- by A teacher writes:
- The Guardian
- Issue #2203
Photo: AEU Victorian Branch FaceBook
Members of the Australian Education Union (AEU) have voted to accept the state government’s 10 August revised Victorian government Schools Agreement offer, with further improvements to pay and conditions and a commitment to fully fund Victorian public schools. 89 per cent of eligible union members voted, with 79% voting to accept the government’s offer.
A teacher writes:
People in my office were really nervous before the outcome of the ballot.
We were really devastated by the outcome. Not because we expected a no. We were expecting a yes but not for it to be 79%.
Speaking to people and listening to the rank and file it is clear that it wasn’t a yes vote because they thought it was a good deal, it was a yes vote because they are exhausted and over it.
We celebrate that the AEU rank and file members organised and fought a defiant campaign that won an improved wage offer, halved meetings and secured other entitlements. We built mass support in the community for our demands.
There has been progress, but this deal locks our schools in a deep crisis, and we will not stop fighting that crisis now.
Teachers I know voted no to four more years of burnout, ballooning class sizes, untenable face-to-face loads, exploitative ‘role creep’ and unpaid lunch breaks for Education Support Staff. We voted ‘no’ to ongoing wage injustice.
Every gain beyond the proposed and inadequate in-principle agreement we were presented with before teachers started striking was achieved by members’ willingness to build action from the bottom up.
Members have endured insulting wear-down tactics and fear campaigning, from leaders, who accepted Labor’s excuses at the bargaining table, and hesitated to lead a fight back.
We disproved the arguments that we couldn’t get more, that the public would not support us, and that the rank and file must not take the initiative to act. We were told that FairWork would destroy us and that members didn’t want to strike. We proved that wrong.
We called strike action from the bottom up, and took defiant stopwork and local actions that unleashed community support and built union power and momentum.
We have learned to rely on our own organising capacity, pressing our true demands, regardless of what the officials tell us is possible, and building networks across schools that can act together.
When this deal is finalised, we’ll resist the untenable terms within it.
Our message to Victorian Education Minister Gabrielle Williams is that we don’t accept the burnout conditions, or the wage injustice, and we won’t wait four years to demand better. We will make class size blow-outs the government’s political crisis, not our personal impossible burden. We will hold the department and government accountable for the predictable staff attrition and student disengagement rates this agreement will lock in.
