Teachers and school support staff in South Australia staged a very successful strike on 29 November, staring down a state government determined to trash their hard-won conditions, security and essential services in schools. 
After a rally last month, 77 percent of Australian Education Union members voted in support of the half-day strike. More than 200 public schools and preschools were closed, while others resorted to “alternative programs” on a skeleton staff. 
Mass rallies were held in a range of rural centres as well as Adelaide, as education workers showed their power for the first time in more than a decade. 
The 3,500-strong Adelaide rally sprawled like a heaving sea of red t-shirts, bandannas and flags in front of the Education Department in central Adelaide. “We teach students to stand up for themselves, now it’s our turn”, read one bright red placard. 
Numerous schools brought their own banners and marched in contingents. Many of the teachers took part in the last strike in 2008, but there were also many newer teachers (like myself) on strike for the first time. 
The camaraderie and sense of defiance were palpable – the 20 teachers from my school gathered enthusiastically around our banner and, with thousands of others, voted with great gusto for a motion to continue the campaign with further industrial and political action. 
Rob Lucas, the state treasurer, who is leading the push against the teachers, made the usual condemnations of the strike. Predictably, every effort was made to brand teachers’ modest 3.5 percent wage claim as selfish, and to bemoan the disruption supposedly caused to parents. But this didn’t deter the workers, nor the many supportive parents who showed their solidarity by keeping their children at home. 
Lucas has made it plain that, if he gets his way, salary increases will be sacrificed for new government “initiatives” like an “entrepreneurship program” or literacy programs (read: more work for teachers, with no extra hours or support).
 His negotiating team also insists that the agreement must include greater “flexibility”, which means a further increase in insecure contract staffing and the stripping away of crucial entitlements. 
Also under threat is the union’s role in school decision making. The government wants to reduce the power of the Personnel Advisory Committees, mandatory bodies in schools that facilitate union input into employment matters. 
Finally, the government’s threat to remove “the Commitment” from the agreement – a list of essential services that the government commits to funding like information technology, special education/disability programs, new arrivals intensive language centres and a host of others – has galvanised a wide range of staff into action. It is now as clear that the government wants to open the way for cuts and the undermining of conditions in an already strained system.
Although the wage increases are important – a 3.5 percent increase would mean South Australian teachers still earn only mid-range wages compared to teachers in other states – most educators see the battle as about much more than just pay. For most, it is just as much about the welfare of children and young people. 
What is needed now is an urgent commitment from the union to more strikes early in the new year. The strategy of seeking out Christmas and New Year media plugs, put forward at a recent branch council meeting, will not be enough to apply real pressure. 
A strike in the first week of term one next year, would help create a political crisis for the government. The evidence is it would be enthusiastically taken up by education workers. 
This is the sort of action needed to secure an agreement that does not sell out wages and conditions.
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Paul Coats is a teacher and AEU sub-branch secretary at a suburban Adelaide high school

Paul Coats

‘Now it’s our turn’: teachers strike in South Australia

South Australian teachers and school support officers have entered a new phase of combat against the Liberal state government in response to the government’s refusal to continue negotiations for a new enterprise agreement. 
A rally of more than 500 teachers and support staff outside the Department of Education on 26 October marked a modest but important escalation in the campaign. The state branch of the Australian Education Union is now hoping to ballot members for a half-day strike on Wednesday, 26 November, in an effort to intensify the pressure. 
The state treasurer, Rob Lucas, is demanding “efficiencies” (a reduction in conditions such as workload protections and placement rights) in exchange for what are misleadingly called wage “increases”. In fact, the increases on offer are less than inflation, and therefore amount to a real wage cut. 
Paltry wage increases are in part a legacy of 16 years of Labor government in South Australia. The Weatherill Labor government, in power from 2011 to 2018, stared down unions and pledged to cap public sector wage rises at 1.5 percent per year (read wage cuts), a move Business SA applauded as a “champagne moment”. It’s no wonder then that the new Liberal education minister, John Gardener, feels confident to do the same. 
There are more than 27,000 teachers, school and preschool staff in South Australia. South Australian teachers are the second lowest paid in the country, only Tasmanian teachers earning less. Meanwhile the cost of living continues to skyrocket. Electricity prices have increased by almost 20 percent over the last year, transport by 6 percent and housing by 5 percent according to the South Australian Council of Social Services. 
Wage increases of at least 6 percent per annum are needed to improve the situation for education staff, coupled with a real commitment to addressing the pressures teachers face at work, including high workload, lack of support for the increased numbers of students with special needs and the blowout in short-term, insecure contracts. 
The last major confrontation between South Australian educators and the government was in 2008, when teachers and support staff struck multiple times for a 21 percent increase over three years. Thousands participated, and the strikes and mass rallies generated a climate of solidarity and confidence on the part of school staff that was felt for years afterwards. 
Over the last 10 years, however, the union has become complacent and pliant to Labor in office, refusing to confront the government seriously despite steadily declining wage increases in successive agreements and massive growth of tenuous short-term teaching contracts. 
Permanency rates have dropped rapidly, from 87 percent in 2011 to 75 percent in 2016. Meanwhile the TAFE sector, represented by the same union, has been gutted under Labor. This has paved the way for the recent budget announcement of the closure of a further seven campuses by the Liberal government.
The lack of industrial action for more than 10 years means that many teachers are demoralised, union membership has declined, and younger teachers have been denied any experience of serious rank-and-file union militancy.
The recent effort to organise protest action as part of agreement negotiations is long overdue, and the call for strike action welcome. However, it is lamentable that even when it was clear that government negotiators were stalling, branch officials delayed protest plans until late October. 
It’s now crucial that union members support the call for a half-day strike, even though this strike is likely to be held just two weeks before the end of the school year, without time for serious follow-through. In 2008 it took rolling strike action over many months to seriously pressure the government. 
What is needed is a commitment to urgent and determined action that can galvanise members and build solidarity for the potentially bitter fight ahead. Without this we face the real threat that, in desperation, an agreement that makes no improvement to conditions, and that accepts real wage reductions, will be foisted upon a demoralised membership. 
If the strike on 26 November is a moderate success, it can lay the basis for more united industrial action and the kind of solidarity in action that we need to prove that South Australian educators can win the respect we deserve.
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Paul Coats is AEU secretary at a suburban high school in Adelaide.

South Australian teachers escalate their campaign

On a warm and sun-drenched Adelaide morning in February, about 20 refugee students and some teachers gathered in the quadrangle of Adelaide Secondary School of English to hand-paint, draw, write and glue a colourful assortment of placards.
They read, “Students say education not detention” and “Welcome refugees”. A huge sign said “Let them stay”. In another classroom, even more students and teachers were organising to paint huge signs that say “Close Nauru” and “It’s not fair”.
At ASSOE, we have been spurred into action and solidarity with many people, including numerous school communities, who have taken a stand against the High Court’s recent ruling that could lead to the forced return of hundreds of refugees to Nauru and Manus Island. The mere suggestion that we organise our own protest was enough – I was inundated with people wanting to be involved however they could.
At lunchtime, many staff and students gathered to protest and take photos to distribute online. A whole class that missed the event insisted on holding their own protest later in the day.
Several part time staff who were not rostered that day also pledged to be included and sent photos and messages of support to be displayed alongside the rest. After the protest, a prominent wall of the school was adorned with the placards, keeping the issue alive and a lingering source of discussion.
The recent history of young people removed from school communities means staff at ASSOE are well aware that our own refugee students are at risk of similar treatment at the whim of Border Force and the government.
In 2014, two students in community detention, both former students at my school who were studying at nearby Woodville High School, were whisked away in the dead of night and taken to Darwin’s Wickham Point Detention Centre, sparking a huge campaign by teachers and students to “‘Bring them home”.
Understandably, many frightened community detainees, including ASSOE students, facing a similar prospect, fled underground for fear of being detained.
Last year a refugee student from Brisbane’s Yeronga High, Mojgan Shamsalipoor, was taken back to detention, sparking the “Free Mojgan” campaign that led to teachers protesting and walking out of school for an afternoon.
In both these cases teachers, the AEU, SRC and students at my school were moved to take action and show our solidarity by holding protests at lunchtime, taking solidarity photos, signing petitions and attending community protests.
This won’t be the last time we protest against this government’s cruelty – teachers are prepared to support our own students if they are kidnapped by Border Force in the dead of night. An empty chair in the classroom, a classmate and a student lost would not be taken lightly.

Teachers and students stand up for refugees in Adelaide

High school students in Adelaide have been galvanised into protest in defence of classmates being victimised and abused by the federal government’s cruel refugee system.
Students at two secondary schools held a lunchtime protest on 26 August, calling for justice for refugees and in particular demanding support for 17 Vietnamese community detention students who have gone underground to escape deportation.
At Adelaide Secondary School of English, about 20 students from the students representative council, many of them also refugees, displayed handmade placards that said things like “We will help you – you are not alone” and “We are people, not puppets.”
At Woodville High School, dozens of students and teachers protested in front of the school, wearing gags on their mouths to symbolise the silencing effect of detention. The gags were emblazoned with “KEE080”, the code allocated by the Department of Immigration to the vessel that brought the Vietnamese students to Australia in 2011.
Department officials turned up on 26 June at the homes of two Woodville High School students, both from Vietnam, and whisked them away into closed detention. They were given no reason why their community detention was revoked. That night they were flown to Darwin, each terrified teenager surrounded by a ring of brutish Serco security guards, and incarcerated at Wickham Point detention centre.
When the word got out, a further 15 Vietnamese community detainees, all students attending high schools around Adelaide, fled their homes and went underground to evade incarceration or deportation. This was a brave act of defiance. What is more incredible is that the two students detained and sent to Darwin also subsequently escaped and still have not been recaptured.
Three weeks before the lunchtime school protests, there was a well-attended rally of almost 1,000 people on the steps of Parliament House, called by Woodville High School students and their supporters under the banner of #TwoTooMany.
Woodville High student Wathnak Vy – one of the leaders of the campaign – opened the rally with a fiery speech, inspiring the crowd with his raw anger at the government. It was clear that, although the rally was called to “Bring Back our Boys”, the implications of the protests were much broader.
The campaign is not simply a struggle for the 17 young people who now cower in fear of capture. It is a struggle for the thousands of people languishing in inhuman, squalid conditions in Nauru and Manus Island detention centres.
We also should remember the many people, including young people in our care, who continue to live in precarious situations in onshore detention, in community detention or on bridging visas.
Some supporters of the campaign, including some teachers and social workers, have questioned the students’ wisdom in running away and expressed concern for their welfare.
However, it’s absolutely understandable why they would go underground. They potentially are facing state violence, persecution, retribution and poverty if deported back to Vietnam – or a soul-destroying period of indefinite detention in Darwin or an offshore detention centre.
These students took action to defend themselves. They were organised. Undoubtedly they have extensive community support. Any one of us in the same situation would have considered doing the same thing.
What the 17 students perhaps didn’t know at the time they fled was just how much support they would receive from their fellow students and teachers. Refugee resistance, in all its forms, has always been a call for solidarity. The #TwoTooMany campaign is no exception. Wherever those 17 students are, continuing their daily struggle for freedom, at least they know that thousands of people have stood with them and will continue to support them.
In Adelaide, the irony of the loss of 17 Vietnamese young people at the same time as Hieu Van Le (a former Vietnamese refugee) has been sworn in as the new state governor has not gone unnoticed.
It’s promising to see that more and more school students, including at a number of Catholic schools around Australia, are organising opposition to mandatory detention and for refugee justice.
It was also great to see the #TwoTooMany campaign endorse the March in August protest, and organise a sizeable contingent of Woodville High School students for it.
The refugee rights movement needs more young people who are prepared to take a stand against this government’s cruelty – on both sides of the razor wire – and more teachers and parents willing to cheer them on when they do.
[Paul Coats is a teacher at Adelaide Secondary School of English, AEU sub-branch secretary at his site and a member of Socialist Alternative.]

‘Now it’s our turn’: teachers strike in South Australia

South Australian teachers escalate their campaign

Teachers and students stand up for refugees in Adelaide

Adelaide high school students fight for refugee classmates

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