11 March 2006

Teachers to strike on Tuesday

| Kerces
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This note was sent out to parents of a northside college at the end of last week (all formatting as in original):

The Australian Education Union (AEU) has notified the department that union members will take industrial action on the morning of Tuesday 14 March 2006. the AEU have advised that the action will consist of “a half day stoppage of all AEU members on Tuesday 14 March 2006…members will return to their workplace to commence duties on that day by 1:00pm”.

The department has been discussing a new enterprise agreement with the AEU and the stopwork action forms part of the AEU’s strategy to gain pay increases for their members.

In order to bring media attention to the industrial dispute between the AEU and the department, the AEU has decided to hold stopwork action between 8:30am and 1:00pm on Tuesday 14 March 2006.

[The college] will close at 8.30am and resume, with normal classes, at 1pm.

Students are advised to use this time to work on unit assignments or revise work for upcoming tests.

I shall keep you informed of any future developments.

[signed The Principal]

Hang on two seconds and run that by me again? The purpose of the stopwork is “to bring media attention to the industrial dispute”? How about this, this and this? Or all the stories on the ABC (here are two)? I’m sure WIN has also covered it but their site search is awful. And that’s just the mainstream media. There’s also been extensive debate here on RA about the issue.

It may well be stopwork action is a good way to bring attention to the issue and put pressure on the government, but given the coverage this story has already had, I don’t think media attention should be the sole stated reason for the action.

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HOw do you know they were teachers Kimba? There are alwasy poorly dressed hidious looking people drinking coffee in civic.

There were heaps of poorly-dressed and hideous-looking teachers sitting around the Civic coffee shops this morning enjoying a brew before their industrial action. Wonder who were keeping an eye on the students!

I support them completely.

The AEU (on their website) has put up a 5 page document re: tomorrow’s strike.

You can access it here:

http://www.aeuact.asn.au/resources/Circular11Mar06.doc

Kerces, it’s at the National Convention centre tomorrow morning.

Gee, when was the last time you heard of teachers striking in the private sector? Can someone explain how this is delivering a quality education outcome for children?

Note to the AEU: You are becoming predictable. Negotiate a payrise, get a decent CPI increase from the government, bitch that it’s not enough. Then (a) if an ALP government is in power, strike because it embarrasses said govt; or (b) if it’s the Libs, grit your teeth and go back to work because they are happy to screw you over.

Why do you think parents are moving their children to the private system in droves?

When and where is the strike Nyssa?

No you’ll soon see parents complaining that their child is failing because they can’t understand a word their teacher is saying.

There’s even cases of it in Canberra atm.

If anyone is out that way on Tuesday (I’ll be in the classroom) let me know how “it goes” i.e. as in how stupid the strike is.

But Vic…

If they bring in foreign teachers, how soon will it be before we see headlines in the CT about those same foreign teachers being paid under the award conditions? 🙂

Vic Bitterman9:11 pm 12 Mar 06

Damn greedy teachers.

Bring in more overseas trained teachers, that’ll learn them about economic realities.

Oops…buggered the html..apologies.

Kerces, in today’s CT there is another article

Katy Gallagher is calling teachers “greedy”. I object to that statement. The majority of votes wins in the AEU and the majority is made up of teachers over 45yrs.

Yes but striking for is ridiculous.

By all means, don’t implement the Essential Learnings etc. But they don’t have to strike.

Nyssa,

Working is all about the money. If you weren’t paid you wouldn’t do it.

Higher pay means people put up with crappier conditions. Take mining, oil rigs and truck driving for example. Lots of dollers, crappy working environment.

Teaching is the same.

You’ve said you are looking at other options. If they were paying you lots more you wouldn’t be. Its something each person has to weigh up themselves.

For example – dole bludger – great conditions – shitty pay.

Kerces, I still don’t believe in the strike – it will just cause parents etc to think teachers are only after the money as teachers won’t be at school.

It’s just proven to me that the strike is all about the money, not the media coverage.

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