Wage agreements for 16 state sector enterprise bargaining deals are up for renewal this year, with educators joining health and community service workers in rejecting a blanket Government offer across the public service.

The education union said the offer equates to a refusal to fix workload, classroom violence, and educator shortages until at least 2027.

In past enterprise bargaining negotiations, AEU Tasmania Branch president David Genford told EducationHQ that teachers would negotiate directly with the education department.

But now with a lead negotiator system in place, where all 16 agreements are handled by one person, getting an agreement sorted is much more difficult, he said.

“When I’ve been a part of this previously, we’ve been dealing with members of the department, and by meeting with them fortnightly, you can actually have conversations about what’s beneficial for both sides,” he said.

“[This time] instead of actually looking at us as a separate entity, they’ve lumped us in with the 16 agreements being negotiated.

“There are some things the department wants to change that we agree with, but to not even put those working condition changes into an agreement, that is what has frustrated our teachers.”

Genford said the Government believed that by offering educators 3 per cent for a year, “they can put everything on hold for a year and everyone can just be happy with what’s going on”.

“That’s a lack of understanding of what’s happening in schools – the violence we’re seeing in schools, the workload we’re seeing in schools – and it’s not going to help keep people in the profession, which is what we need,” he said.

While Genford acknowledged pay as a significant part of negotiations, it is working conditions, he said, which are producing widespread mental health issues and contributing to high staff attrition rates, that are of great concern to educators across Tasmania.

AEU Tasmania Branch president David Genford says he'd like to see the Premier and Education Minister sit down with the union and look at what can be legitimately done to try and ease the workload on teachers and support staff, to encourage people to stay in the profession. PHOTO: AEU Tas Branch/Facebook

“Our teacher assistants are not paid for 52 weeks work, they get stood down during the school holidays, and that’s not the same as what happens on the mainland,” he explained.

“We want to see a government that’s willing to show respect to our teacher assistants.

“These are the people that work with our most vulnerable students, students with disability often, and unfortunately, we are seeing a churn, because it’s just not secure work when you are not employed for the whole year.”

What the AEU would like to see happen, Renford shared, is for Premier Jeremy Rockliff and Education Minister Jo Palmer to sit down with the union and look at what can be legitimately done to try and ease the workload on teachers and support staff, to in turn encourage people to stay in the profession.

“We’ve suggested trialling things like smaller class sizes, more professional support, more admin support, just so that teachers can actually be concentrating on teaching, and an acknowledgment that the complexity of teaching has increased and having a class of 30, 32 kids isn’t easy when you’ve got 20 of them on a learning plan that requires extra work and extra meetings to make sure they’re getting the best of learning.”

Another issue is teachers in an ‘unpromoted position’ in Tasmania – those that have been teaching for around 10 years that can’t move further up the chain and are sitting well behind other states and territories in terms of remuneration.

While the Victorian AEU branch is asking for quite significant pay increases, Genford said the Tasmanian branch is seeking something that “gets us to the middle of the pack”.

“We need to look at what we can do to catch up to the mainland so that, and we see it happen across a lot of industry in Tasmania, we can keep our brightest and smartest young people, because typically they leave uni and say, ‘well, why would I stay? I’ve got opportunities to go and teach in places like Canberra, for example, which has great salaries.

“You can go and teach there and be earning almost $20,000 more a year than what you would be in Hobart.

“I’ve had friends that moved to Victoria, to Ballarat, and they worked out that over three years they were going to be $60,000 better off to teach there … because of the incentive to teach in regional Victoria and the extra pay.”

Speaking in The Mercury newspaper two weeks ago, state deputy Labor leader Janie Finlay slammed the Government’s approach to the current EBA bargaining round.

“It’s time for the Liberals to stop treating workers as a budget problem and start valuing them with the fair pay, respect, and the proper conditions they rightfully deserve,” she said.

“Tasmanian workers – whether in health, community services, policing, or teaching – deserve to be paid fairly for the critical work they do every day.”

According to The Mercury, the Rockliff Government has indicated that it is keen to shrink the state’s public sector workforce by around 6.6 per cent by 2032 – which equates to around 2500 jobs, to help pull its budget into order.

Renford said staggered strike action is scheduled over three days next week in the north west, north and south of the state, resulting in no staff in schools until 11am.

“On the 28th of October, the north west will take action, then on the 29th, the same thing will happen in Launceston and on the 30th it will happen in Hobart,” Genford said. 

“The Minister needs to make a decision whether schools will be closed for a half day or a whole day, or she could risk keeping schools open, but principals won’t know how many staff are going to be there because most of them are going to be at the strike actions at that time.

“The Government has got its head in the sand … and while we never like to take industrial action, it’s this type of action that actually alerts the Government as to how serious we are that we want to see things happen.

“If they keep dragging their feet, then they’re going to see increases to future industrial action.”

School buses will continue to operate at their normal times, except for Support School buses, which will be unable to run in the morning.

In a statement, Palmer, said the State Government was extremely disappointed in the unions’ “unnecessary action” that will disrupt student learning and families, as well as impact businesses.

“Every day of school matters,” Palmer said.

“This disruptive and unnecessary action by the unions’ means we are unable to guarantee there will be enough staff on site to adequately care for students

“We recognise the impact this will have on students, families and small businesses, and we again call on the unions to take the pay rise being offered and keep schools open.”

Rallies are scheduled to take place next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in Devonport, Burnie, Launceston and Hobart.