Long road to equity

As part time casuals await the decision in the pro rata case before the Industrial Relations Commission, DIANNE MULLIN outlines the history of a long campaign for equity.

"They'll never grant it. It'll cost too much." If we believed that, we'd never have begun.

What seems like a hundred years ago, at a meeting of the TAFE Part Time Casual Teachers Special Interest Group (PTC SIG), we talked about how our union could help us. Ideas flew around, including the usual gripe of "Nobody worries about us".

Fortunately, that wasn't the case. Once we were prepared to get going Federation supported us every step of the way.

Our path was something like this:

• addressing TAFE TA Council on why we needed special help
• educating our own full time colleagues on the discrepancies between full and so-called "part-timers", in pay, in leave conditions, long service leave, in superannuation, in work areas and in job security
• nominating and electing a PTC to TAFE TA executive to ensure that our needs were being understood by those who could help in practical ways
• arranging for PTC activist training days
• planning a "There's nothing casual about teaching" red sticker day to raise local awareness
• wearing badges to remind the community that there are 15, 000 PTCs teaching 70 per cent of the hours in TAFE
• lobbying parliamentarians
• addressing regional Labour Councils
• writing letters, emails and articles
• talking to our students about the implications of casualisation on a workforce
• speaking at TAFE TA branch meetings arranging a day at Parliament House with the help of sympathetic members to raise awareness of our plight
• preparing witness statements and testifying in court as Federation sought to change the award to grant pro rata pay and conditions for those on a regular program of eight hours or more per week
• maintaining a roster of supporters in the courtroom for our witnesses while the were giving evidence
• rallying outside the IRC on the first and last days of the case.

There were down sides -- some members who testified were immediate victims of collapsed classes, families were denied hours as all these meetings were enormously time consuming, and families and friends had their patience sorely tried as we became single issue conversationalists.

There have been two results so far that make the whole exercise worthwhile.

Firstly, enjoying a sense of community with the people who have worked together for so long, respecting and allowing us all our right to contribute ideas and effort -- from the members of the SIG, to the Federation Officers and staff, and the legal team. Encouragement was given every step of the way.

Secondly, knowing that we have worked to right an injustice makes us feel that we are fitting teachers. If we allowed our society to discriminate without challenge against "casual" workers, then we would have no right to call ourselves "teachers".

One of the Commissioners asked: "Is this just a matter of nomenclature then?" We all wanted to cheer him. PTCs are as well qualified, as conscientious and as responsible as our full time colleagues. There are not two kinds of teacher -- as our employer argues -- but two names. The drastically falling numbers of full time teachers mean that the same work is being done by PTCs. Someone is doing it!

Stories abound of meetings that are not budgeted for (that is, where attendance is unpaid); in-service days where PTCs are invited to attend but can't be paid and administrative work that is regarded as compulsory unpaid duties. Head teachers are being placed in the cruel and embarrassing position of implementing these injustices.

Related duties hours and non-teaching weeks are spent on research, preparation, photocopying, planning assessments, marking, entering marks, correlating marking, data entry into CLAMS (frequently unpaid), helping individual students and de-briefing/supporting one another. Most PTCs would spend more than the allocated 10 hours per week and a couple of non-teaching weeks that full time teachers are paid for doing all of these things. So-called PTCs aren't. Yet many of us do exactly the same non-classroom work.

Federation hopes there will be a decision before Christmas.

Dianne Mullin is a TAFE PTC and member of the SIG.

For further information

October 2004 contents