The Allan government is facing teacher strikes in the lead-up to November’s state election after the Australian Education Union on Monday rejected its offer of a 17 per cent pay increase over four years.
The pay offer is the first tabled by the government in a wage dispute that has already dragged on for eight months.
Public school teachers are planning to walk off the job next Tuesday in an escalation of an industrial dispute that has cleaved a divide between Victoria’s long-term Labor government and an influential union that campaigned for its re-election at the last two state polls.
The AEU is pushing for a a 35 per cent pay bump over three years to bring Victorian teachers in line with their NSW counterparts. A graduate teacher earns $78,801 in Victoria compared with $90,177 in NSW and the pay gap between experienced classroom teachers is $15,000.
Victorian teachers and the AEU leadership remain incensed at secret cuts to the state school funding exposed by this masthead, which will leave government schools $2.4 billion worse off between now and 2031.
The secret cuts, which the government’s Budget and Finance Committee of Cabinet chaired by Premier Jacinta Allan approved in March 2024 against the protestations of Education Minister Ben Carroll, mean that 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 needs-based formula all states have agreed to.
The Commonwealth government is committed to funding the balance but only once states fully fund their share.
In Victoria, the only jurisdiction in Australia without a published, long-term plan to fully fund the Gonski reforms, government schools will this year receive just 70.4 per cent from the state and 20 per cent from the Commonwealth.
The gap between what government schools get in Victoria and what students need is currently about $1.38 billion.
The simplest way of closing the gap is to pay teachers more through an enterprise bargaining agreement but Treasurer Jaclyn Symes is struggling to contain public sector wages which, according to a mid-year financial report tabled in state parliament last week, topped $23 billion in the second half of last year.
Carroll has publicly vowed to deliver teachers a “proper pay rise” and provide nationally competitive wages across the government school sector.
The government was hoping to avoid industrial action next week by making what it considers a generous pay offer.
The proposal is for a one-off 8 per cent pay rise this year, followed by annual 3 per cent rises over the next three years. A meeting of the AEU Victorian branch executive voted on Monday night to reject the proposal as “completely unacceptable” and hold firm for a better deal.
“This offer will do nothing to fix the staffing shortage crisis in Victoria’s public schools,” AEU Victorian branch president Justin Mullaly said in a statement issued late on Monday night.
“How can Education Minister Ben Carroll call Victoria ‘the education state’ while teachers, principals and education support staff are overworked, underpaid, and already leaving the profession in droves?
“The Allan Labor government is overseeing the country’s lowest funded public education
system and is the employer to the nation’s lowest paid public schools teachers.”
AEU members working in public schools will stop work for 24 hours next Tuesday in the first, day-long strike of an increasingly bitter industrial campaign. It would be the first statewide strike action by Victorian teachers since Labor returned to government.
Chip Le Grand leads our state politics reporting team. He previously served as the paper’s chief reporter and is a journalist of 30 years’ experience.Connect via email.From our partners
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