TAFE judgment sets dangerous precedent

By

Bob Lipscombe

Outcome of current dispute will have major bearing on negotiations for next school award.

The Government's agreement to commence negotiations with Federation on the TAFE dispute is an encouraging development. Nevertheless, no teacher in either TAFE or schools can afford to relax and assume their working conditions are safe. All teachers must be prepared to take action not only to oppose changes in TAFE but also to defend fundamental working conditions in schools. Unless negotiations are successfully concluded, significant working conditions, including teaching hours, teachers' use of release time, long service leave (LSL) and attendance time remain at risk in both TAFE and schools.

The similarity of many conditions in TAFE with those in schools should not be lost on anyone. It is certainly not lost on many senior Department of Education and Training (DET) officers. For example, up until the recent Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) decision introduced the five-hour increase, TAFE teachers had identical attendance hours to school teachers. The fact that numerous judges over the years have acknowledged that TAFE teachers work far in excess of these attendance hours did not save the teachers in the recent IRC judgment, just the same as it is unlikely to save school teachers if DET pursues similar changes in the IRC at the expiry of the current schools award.

With Federation pursuing increases in release time for school teachers, particularly in primary and infants schools, why wouldn't the government now seek to provide this by simply increasing attendance time? After all, if the IRC agreed to increase attendance time in primary/infants schools to the new level in TAFE, primary/infants teachers would have an immediate increase of five hours in release time. This is especially so when you consider that if an additional one hour of release time in primary/infants was granted within the existing 30 hours of attendance, hundreds of additional teachers would have to be employed at a cost of many millions of dollars. By increasing attendance time to accommodate release time, the cost to government would be virtually zero.

Similarly, the IRC's decision to require TAFE teachers to use their LSL to fund their TAFE vacation if the vacation is abutted by LSL could be applied very easily in schools by a government seeking savings. In fact, it could be difficult to argue why a different system should apply in one sector when LSL and vacation entitlements are currently so similar across both.

Other conditions also remain at risk in schools. The TAFE judgment allows TAFE management to determine how teachers use their release time. How could Federation argue that somehow school teachers should be allowed to exercise their professional judgement when TAFE teachers cannot?

The TAFE decision also allows for "increased flexibility" at the expense of TAFE teachers. Again, this has been pursued in schools in the past, most notably in DET's 1999 award application. Why should there be limit on the total number of face-to-face teaching hours in schools, when there is now no such limit for TAFE teachers? Why shouldn't school teachers be required to average their teaching loads over the year? Why shouldn't school teachers be required to work at night or early in the morning, just like TAFE teachers?

The TAFE dispute is not just about TAFE. With the schools award concluding at the end of 2011, negotiations on the next schools award have to commence in 2011. Why would DET negotiate with Federation in good faith when it knows that it can pursue the same changes with the same arguments before the same IRC? And what happens if they decide to just pursue changes for primary teachers? Or secondary teachers? Either would provide significant savings, especially to a new government after the March 2011 state elections. Members must take action now to defend conditions in both schools and TAFE.

Teach for Australia in trouble in Victoria

Earlier this year Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the Teach for Australia program to place graduates with degrees not related to teaching in teaching positions in disadvantaged public schools after an initial six weeks of training. At the time, the Federal Government announced that Victoria had volunteered to be the first state involved and that 100 Teach for Australia "associates" would begin teaching in disadvantaged Victorian schools after six weeks of training over the Christmas vacation. Although issued on the same day as the Federal Government announcement, the Victorian Government's media release was a little more modest, stating that 70 would be trained.

Now, in a joint media release from both the Deputy Prime Minister and the Victorian Minister for Education, it has been revealed that only 45 graduates have been recruited to commence at the beginning of 2010. Experience overseas with similar programs raises real questions about the effectiveness of the program and has shown that many will drop out in the first 12 months. It's time for the Federal Government to abandon showy but ineffective schemes from the US and develop programs that really will make a difference in our schools.

Bob Lipscombe is the President.

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December 2009 contents