About 1000 Queensland teachers rallied outside state parliament on June 20 to protest the Campbell Newman Liberal National Party government's "unacceptable" offer on pay and conditions in current enterprise bargaining talks. The government is proposing a 2.7% annual pay rise in return for cuts in rights and conditions.
“The fight we teachers are having here today is the same fight all the other unions in the state public sector are having,” Graham Moloney, Queensland Teachers Union (QTU) state secretary, told the crowd. “We will stand in solidarity with every other union facing job losses.
“The government’s 2.7% offer will put in jeopardy everything we have fought for in the last 18 years. The QTU has been around for 123 years. Governments come and governments go. We will still be around when this mob is gone.”
Student teacher Billy McCaskill condemned the government’s plan for new teachers to face a starting salary freeze for their first three years in the classroom. He asked, to rousing cheers: “I was offered a six-figure salary for a job in the mining industry, but chose to stay with teaching. Where’s the government’s commitment to us?”
QTU president Kevin Bates said: “We will not allow the government to take away the rights that unions have won over decades. They will be held to account.
“We’ll be back, for as long as it takes.
The crowd chanted slogans such as “Teachers' conditions are not for sale”, “state schools, great schools!" and “QTU! QTU!”.
