Updated ,first published
Victorian teachers, principals and education support staff will be given a “waterfall” pay rise of 28.3 per cent over the next four years by the state government, as Labor tries to avert school strikes planned for next week.
The offer will bring pay increases for lockout workers and teachers and includes a 12.75 percent increase for all through October 2026.
The revised offer to teachers is a slight improvement on the government’s previous position of a 28 percent increase over four years, but less than the 35 percent over three years sought by union members.
The union will hold a meeting late Friday to consider the offer and its next steps.
The Australian Education Union has accused Labor of making an “anti-union move” by signaling it would try to bypass them and go straight to staff, emailing public teachers across the state directly with the offer.
Education Minister Ben Carroll, who is also deputy prime minister, said going straight to staff was necessary after a previous union-approved offer was rejected in a vote by rank-and-file teachers.
“I signed an agreement with the Australian Education Union last time, an agreement that they themselves described as good,” Carroll said on Friday.
“What I decided this time is that, after meeting with the party and making an offer, I instructed the secretary to also send the offer to every government teacher present.
“This is a water deal… when I talked to the teachers, they told me. They don’t want to strike. They want another offer, and this is what I’m doing.”
AEU Victorian president Justin Mullaly said the government should never have gone directly to members, and that if the government was “really serious” about helping teachers, it would not ignore long-term school funding concerns.
The revised salary agreement would also mean teachers would need meeting hours cut in half from 80 to 40 hours a year, and teachers above the salary scale would be given an annual lump sum payment.
The Allan government will hope the amended version can prevent a long trip that could disrupt classes in hundreds of state schools on July 23.
The school staff voted 24-hour statewide strike and banning unpaid overtime during a meeting of more than 100 union representatives this week.
The AEU will face intense pressure from within its ranks to return to the negotiating table, with members of its left wing pushing for compromise on key issues.
However, one vocal group signaled its intention to organize a strike if the AEU agreed to anything less than what it called “our red lines”, before the revised version was released.
They included a 35 percent salary increase over three years for teachers, reductions in class size and face-to-face instruction time, and a maximum of one hour of meetings per week.
Victoria’s vocal union members plan to push for better conditions for education support workers, including a pay agreement with teachers and lunch breaks.
A separate union group, a junior branch of Keilor Downs College, organized a rally outside Carroll’s office in Niddrie on Thursday.
George Pattichis, president of the AEU sub-branch at Keilor Downs College, said the meeting was called because members were “tired of waiting for our union leaders to act”.
“Our leaders called off the strike in the 2nd term to come up with a completely inadequate agreement. We rejected the plan because it did nothing to address our unbearable workload and left education workers further behind,” Pattichis said.
Mullaly refused to be implicated in whether the group was undermining his work to secure a payment agreement for members.
Up to 35,000 teachers, principals and educational support staff he left work for a day in March in pursuit of a better deal on pay and conditions, taking to the streets of Melbourne’s CBD in the state’s first teacher strike in 13 years.
Teachers were planning to strike again in May, but the strikes were called off after the union reached its limit basic agreement with the government.
Keilor Downs College humanities teacher Liz Walsh said Thursday’s meeting should send a message to the government.
“Not only are they negotiating with union leadership, they’re negotiating with rank-and-file activists, and we’re not in a position to reach a better deal that fails to meet the needs of all school employees: teachers and educational support staff,” Walsh said.
Carroll said the government wants union leaders to present a revised version to members and end the strike.
“Students should be in classes and parents should not be left scrambling to find childcare or lose a day’s pay,” he said. “Let’s keep the kids in school next Thursday.”
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Caroline Schelle is an education reporter, and joined The Age in 2022. He previously covered the courts at AAP.Connect through X or email address.
