Teachers at Western Australian schools are going on strike for the first time in a decade

Thousands of public school teachers across Western Australia (WA) will strike for half a day tomorrow (Tuesday), the first time such industrial action has been taken in the state in more than a decade. Angry and frustrated at the appalling conditions in schools, teachers will converge on Perth, the state capital, with demonstrations also being organized in regional centers such as Broome, Albany, Geraldton, Kalgoorlie and Karratha.

Protesting Western Australian teachers (Photo: State School Teachers Union of Western Australia)

The industrial action is for a new pay and benefits agreement between Premier Roger Cook’s Labor state government and the State School Teachers Union of Western Australia (SSTUWA). The SSTUWA has been negotiating with the government since October. The log of claims includes a 12 percent pay increase over two years, 7 percent in the first year, followed by 5 percent in the second year.

The government’s latest offer is an 11 percent increase spread over three years, starting with a 5 percent increase in the first year and 3 percent in the following two years. This amounts to a real wage cut.

Whether it is 11 percent over three years proposed by the government or 12 percent over two years by the union, neither addresses what teachers have sacrificed over the past four years. Amid the skyrocketing cost of living, the Labor government and unions have enforced a freeze on public sector wages.

The punitive pay cut policy imposed by previous Labor Prime Minister Mark McGowan affected 150,000 public sector workers, as part of an austerity policy dictated by the corporate establishment. In an attempt to quell public sector opposition, the government later imposed a massive $350,000 fine on the nurses’ union for taking strike action against the wage cap.

The government’s offer to teachers is a pittance, in circumstances where the government announced a surplus of $3.7 billion in the last revision of the 2023-2024 state budget, based on rising royalties on iron ore. The state’s Labor government has a historic majority, with 53 of the 59 seats in the lower house of parliament.

In a media statement, SSTUWA president Matt Jarman described the latest government offer as an “insult” that failed to take into account “significant workload issues” and class sizes that are “the largest in WA compared to anywhere in the country”. He said there was a “crisis” in the public school sector.

To describe the deal as an “insult” and to speak of a “crisis” in public schools is a massive understatement on both fronts.

The terrible state of affairs in public schools is not a new phenomenon; successive Labor and Liberal National state and federal governments have kept public school funding to a minimum for decades.

However, the crisis has now reached a qualitatively higher level. Classrooms are at a breaking point, as the worst ever teacher shortage is fueled by excessive workloads, real pay cuts, increasing student disengagement, violence and behavioral problems, and COVID-19 infections. The curriculum is becoming increasingly regressive, aimed at artificially inflating standardized test scores and influenced by militarism through school programs linked to the AUKUS alliance.

Many teachers have tried to cope with the unbearable workload by reducing their hours, working as temporary teachers or leaving the profession entirely. More than 6,000 teachers have left the profession in Western Australia in the past four years. As a result, hundreds of classrooms lack a regular or well-qualified teacher.

In WA, this crisis has been highlighted in numerous union surveys, independent reports and the Education Department’s own research.

In the union’s 2023 State of Schools survey, a whopping 90 percent of respondents said their workload was currently high or very high. More than 32 percent reported working more than 40 hours, another 30 percent worked more than 50 hours and another 10 percent worked more than 60 hours.

Of the school principals, 73 percent reported a shortage of staff at their school. Another 39 percent reported working more than 50 hours per week and 23 percent said they worked more than 60 hours per week.

In a desperate bid to solve a crippling workforce crisis, the government this year hired 100 foreign teachers and adopted a policy of hiring unqualified staff. Last month, the union reported that 7 percent of teachers hired from the start of the year had not yet completed training or had limited enrollment.

Recent social media posts reflect the reality in schools: “A pay increase would be great, but it’s working conditions that are driving teachers away and creating a chronic teacher shortage,” one teacher wrote.

Another explained: “At the moment at my school (in rural WA) we are short of 5 FT (full time) staff. The rest of us are dealing with collapsed classrooms, causing even more stress. My school has not had an English teacher since the end of the third semester and has been advertising for an English teacher since August of last year. Since then, I think we’ve had a total of two registrations.

“New teachers do well if they last a semester. I have a student whose last school was (in) Hedland and they told me they had six English teachers last year. All graduates. Everyone stop.

“Since the last decent pay rise seven years ago, inflation has caused prices to rise by 25 percent, while teacher salaries have risen by 11 percent. The union’s 7 percent demand, if accepted, would still represent an effective pay cut in real terms.”

The government is fully aware of the scale of the crisis. A survey commissioned by SSTUWA and chaired by Carmen Lawrence, former Education Minister and Premier of WA, involved meetings across the state and the assessment of more than 130 submissions from parents, teachers and education experts.

Lawrence’s report, entitled ‘Facing the Facts’, concluded: ‘The profession is at a breaking point (…) public schools are starved of funding and support as they cope with increasing curriculum demands and the challenge of delivering many more educate disadvantaged students and students with increasingly complex needs. The cumulative impact of frequent policy changes, (…) the intensity and complexity of the workload, lowered morale, increased burnout and created an environment in which teachers feel undervalued and disrespected. Many teachers, especially in disadvantaged schools, pay a high personal price for continuing to practice their profession.”

The report made no mention of the past decades of sell-out deals, deliberately engineered by governments and signed by unions, that led to the crisis.

The SSTUWA director has claimed in the log of claims that “there will be NO compromise or any reduction of conditions and rights.” This statement is belied by the union’s record. Such comments from highly paid union officials have been heard many times before as they signed agreements accepting pay cuts, inadequate resources and the maintenance of excessive workloads.

The last SSTUWA agreement accepted impossible class sizes of up to 32 students for years 4–10. Even this number is routinely exceeded due to the staffing crisis. The latest agreement also contained clauses that increased pressure on teacher performance, including breaches of “Duties Other Than Teaching” (DOTT). This is time scheduled outside of face-to-face teaching and is intended for preparing materials, planning lessons, keeping records and writing reports.

Such deteriorating conditions are not unique to WA, but are reflected nationally in teacher agreements.

In the past two years, sell-off agreements have been imposed in almost every state. In 2022, the Australian Education Union (AEU) in Victoria rammed through a deal with the Labor government that imposed a pay cut of less than 2 percent and did nothing to address intolerable working conditions. Forty percent of teachers opposed the deal, which was pushed through through union misinformation, censorship and undemocratic processes, while the union fraudulently claimed a ‘victory’ (see: “Australian Education Union is pushing through to cut Victorian teachers’ pay and conditions”).

In New South Wales, teachers held three statewide work stoppages in 2021 and 2022 to combat workloads and poor pay and working conditions. In November 2022, leaders of the New South Wales Teachers Federation called off all strike action and urged teachers to support the election of a Labor state government in May 2023, claiming this would improve wages and working conditions. Last week, Minn’s government announced cuts of $148 million to public schools this year and $1.4 billion over four years.

Early this year, the AEU in South Australia followed suit, imposing a sell-off deal that was in line with the Malinauskas Labor government’s austerity agenda, dictated by the banks and international lending institutions.

For years, teachers unions have worked to diffuse anger over wages and working conditions. They have sought to isolate teachers from each other and from broader sections of workers, who are increasingly calling for action to combat the reduction in wages and working conditions. To fight for sustainable workloads, decent wages, and high-quality public education, teachers must build their own fighting organizations, rank-and-file committees independent of the union apparatus, and work with teachers in other states and broader sections. of the working class, including other public sector workers.

We urge teachers to contact the Commission on Public Education today to discuss this perspective.

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Twitter: @CFPE_Australia

By VaselineApril 22, 2024