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State school teachers will walk off the job on Tuesday and rally in Brisbane and major Queensland towns, with their union urging parents to keep their children at home or make other arrangements.
It came as the state government assured parents that all schools would remain open, with supervision in place for students who show up.
In a statement, the Queensland Teachers Union blamed Premier David Crisafulli for the strike, saying it would have been called off if he had agreed to their demands.
Teachers rally outside Queensland Parliament House in Brisbane earlier this month.Credit: Catherine Strohfeldt
The union wanted his intervention to grant teachers an interim 3 per cent pay rise, and narrow the scope of talks to come before the industrial watchdog next year.
“He could have communicated and agreed to the very basic, reasonable request we had for arbitration, and that would have stopped this strike. Instead, he did nothing,” President Cresta Richardson said in a statement.
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The Queensland Department of Education said that schools would remain open in a “critical time, especially for students completing their studies”.
“Schools are working closely with the department to minimise disruption and ensure no student is disadvantaged and will communicate with students and families directly about any changes to routine or assessment arrangements,” it said in a post on social media on Monday afternoon.
“Every effort is being made to support learning, safety and wellbeing across all school communities.”
Tuesday’s strike will be the second that the 51,000-strong QTU has held this year.
The date, in week eight of term four, was selected to avoid clashes with year 12 exams and end-of-year activities set for the final two weeks of the year, the union said last week.
It falls just weeks out from Christmas, putting a hole in teachers’ first December pay cheque, which normally includes leave loading from the year on top of regular pay.
Teachers remain at loggerheads with the state government over their pay and conditions.
The government has offered a three-year 8 per cent wage increase, attraction and retention incentives, a new experienced senior teacher pay bracket, and anti-occupational violence measures.
The QTU said they believed it would not resolve Queensland’s teacher shortage and the issues behind it, including workload, occupational violence and aggression.
Arbitration talks at the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission will automatically begin on December 31, after which point industrial action will not be protected.
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