17 January 2007

Teacher's dispute finally over

| johnboy
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The Canberra Times is reporting that the teacher’s war is finally over with:

“an 11.5 per cent wage rise over the next 212 years”

Boy did they ever get screwed on that one!

(ok, I think it’s meant to read 2 1/2 years)

So when does the next round kick off?

UPDATE: Nyssa wrote in to describe it thusly:

Today’s CT briefly states that yesterday’s final day of arbitration between the ACT Govt and ACTDET ended with an 11.5% pay increase (over 2 1/2 years – backdated to March 2006) and increased teaching hours from 18 to 19hrs face to face a week.

Teachers have to vote on it next month – which I thought they wouldn’t have to as the arbitrator’s decision is final and legally binding to all parties.

So now that’s out of the way teachers may actually find out where they are placed for 2007, myself included, with 13 days to go before the mandated PD (professional development) sessions begin on the 30th January.

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According to Clive Haggar (radio interview) there will be a shortage of teachers by 2010.

Like we didn’t already know that.

The Transfer Round was out today. I received my letter this morning.

About time….

Thanks Edumacated. I just checked out the arbitration document and an interesting thing stood out to me:

“The success of the ACT Government system supports the conclusion that teachers in the ACT are adequately supported and not overworked. It is improbable that an education system can function effectively if it is not being properly resourced and its teachers are being overworked.”

Therefore, if ACT teachers work their butts off to make the ACT system the best in the world, they can’t possibly be overworked and under-resourced. So, if we want more money to go to our teachers and our education system, better make sure it’s really crappy with poor student outcomes before you can expect a decent payrise.

The modified “award” is here… I’m assuming these are just tacked on to the current EBA 😉

JTK, if she’s permanent she’ll find out on Monday – they want everyone to “know” at the same time.

Why they just don’t issue a press release telling teachers to come and collect the letters from Manning Clark House is beyond me. Or even e-mail it to them using the e-mail system they use for payroll.

It’d save a fortune in stamps and it would demonstrate to those in the Transfer Round that the Dept wants to notify them immediately, instead of dragging it out to 6 days before we go back to work.

The mind boggles.

James-T-Kirk10:01 am 18 Jan 07

KidKenosha – It was total, pure sarcasm.

I am married to a teacher, who is currently unemployed, as she is waiting to see what the govmit does.

At least, she agrees that if I worked for am employer who treated me the same way she has been treated, she would be nagging daily. (And believe me, I have worked for some pretty useless employers in the past!!) – At least my employers were simply tardy with the pay, I was never sacked over Christmas, only to be re-hired in Jan.

It all reeks of Govmit if you ask me.

Interesting read Ed.

Check out

pdf link [ARRGH!]

for the details of the arbitration.

Everyone finds out Monday – even though the letters are being done today and tomorrow. I’m not allowed to pick mine up before my trip because it would be “unfair” to the others.

Given that next week is 4 days long, this is getting beyond a joke.

Thank you AEU and Andrew Barr.

GnT I understand your frustration, but part of the issue about pay during strike action sits firmly with our new and wonderful Work Choices laws.. e.g. getting docked min 4 hours pay even if you went on strike for 30 mins. That’s not ACT Govt. But still taking this long to negotiate is rediculous, the education of the next generation and therefore the pay of teachers should be up there with the highest public funding priorities as far as I’m concerned.

@James-T-Kirk: not sure whether you’ve forgotten or are just being sarky, but “just increasing class lengths by 12 mins” isn’t a valid answer at all.

What happens is that teachers (who already have a workload far greater than the average public servants) have to work even harder for what is in reality a pretty piss-weak payrise.

This is pretty disappointing, but not in the least but surprising. My mother’s a teacher in the system, and by all accounts the government’s involvement has been characterised by complete lack of knowledge and understanding of the system in general. It’s really no surprise that the private system is in ascension, since the government seems so determined to destroy the public schools.

Well I rang ACTDET at 9:35am. I was told they would get back to me before 10am re: being away and the date teachers find out.

It’s now 3:45pm and still not one call. They had home and mobile, as well as e-mail.

FFS. They could have just said “call Friday”.

James-T-Kirk2:32 pm 17 Jan 07

Dam shame. 11.5% over 2.5 years – Looks like 4.6% per year –

Still rekon that they should have been pushing for 10% – 15%…

In any case, the extra hour that they teach can trivially be absorbed by increasing class lengths by 12 mins per class – then, they can absorb the excess just like the rest of the public service does by working an extra 9 mins per day or some other gobbledygook – giving them the gap between christmas and new-year off….

No further changes necessary.

Nice though, to see the department paying overtime to those who don’t actually teach Staffing section. Good on ya!!

Thank god it’s over!

It should be back dated to the expiration of the old CA. If the arbiter doesn’t back date, it means the longer a dispute goes on, the more savings the employer makes and the worse off the workers are. Especially in this case, with the savings the government made through teachers taking strike action, I’d say they are probably better off than had the teachers acepted the original offer (and our children’s educators are worse off).

This whole thing has royally pissed me off. I am completely disenchanted by this government. I would love to say I won’t vote for them at the next election, but what is the alternative?

Ed, I was told March – by DET. Sorry!

It’s still shitty though – 1 month.

The article states that it will be backdated to last month, not last March. Big difference!

Just to add jb, I just spoke to ACTDET re: placements and it will be mailed out on Monday – most won’t get it until Tuesday/Wednesday next week and then that’s a week before we go to work.

Staffing are coming in on Sat/Sun to do the list – which should have been prepared to deal with job losses and without job losses ages ago.

I’ll be away from Canberra all next week so it doesn’t work for me.

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