campaign for the Allan government if it remains locked in an industrial dispute in the lead-up to November.

Carroll said he would “not be rushing back to the negotiating table”, and warned teachers they could end up negotiating with a Coalition-One Nation government if they did not accept an offer before the state election.

“The Liberals and One Nation… have voted against every single minimum pay rise,” he said.

“We have offered, on average, a 30 per cent pay rise. There is only five months to the next election, and the Liberals and One Nation would not have this offer on the table.”

Opposition education spokesperson Brad Rowswell was quick on Friday morning to try to turn up the political heat on Carroll in the wake of the vote, suggesting the Coalition would prioritise a settlement if it claimed power in November.

“This outcome demonstrates just how out of touch Ben Carroll is with Victoria’s teachers,” Rowswell said.

“Teachers deserve to be respected for the work they do and the contribution they make.

“Teachers deserve to be paid more.

“Jacinta Allan must now step in and give an immediate assurance that she will do everything she possibly can to get back to the negotiating table and deal with this matter urgently.”

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