Casual relief teachers in Victoria are being ripped off, Alex Milne argues, because they are at the mercy of private hiring agencies.
Alex Milne
Victoria Police removed the last few protesters on October 30 from the site of a hotly-contested new highway extension between Ararat and Buangor, reports Alex Milne.
Efforts to save sacred trees in Djab Wurrung country have been dealt a savage blow. Alex Milne reports.
A red alert was issued by the Djab Wurrung Heritage Protection Embassy on September 11 after police and VicRoad workers arrived near the protest camp sites set up by Traditional Owners to protect sacred trees from a $672 million highway duplication project in south-western Victoria.
Support for the Djab Wurrung Heritage Protection Embassy continues to grow, nearly a month after the Victorian Labor government gave Traditional Owners and supporters two weeks to vacate the protest camp site.
Support is continuing to grow for the Djab Wurrung Heritage Protection Embassy, in south-western Victoria, in the face of police threats. The protest camp was set up by Traditional Owners to defend sacred lands under threat from a highway duplication project that will cost $672 million to save motorists an estimated three minutes of travel time.
Teaching is one of the lowest-paid professions and casual relief teachers (CRTs) are among the most marginalised and exploited workers in Victoria.
Our daily pay rate is $293. Think that sounds good? Well, there are about 200 teaching days a year. If we were to work every one of those days, we would still earn less than $60,000 a year — that is the maximum pay we can expect, after a minimum of four years at university.
But we are emergency teachers; we can expect to work, at most, about 100 days. That is less than $30,000 a year.