The Allan government is facing a teacher strike in the run-up to November’s state election after the Australian Education Union on Monday rejected its request for a 17 per cent pay rise over four years.
The payment offer is the first presented by the government in the wage dispute that has already lasted for eight months.
Public school teachers plan to strike next Tuesday in an escalating industrial dispute that has fueled a rift between Victoria’s long-serving Labor government and the influential party that campaigned for re-election in the last two state elections.
AEU is pushing to get a 35 per cent pay rise over three years to bring Victorian teachers in line with their NSW counterparts. A qualified teacher earns $78,801 in Victoria compared to $90,177 in NSW and the pay gap between experienced classroom teachers is $15,000.
Victorian teachers and AEU leadership remain furious secret cuts to state school funding exposed by this title, which will leave public schools $2.4 billion worse off between now and 2031.
The secret cuts, which the Cabinet’s Government Budget and Finance Committee chaired by Premier Jacinta Allan approved in March 2024 against the complaints of Education Minister Ben Carroll, mean Victoria will not fully fund its share of the Gonski school reforms before 2031.
State governments in Western Australia, Tasmania, NSW and South Australia already provide their schools with 75 per cent or more of Gonski funding – a formula that meets the requirements that all states have agreed to.
The Commonwealth Government has committed to funding the balance but only once the states fully fund their share.
In Victoria, the only jurisdiction in Australia without a published, long-term plan to fully fund the Gonski reforms, state schools this year will receive just 70.4 per cent from the state and 20 per cent from the Commonwealth.
The gap between what Victorian government schools get and what students currently need is about $1.38 billion.
The quickest and easiest way to close the gap is to pay teachers more through a trade agreement but Treasurer Jaclyn Symes is struggling to control public sector salaries which, according to the mid-year financial report tabled in the state legislature last week, exceeded $23 billion in the second half of last year.
Carroll has publicly vowed to give teachers a “proper pay raise” and provide nationally competitive salaries in the public school sector.
The government hoped to avoid industrial action next week by making what it sees as a generous pay offer, the details of which were disclosed by the government to Herald Sun newspaper.
The proposal according to the AEU is for a salary increase of eight percent this year, followed by an annual increase of 3 percent over the next three years. The executive meeting of the AEU’s Victorian branch voted on Monday night to reject the proposal as “completely unacceptable” and to hold out for a better deal.
“This offer will do nothing to resolve the staffing crisis in Victoria’s public schools,” AEU Victoria branch president Justin Mullaly said in a statement released on Monday night.
“How can Education Minister Ben Carroll call Victoria an ‘education state’ when teachers, principals and education support staff are overworked, underpaid, and already leaving the profession in droves?
“The Allan Labor government is running the lowest funded public education in the country
system and is the lowest paid public school teacher employer in the country.”
AEU members working in public schools will walk out for 24 hours next Tuesday in the first day-long strike of an increasingly bitter industrial campaign.
Chip The Great leads our state politics reporting team. He was previously the editor-in-chief of the magazine and is a writer with 30 years of experience.Connect through email address.
