Salaries and status campaign

Furthermore, the Government is aware that:

The continued depression of teacher wages can only result in a shortage of qualified teachers in an era of worldwide teacher shortages. In that event the community will face larger class sizes or the employment of unqualified teachers.

Full funding is a political issue

The Government's actions put the lie to its rhetoric about "respecting" teachers and "valuing" public education. The Government is duplicitously and blatantly determined to exploit teacher professionalism to fill the growing deficiency in public education funding. Hence the absolute necessity of achieving a full funding commitment, whether the salaries claim is finalised by negotiation, arbitration or a combination of these methods.

Given the nature of the work value evidence to be provided by our witnesses in the Industrial Relations Commission case, Conference believes the membership should have high expectations of a just arbitration outcome commensurate with a professional, competitive wage in today's world. However, notwithstanding the best efforts of our witnesses and the Commission, continued action in the community including direct political action will be required to ensure that the Government fully funds any arbitration and/or negotiated increases from Treasury and increases funding to public education.

Progress since Annual Conference 2002

In particular Conference thanks all those members who have offered to be witnesses in the arbitration cases for salaries, casual schoolteachers and TAFE part time casual teachers.

Conference also notes rising membership anger at the Government's paltry and insulting offer resulting in numerous local stop work meetings across the state calling for Federation to organise statewide political action.

As a result of membership activity, progress on our claim has been made many months before the expiry date.

Agreement has been reached on a two-year award and no change to award and regulated conditions (that is, no trade offs). The Government will also consider flowing the quantum results to AMES, Corrective Services and other smaller awards.

Federation will pursue the speedy achievement of these flow-ons.

Furthermore paid advertising, the Vinson Inquiry and negotiations since February 2002 have all helped build community goodwill for our campaign.

Where is the state's money?

This means the Government has made a political decision not to pay. The June 24 State Budget was the 8th Carr Government Budget in surplus. However, yet again the Government cut funding to public schools and TAFE colleges in real terms while boosting private school funding. Apart from the projected surplus and increased revenue raised, there are a number of areas where Government could make savings to divert to public education. For example:

Publicity and political action plan

2. To support members' activities with their communities an information kit for parents will be developed. A parliamentary brief will also be sent to all state politicians and provided to members for their lobbying efforts.

3. The Federation will engage in dialogue with our public education allies about raising the salaries and status of the profession with the aim of producing joint public statements where possible and appropriate. In particular, Federation will seek the support of the P&C Association to publicly call upon the Premier to guarantee, before the commencement of the salaries award hearings, that the salaries outcome will be fully funded by additional NSW Government Treasury funds.

Further, the Federation calls upon the NSW Labor Council to publicly support our salaries claim and join with the Federation to achieve a guarantee from the Premier that the salaries increases will be fully funded from Treasury.

4. Federation will publicise in Education the responses given by politicians to Federation members when they lobby.

5. Federation will publicise the evidence and hearings in the Industrial Relations Commission to ensure the work value of teachers is understood by the community. This will include evidence from the TAFE part time casual teachers' case.

6. On Public Education Day 2003, Federation workplaces called on the Government to make a number of political decisions. As a consequence of Government's failure to heed these calls and dependent on further progress in negotiations, June Council has called a Sky Channel stopwork on July 29. August Council will consider the results of the Sky Channel meetings, the progress of negotiations and determine further appropriate action.

June Council called for the State Government to:

Since June Council the State Government has not met any of these demands. Furthermore it has demonstrated, once again, that it does not value public education, teachers and students by cutting real funding in the State Budget, increasing student fees in TAFE and cutting 1000 jobs from public education to pay for unfunded pre-election promises.

In the context of the Government's actions since June Council, Conference directs Executive to consider a 24 hour strike when formulating a recommendation to Sky Channel.

As well, Federation is to continue to engage in dialogue with other AEU Branches and Associated Bodies, currently involved in a bargaining round, with a view to co-ordinating this action.

7. In recognition that the professional commitment and goodwill of teachers is not to be exploited by government, the Federation will identify and treat appropriate government and DET initiatives as extra claims not to be implemented. The list of items for non cooperation is to be considered by the Sky Channel meetings.

8. That if further industrial action is required by the membership to secure salary justice, no minimal supervision will be provided in any primary, secondary, central, small, SSP, TAFE, Corrective Services, AMES, OCAA or Juvenile Justice workplaces.

9. If salaries justice is not achieved by negotiation or salaries arbitration in 2003, Federation Executive should call a day stopwork in week 2, term 1, 2004. A mass meeting on this day should consider prolonged strike action.

10. Conference recognises that issues of remuneration go beyond matters of salary. This Conference flags that addressing the superannuation needs of teachers will form a significant component of the next salaries campaign.