State school teachers to walk off the job within days

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State school teachers will walk off the job next Tuesday, with rallies set for Brisbane and major Queensland towns.

Giving a week’s notice, Queensland Teachers’ Union general secretary Kate Ruttiman sent a missive to members on Tuesday morning calling for the 24-hour work stoppage.

“The QTU has shown good faith in the conciliation process by delaying any consideration of further industrial action … despite calls for the premier to personally intervene in the dispute, the government has failed to act,” Ruttiman wrote.

Queensland Teachers’ Union members rallied outside Parliament last Thursday.

She told members the date – which falls in week eight of term four – was selected to avoid clashes with year 12 exams, which ended on Tuesday 18, and end-of-year activities set for the final two weeks of the year.

The union had previously suggested a strike for Thursday, November 13, when year 12 students were sitting external language exams, but instead chose to rally outside parliament that afternoon after school had finished for the day.

The largest rally, in front of state parliament, attracted hundreds of members.

In the lead-up to the rally, QTU president Cresta Richardson said the union was prepared to halt strike action if the state accepted its conditions for arbitration.

These conditions included placing only parts of the agreement on the table for renegotiation, and granting teachers a 3 per cent wage increase for 2026, as arbitration would see their wages frozen for up to two years.

Ruttiman said the union could not afford to have the state walk back previous wins, such as class size caps and non-contact hours they used for course planning, marking and lesson preparation.

She said the union hoped the strike action would spur the government into stopping the looming arbitration process with a new wage offer.

“Such offers occurred in 2006 and 2009, despite negotiations being in, or on the path to, arbitration,” she said.

Next week’s strike will be the second strike this year.

Negotiations between the union and Education Department began in July when the previous wage offer expired.

Members held their first strike in early August, following an offer from the state the QTU rejected, and more than 90 per cent of members voted to continue a series of 24-hour strikes if the government would not come to the table.

Following conciliation, more than two-thirds of union members rejected the state’s final offer, and the Education Department told the QTU its next step was to hash out the dispute in court.

The state has repeatedly offered teachers a three-year 8 per cent wage increase, with the final offer including attraction and retention incentives, a new experienced senior teacher pay bracket, and anti-occupational violence measures.

Arbitration will automatically begin on December 31, after which point industrial action will not be protected.

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