Queensland teachers fight back against insulting pay offer

Hundreds of teacher unionists rallied outside the Queensland parliament on 24 June to demand a decent pay rise from the state government.

Teachers’ real wages have gone backwards by more than 6 percent in the last three years, but the government is offering an insulting 8 percent pay increase over the next three years, while annual inflation sits at 2.4 percent.

The teachers also want workloads to be reduced. High school teachers’ planning time has not increased since the 1970s, but there has been a dramatic increase in the required work—assessing, marking and writing new unit plans. All of this work is unpaid and unacknowledged by the government.

“I don’t feel like there’s much time to get everything done”, Danielle, a secondary school teacher, told Red Flag at the rally.

Mina, a primary public school teacher, said she thinks teachers deserve a 30 percent pay rise—the rate that rank-and-file network Queensland Teachers Fightback is arguing for.

Mina told Red Flag that she supports taking strike action next term, “to get the point across that change is needed, a pay rise is needed, and we need to be acknowledged for the role we play in young kids’ lives”. Queensland public school teachers haven’t taken statewide industrial action in sixteen years.

If teachers struck, they’d receive support. Construction workers from different job sites rallied alongside the teachers outside parliament. They agreed that teachers deserve the solidarity of other trade unions as they fight for their pay and conditions.

One construction union member said attending the rally was important “to show the QTU [Queensland Teachers’ Union] is not alone. It’s a symbiotic relationship we have with all trade unions”.

The QTU voted last year to support construction workers, whose union has been put into administration by the federal Labor government. Rank-and-file activists in both unions believe that, when one section of the workforce stands up to the bosses, they show all workers the power they have.

Public sector workers are being left behind. Queensland teachers, nurses and firefighters are due to negotiate new contracts this year. But the Crisafulli state government has made it clear that, while there’s money for Olympic stadiums and cops, there’s little to nothing for the working class.

Teachers will have to fight, and take industrial action, to win what they and their students deserve.