Victorian teachers and education support staff have overwhelmingly rejected their proposed pay deal, in a rank-and-file rebellion against pay cuts, unbearable conditions in schools and their own union leadership.
A decisive 57.7 per cent voted “no” to the agreement, despite the Australian Education Union (AEU) leadership arguing it was a great deal.
But as Fight the Crisis activist Lucy Honan put it, the agreement contained “a real pay cut disguised as a pay rise, and inadequate changes in terms of conditions”.
“There was nothing to deal with the crisis of overwork and ballooning class sizes that are driving more and more teachers into burnout and out of the profession.”
Teachers have seen their pay go backwards by 11 per cent after inflation since their last agreement. Instead of the union’s demand for a 35 per cent pay increase over three years to catch up, the government’s offer would still have left teachers earning less than in 2020 in real terms.
Education Support staff were offered even lower pay rises.
The “vote No” campaign was led by rank-and-file group Fight the Crisis. The group circulated material on social media with a breakdown explaining how teachers would still face a real pay cut and gathered public pledges to vote no from union members at 132 schools across the state.
“Throughout the campaign Fight the Crisis members were emailing and calling schools, trying to get in touch with union reps to have a conversation about why they should vote no, and what needs to come next,” Lucy said. “Those relationships are going to be key in now pushing for strike action.
“As people who are working in schools, we know how bad it is and how much needs to change, and how disappointing it is to hear such narrow ambitions from our leadership.
“So it was popular in and of itself to argue that we should keep expectations high about what we can achieve—that we should get above inflation pay, that we should have class sizes that are manageable, that our workload shouldn’t make us literally lose the plot.
“Fight the Crisis came out of two threads. One was long term rank-and-file work in different formations. But the huge burst of energy and leadership has been people involved in Teachers and School Staff for Palestine. They brought the experience of intransigent rank-and-file activity.
“We ran in the union elections to build our profile and got about 37 per cent of the vote for executive positions, but only ten branch council positions out of about 120.”
Organise for more strikes
Teachers staged an electrifying 24-hour strike at the end of March, with up to 40,000 marching in Melbourne. But after that the union leadership called off further action and argued to accept the offer from Jacinta Allan’s Labor government.
As Lucy explained, “Despite the No vote, when AEU Council met on Friday 19 June, they dug in to defend passivity and inaction.
“Fight the Crisis councillors proposed a motion to immediately start preparing for strike action. That motion was defeated.
“Instead the leadership pushed through a motion to run a survey of members until 17 July.”
This is clearly another attempt to stall and wear down enthusiasm for more strike action.
“An amendment passed to include details from the Fair Work Act about the penalties for further strikes and ways that the state and federal government could crack down on the union! Yet an amendment to include discussion of further strike action was rejected.”
An extraordinary council meeting has been called for 17 July to consider the results of the survey and discuss next steps.
Fight the Crisis is organising among the union’s rank-and-file to call the further strike action necessary to force the government to offer a decent agreement.
“Fight the Crisis publicly called members to a strike committee meeting for Saturday, the day after the council meeting. Thirty-two AEU members attended and formulated a plan for calling a strike built from the rank-and-file,” Lucy said.
The group is calling on AEU members to pass motions at union sub-branch meetings for a 24-hour strike on 4 August. This needs to happen quickly.
“The timetable is tight because there’s one more week of school, then two weeks’ holidays, then four days before the extraordinary council meeting on 17 July,” she explained.
The Fight the Crisis motion also calls on regional AEU meetings to call the strike action themselves if the council meeting refuses to.
“With the Victorian state election coming up in November, and health workers also having recently taken strike action, the government will be desperate to settle the dispute rather than face escalating industrial action up to the election.
“What the AEU is able to win will potentially have flow-on effects in Victoria and around the country.”
One Nation is feeding off the bitterness about Labor’s failure to address the cost-of-living crisis. A successful union fightback for pay rises is the way to show there is an alternative.
The Victorian teachers are showing the kind of rank-and-file organisation and socialist politics inside the unions that are needed to win this.
The motion for AEU members in Victoria to move at sub-branch meetings is here.
Follow or get in touch with Fight the Crisis via Instagram here.
