Teachers from Sydney Institute's Design Centre at Enmore stop work for the afternoon on November 26.

Negotiations on TAFE dispute continue

By

Bob Lipscombe and Joan Lemaire

Stopwork action to proceed on December 9.

Over the last two weeks there have been negotiations with senior Government officials to attempt to resolve the TAFE dispute. To date, however, no settlement has been possible and both TAFE and school working conditions remain under serious threat.

Action must be taken now. Because the attack on TAFE has significant implications for all teachers, Federation Council has determined that a stopwork meeting of up to three hours will be held on Wednesday December 9. These meetings will include all TAFE teachers and delegates from schools.

Attendance is vital. Reports will be provided to the meetings on progress, or otherwise, made in negotiations with the Government and if necessary consider proposals for further industrial action in early 2010.

Members should check the Federation website for venues of meetings and any developments and negotiations between the Government and Federation. If there is an acceptable settlement, the stopwork meeting will consider a recommendation to accept the settlement.

The dispute centres on the fact that as a result of the Department of Education and Training's (DET's) successful application in the Industrial Relations Commission, TAFE teachers can now be required to teach up to 35 hours face-to-face per week at any time between 6am and 10pm, Monday to Saturday. In addition, they will be required to attend for 35 hours per week and teach an additional 36 hours per year. If long service leave is taken before and after vacations, the whole period will be counted as long service leave.

If these conditions are allowed to stand for TAFE, it is clear school teachers will be next. School teachers could be required to teach increased numbers of hours, attend school for longer periods, lose their long service leave to fund school vacations and be directed on how to use their release time. An attempt was made by DET to apply conditions such as these to teachers in their 1999 award application. Thousands of teachers showed their contempt for this attack by throwing copies of the award application over the gates of Parliament House in Macquarie Street at that time. Unfortunately, there are those in DET who would like to resurrect this application.

The strength of Federation is based on all our members working together to support public education and each other. We cannot allow the Department to divide us. If no resolution is reached, school-based delegates will hear the report and consider what joint action of school and TAFE members will be necessary to protect the working conditions of all public education teachers.

Bob Lipscombe is the President and Joan Lemaire is the Senior Vice President.

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December 2009 contents