‘Happy to roll the dice’: Teachers vote to reject ‘final’ pay offer

6 days ago 5

State school teachers have knocked back the government’s final pay deal, sending the union and Queensland government to the Industrial Relations Commission to hash out the dispute in arbitration.

The offer was made to the Queensland Teachers’ Union (QTU) on Sunday evening following months of negotiations, with 67.6 per cent of members turning the deal down by the vote’s close at 2pm on Friday.

“Clearly the majority of members don’t believe the government’s offer will achieve [serious reform] and have voted accordingly,” QTU said in a statement released shortly before 3pm.

Queensland Teachers’ Union members went on strike in August.

Brisbane-based state school teacher Nicole Whilesmith said the offer did not have proper solutions to key problems teachers faced, leaving them “rightly angry”.

“Our classrooms are running on goodwill and teachers are bearing the burden of key functional requirements, including both safety and resourcing,” Whilesmith said.

“Teachers paused strike action in good faith because we care about our students and families – the government has not shown teachers, students, or the community the same respect.

“The only winner is the government’s fiscal bottom line.”

The rejected offer added measures to address conditions faced by teachers in classrooms – including a new occupational violence strategy and safety taskforce – but kept the wage increase at 8 per cent wage.

If they had accepted, teachers would have been backpaid to October 1. Also included in the offer were retention and attraction incentives, and an increase in wages for first-year teachers to above $90,000.

Speaking to media on Monday, Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said the state government’s wages policy – which limits pay offers across the public service to 8 per cent – had been accepted by other sectors.

He said then he was confident the offer, which he called the government’s best and final, would be accepted by teachers.

QTU members were overwhelmingly unimpressed, Brisbane teacher Jack Diamond said.

“In terms of the finances, this offer is definitely worse than the one we were striking for [in August] because they’re not even giving us backpay to when the EB [enterprise bargaining agreement] expired,” he said.

Teacher Jack Diamond (left) at the teachers’ strike in August.

The minister and the union had warned that the dispute would head to arbitration in the Industrial Court of Queensland if the offer was rejected.

QTU president Cresta Richards told members on Monday that arbitration could take up to two years, and might not deliver the conditions teachers sought, but Diamond said teachers were optimistic.

“If you look at a couple of the past times that negotiations have gone to arbitration, we’ve gotten a few decent wins out of it,” he said.

“I believe there was a 14 per cent pay increase in the 2000s, 17 per cent pay increase in the 90s, so it hasn’t happened too often, but I think people are happy to roll the dice on that one.”

Diamond added the state had also not fleshed out plans to reduce occupational violence.

Whilesmith said successive governments were to blame for “violent, unsustainable working conditions” faced by teachers.

“This is a long-standing issue where complacency and ignorance have failed all stakeholders, including our children,” she said.

“The government keeps announcing new policies and initiatives without the funding or resources to implement them successfully.”

The QTU State Council will meet in Brisbane on Saturday to plan the union’s next steps.

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