Return to teaching service for support staff lost

By Bob Lipscombe

DET cost cutting has spread to hit staff support officer positions.

Following a move to change investigator positions in the Employee Performance and Conduct (EPAC) Unit to be filled as public service positions rather than the higher paid teachers positions (Education, December 3), the Department of Education and Training (DET) has decided that all future staff support officer positions will be filled as public service positions from November 30, 2007, with no recognition of teaching experience.

Currently, approximately 15 of the 45 staff support officers employed across the state come from teaching backgrounds. As a consequence of this latest decision, any future successful applicant from the teaching service will be employed on a significantly lower salary and have no right of return to a position in the Education Teaching Service. This change, of course, has significant implications for the support these officers are often called upon to provide to teachers, principals and schools. In a move which showed a total disregard for teachers, DET even attempted to impose these new conditions retrospectively. Teachers who had applied for two positions advertised on the North Coast were advised after applications had closed that if they were successful they would lose their teaching service status and be employed at a much lower salary. Only intervention by Federation forced DET to give an undertaking that, if successful, such applicants would be employed on the salary and conditions applicable when applications closed.

It what appears in reality little more than a crude cost-cutting measure, DET argues that it is unfair to have some staff support officer positions occupied by people from the teaching service paid at a higher rate than those filled under public service conditions. Federation does not disagree, arguing, however, that the answer is, in both these and similar positions, that the public service salaries should be brought into line with those paid to those from the teaching service.

Federation is seeking to reverse this latest decision but, with Federation being forced to pursue the dispute about changes to EPAC investigator status and salary in the Industrial Relations Commission, the dispute about staff support officer positions seems destined to follow.

Bob Lipscombe is Senior Vice President.

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December 2007 contents