AEU-NT Members Reject Government Offer

At meetings held across the Territory over the last week, AEU-NT members overwhelmingly rejected the Government’s offer to teachers.

The offer includes:

· A 10% pay increase over three years. According to NT Government’s own economic brief for the June 2007 quarter, Darwin currently has an annual CPI increase of 3.7%, the highest consumer inflation of Australian capital cities. If inflation continues to run above an average 3.3% over the next three years, the Government’s offer is a cut to NT teachers’ real wages.

· An increase to the Professional Isolation Allowance. Unfortunately, along with the increase, the Government will abolish the current reimbursement for freight allowance scheme. Members in our most remote schools calculate this could mean a loss of up to $3000 per year. Effectively, this means that most remote teachers would receive a substantial decrease in remote allowances if the Government’s offer were accepted, especially those employed in their first or second year of teaching.

· An extended salary scheme. The only element of the offer for school-based teachers (though office based educators would be able to access it as well) to receive a positive response from members. Indeed, it is the only part of the AEU-NT’s log of claims that the Government has addressed without substantial alteration.

· A new flexible working arrangements package for office-based educators. The only other part of the offer to receive any positive response. School based teachers are excluded from this element of the offer ‘due to operational requirements and the existing stand down and leave arrangements’.

· The introduction of school development days during Christmas and mid-year breaks. In order for this work, the government will split teachers’ six weeks recreational leave, which is currently slated over the Christmas break, into the first four weeks of the Christmas break and the first two weeks of the mid-year break. If this were agreed to, teachers would become the only government employees unable to access a six-week block of recreational leave. Needless to say, members met this aspect of the Government’s offer with universal condemnation.

· A sliding scale ERT salary – at level + 20%. T8 and T9 teachers get slight increases with this offer. T7 and below receive drastic cuts to their salaries.

In general, members at report back meetings were outraged by the Government’s offer. They saw it as a slap in the face to overworked teachers facing one of the most dramatic upheavals in Territory Education with the introduction of middle years, Ce-Tool, the federal intervention into remote communities, and a truckload of other sweeping systemic changes. Teachers voted unanimously in favour of a secret ballot to support industrial action, if necessary, to achieve an offer that is not contemptuous of teachers’ work and commitment to Territory students.

Where to from here?

The AEU-NT will continue to work hard negotiating its current log of claims with OCPE over the next couple of weeks. Our media focus will be the good work Territory teachers do and the necessity of an offer that will recruit and retain the best teachers to the Territory. We will also be talking to School Councils in Term 4.

If negotiations with the OCPE fail to produce a significantly improved offer within the next couple of weeks, the AEU-NT will seek a ballot of its members as to what forms of industrial action might help further the Union’s claims.