“Addressing the daily realities for members in workplaces across the teaching service remains the unwavering focus of the union’s work”
A coordinated and targeted campaign to more deeply engage and ignite the membership on the unfinished business of the More Than Thanks campaign — unsustainable workload — was launched at Annual Conference.
While significant public commitments and delivery of the same by the NSW Government and senior officers of the Department are to be commended as the rollback of Local Schools, Local Decisions continues, addressing the daily realities for members in workplaces across the teaching service remains the unwavering focus of the union’s work.
Federation’s policy position, extensively debated at Annual Conference, acknowledges workload and the psychological and physical health and safety of teachers as not only fundamental to individual health, job satisfaction and overall fulfillment but a determining factor of the system’s capacity to attract and retain the teachers we need, and our students deserve. Commitments to relief from face-to-face teaching time underpin the policy position.
Analysis of the ‘core work’ of teachers and decoupling workload from work intensity is central to Federation’s strategy. Activating members to ensure that deprofessionalising and deskilling of the teaching profession in the name of ‘reducing administrative burden’ became central to the membership’s position.
Winding back 12 long years of managerialism through the previous government’s ideological and economic rationalist devolutionary policy, Local Schools, Local Decisions will require a concentrated, broad ranging strategic endeavour.
“Commitments to relief from face to-face teaching time underpin the policy position”
Changing the nature of teachers’ work must directly correlate with a fundamental and seismic change of culture in schools. To that end, Annual Conference actions include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Federation conducting a short, quantitative and qualitative survey of the membership, for the purposes of future negotiations and campaign directions
- facilitate Federation Workplace Committees undertaking ‘workload audits’ in their schools to inform workplace and broader campaigning
- develop various fact sheets, including on release time, hours of work and the right to disconnect, to support implementation of the campaign at a workplace level
- providing clear advice to members in schools on the maximum requirements of before or after school meetings, to ensure total meeting time of all meetings per week does not exceed one hour
- supporting Organisers to use their Work Health and Safety Right of Entry to greater effect against suspected or known contraventions of the Work Health and Safety Act, including regarding the failure to consult
- utilising the Industrial Relations Act, Work Health and Safety Act and other legislation to pursue betterments in working conditions in the areas of both physical and psychological health of teachers
- pursuing the implementation of positions responsible for teachers’ health and safety and ‘staff wellbeing’, akin to Department Staff Welfare Officers. The positions would be allocated and available to schools.
Targeted and specialist resources, including officers of the Department available in schools, remains critical in the delivery of better outcomes for teachers and the capacity to see real change in schools. Risk management processes where identification, assessment of risk, control of risk and review of control measures must underpin these requirements, with consultation fundamental to all elements.
Devolving these responsibilities to principals is not only legislatively inappropriate but sets them up for failure, given the absence of specialisation, levers and resources to address the identified hazards. Indeed, the abrogation of responsibility for the inadequacy of resourcing the system responses to work health and safety issues is damaging the psychological health of many principals.
Federation will continue to work closely with SafeWork NSW, across the union movement and with NSW Government ministers as appropriate, to ensure employer obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW) and Work Health and Safety Regulation 2017 (NSW) are met. Failing this, redress will be pursued through the relevant legislative jurisdictions.
PROGRESS TO DATE
As tasked by the Annual Conference decision, Federation’s Senior Officers have progressed these matters with the NSW Government, Department, TAFE NSW and the NSW Education Standards Authority as appropriate.
Materials to support the membership to work collectively in their schools, including fact sheets and a workload audit tool, videos and other campaign materials have been designed, developed and distributed through multiple channels for implementation of the campaign.
Federation Organisers have undertaken the appropriate right of entry training to strengthen implementation of the legislated requirement to consult. Further campaign materials and frameworks for consultation are being developed for the use in schools.
Understanding of Psychosocial Hazards — the agreed joint professional learning between Federation and the Department as it relates to the changes in the regulations under the Work Health And Safety Act — has now been delivered to all principals and Federation Representatives. Federation continues to work with the NSW Government, Department and SafeWork NSW on the psychosocial health of teachers, changes to the Return to Work Program and resourcing for ‘Staff Wellbeing’, for the benefit of members.
Measures to legitimately address the well documented increases in occupational violence in schools requires a significant commitment of funding by the Department of Education and NSW Government. The complexities of today’s schools and communities, families and broader societal environment require comprehensive, systemic and cross-agency solutions. These must include measures to address gender-based harassment, discrimination and violence.
Upcoming award negotiations, strengthened by the unprecedented response by members in the workload survey, provide opportunities to address these significant matters of workload, gender equity, flexibility and the nature of teachers’ work. Federation is working closely with the NSW Government to address these matters, as well as with other public sector unions as it relates to gender-based violence in the most feminised of professions.
Federation and the Department continue discussions on the implementation of resources for schools and teachers as it relates to work health and safety, resulting from the financial commitments of the Industrial Relations Commission case of the same, for the benefit of the working conditions of members.
There is no doubt that the former government and its more than a decade of neglect of schools and the teaching profession under Local Schools, Local Decisions is the cause of where we find ourselves today: a profession facing a myriad of complexities and burdens as a result of workload and the nature of teachers’ work, all exacerbated by the well set-in rot of rampant managerialism.
The consequence of workload is much greater than just the impact on teachers themselves but rather the system’s capacity to deliver quality public education for our students.
‘Perhaps more pernicious, because of the effect experienced by students, is the role that increased workload and/or work intensification has in constraining the capacity of teachers to address the complexities of learning needs in schools today . . . Teachers feel conflicted by the immense pull of non-teaching workload, unable to reconcile this work as beneficial to student need but having to comply nonetheless.’
Creagh et al, 2023
There is much to do. Collective, collaborative and united actions by Federation members through this campaign will see us turn the tide on your work, your health and our profession.
“United actions by Federation members… will see us turn the tide on your work, your health and our profession”