Melbourne became a sea of red yesterday, as over 40,000 Victorian teachers, school staff and their supporters took to the streets to demand a 35 percent pay rise, meaningful workload reductions and proper funding for public education.
Trams and trains became makeshift meeting spots for teachers and school staff travelling into the city from all directions, all donning the Australian Education Union’s conspicuous red t-shirt. In a small gesture of solidarity, one driver reportedly redubbed the tram he was driving the “education union tram”.
Meanwhile, at the State Library of Victoria, an announcement went out mid-morning warning of “extreme congestion” in the city: the special kind of congestion caused not by traffic or road incidents, but thousands of striking workers disrupting business-as-usual to demand the schools they and their students deserve.
Of the many homemade placards scattered throughout the sea of red, many were simple and stern: “fund our schools, give us 35%”. In a show of the humour that school staff bring onto the sinking ship of public education, other signs hit a different note. Failed report cards for Jacinta Allan and “More pay = more slay” were highlights.
This was our first strike in thirteen years—and it couldn’t have been more urgent.
We copped an 11 percent real pay cut over the life of our last agreement, more than a month’s pay per year. Our workloads are unbearable, with teachers on average working twelve and a half hours of unpaid overtime each week, and education support staff still not receiving paid lunch breaks. It is no wonder that only three in ten teachers want to stay in education until retirement. Many schools are already struggling to find enough staff.
John, a high school teacher in Melbourne’s outer west, is at the coal face of this crisis. “We’re already short of 35 to 40 teachers, and we have at least three senior classes without a teacher, so those students are already so far behind”, he told Red Flag. “We also have 500 new Year 7 students, and many of them don’t have teachers.”
This results in a crushing workload. “Teachers are running out of their own classes to chase up students without a teacher”. he explained.
Emmy, a student-teacher at the University of Melbourne, has already seen how the unbearable expectations imposed on teachers drive people away from the job. “Half of our teaching cohort has already dropped out of the degree”, she told Red Flag. “We go on placement and see what the conditions are like. We see the insane workload for the lowest pay in the country.”
This is the reality of the so-called education state, as many placards took sarcastic shots at. Burnout, underpaid and overworked teachers and school staff are expected to bear the burden of a public education system wilfully left to rot. Thousands of school staff yesterday refused this status quo.
The Victorian Labor government, however, is intent on making the situation worse for Victorian school staff and our students. It has already denied public schools an additional $2.4 billion in funding through 2031. And just last week, it tried to push for an agreement that would increase our workloads by abolishing caps on maximum teaching hours.
Adding insult to injury, Premier Jacinta Allan issued a special plea to teachers at the eleventh hour, asking us to reconsider the “inconvenience for families” caused by our strike—as if a day of complete or partial “inconvenient” school closures compares to the societal decay resulting from young people being unable to access public education because no one wants to work in it or are being driven out by miserable salaries and insurmountable workloads.
John’s response to this plea is simple. “It was insulting, frankly”, he said. “The Labor Party is just wildly disconnected from education staff and schools.”
For Liz Walsh, a high school teacher in Melbourne’s west and a member of Socialists in Schools, the Labor government just has other priorities. “They’ve got millions for war, private schools and prisons—but not public schools”, she told Red Flag.
Yesterday’s strike was an important step towards putting the priorities of ordinary people—like public education and dignity at work for all—at the forefront of society and building the public schools that teachers, school staff and students deserve.
This fight must continue. We need more strikes to show our collective power.
The union’s leaders, however, are dampening the industrial campaign rather than escalating it. A motion published last Friday by the AEU Victorian state council states that further industrial action next term will be limited to a few bans and a patchwork of half-day stopworks in specific regions. No full-day strikes or statewide strikes are planned. This will reduce the industrial and political impact that was so clear and inspiring from yesterday’s full-day, statewide strike.
To win our demands for a 35 percent pay increase for all school staff and crucial improvements to our working conditions, we can’t back down now.
Socialists in Schools is calling on the Australian Education Union leaders to call a 48-hour statewide stopwork in early term 2, and a mass meeting for all union members to discuss how to move the industrial campaign forward. Sign the open letter to show your support for these demands.
