In dreadful weather on Wednesday 21 November, thousands of teachers converged on Melbourne’s Vodaphone Arena to attend a stop work mass meeting.
Teachers are getting angrier over poor pay and conditions, made all the worse by continuing attacks through the media on the work they do.
Anyone who has had the experience knows that teaching is a hard job, made worse where resourcing is falling further and further behind what is required. Pressure is constantly put on teachers to carry the burden. Class sizes increase as do classroom hours. Administrative work that teachers have to do also grows. Fewer teachers are employed. And amongst those employed, a growing proportion is on short term contracts, with no job security. Teachers are leaving in droves because they can’t take it any more.
All this makes the job of teaching much harder. When the Victorian government led by a former teacher, can only respond with insults, angry teachers become even angrier.
This is why the mood at the Vodaphone Arena was electric. The capacity crowd voted unanimously for an ongoing campaign of industrial action, including strikes. After nine months of talks and getting nowhere, the Australian Education Union says that enough is enough. Polling conducted by the union reveals that some 72 percent of Victorians support the teachers taking industrial action.
This state of affairs has come about because of the Kennett era privatisations that have been in essence carried on by the current Labor government. It all boils down to linking the education system closer to the interests of big business through downgrading the public school system and transferring resources to the rich private schools. This includes poaching teachers, as wages are much higher and conditions better in these schools.
The industrial campaign will focus on a 30 percent wage rise and short term contracts. Teachers in Victoria get paid an average of $10,000 less per year than their counterparts in NSW. CRT teachers get $75 less a day.
So far the Brumby government is trying to tie any significant wage rise to school funding. They say that for every dollar paid to teachers there will be one less dollar for the school’s other needs. This is not good enough.
Teachers are crucial to providing decent education. Schools are not just bricks and mortar. Without enough schools and without the continuity of permanent teachers, the education of students suffers. Without decent working conditions, with too many classroom hours and too many demands, teachers have to burn the midnight oil preparing at home, become worn out and performance and morale falls. Providing adequate resources and proper conditions for teachers goes hand in hand with creating good schools. Teachers fighting for their own work needs are also fighting for decent schools.
A good sign was the large number of young teachers at the stop work meeting. A network of beginning teachers has been set up. Some of them wrote a song and performed it at the meeting.
Teachers will be calling on broad community support for their action. They deserve support.
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