Catholic teachers march on church and state
BY JOHN GAUCI
SYDNEY — Three thousand primary and secondary school teachers at NSW Catholic schools struck for 24 hours and rallied here on March 29 against Catholic employment authorities' failure to settle a dispute over pay and working conditions.
Teachers traveled from as far as Wollongong to attend the rally in Sydney, and similar rallies were held in Tamworth and Lismore.
Members of the Independent Education Union (IEU), meeting at the Masonic Centre in Sydney, overwhelmingly passed a motion condemning the government's pay offer as "grossly inadequate and constituting an insult to the profession".
The government is proposing a 2% pay rise this year and next, followed by a 9% pay rise, conveniently situated after the next state election. Michael Costa, secretary of the NSW Labor Council told the meeting, "Why haven't the Catholic employing authorities entered into negotiations? They can't continue to hide behind the government."
Messages of support were read out from IEU branches across the country, the NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF), the Ontario Catholic Teachers Federation and a group of Ontario teachers on exchange.
Union general secretary Dick Shearman was incensed. "The Catholic Church is the biggest private sector employer in Australia. It's not right that they can't negotiate." He accused the education department of using taxpayers' money to depict teachers as under-worked and overpaid. The NSW Department of Education and Training recently spent more than $8000 on a newspaper advertisement condemning teachers' bans on the English Language and Literacy Assessment test, suggesting that parents address their complaints to teachers' unions.
Teachers claim that ELLA doesn't appropriately measure learning but is used to rank schools and determine where teachers will be placed. They are refusing to participate in the literacy testing until the department and the Labor minister, John Aquilina, guarantee that no school will lose its specialist teachers assigned to teach students with learning difficulties.
Shearman said, "Today's teachers are a role model to students in Catholic schools. We're not saying 'Oh, it's too complicated' or 'it's too difficult', we're taking a stand on justice." He said the NSWTF and the IEU had a united position on the issue. The two unions are considering joint industrial action.
After the meeting, the teachers marched on Polding House, which houses the Catholic Commission for Employment Relations, and finally to the office of the Premier Bob Carr.