School staff pay and conditions

As parents and carers may be aware, staff at our school who are Australian Education Union (AEU) members have been negotiating, alongside teachers, education support staff, assistant principals, and principals from public schools around Victoria, with the state government and Department of Education for improvements to pay and employment conditions. Negotiations have been occurring over the last seven months, and the state government has not made any offer at all to this point in time.Currently, Victorian public schools are the lowest funded in Australia and there are significant staffing shortages across Victoria. Victorian public school teachers are also the lowest paid teachers in Australia, with many education support employees and school leaders paid less than their colleagues in other state and territories who do the same role.

AEU members are seeking pay increases and reductions to excessive workloads, with the aim of ensuring the retention of existing employees and the attraction of the next generation to enable the ongoing provision of a high-quality education to students. Because there was not any offer before the current agreement expired, AEU members voted to endorse industrial action, with the union calling a statewide 24-hour stopwork for Tuesday 24 March, should the government not respond properly to key claims.The AEU has written to our school council outlining some of the issues that school staff need resolved, including school funding and staffing shortages, as well as pay and conditions. The union acknowledges that a decision to stop work is not one to be taken lightly and regrets the impact it has on students and their families, with the state government able to avoid such action if a fair and decent offer is made to employees. The offer that was made after the industrial action was called is well short of what was asked for and was therefore rejected by the AEU. AEU members at BNWPS would like to thank school council for the wonderful letter of support that they published on Friday. It was greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

AEU subbranch