From The Age: Xavier College teachers to vote on industrial action over workload

By Emma Koehn and Robyn Grace

For the original article on The Age site, click here.

Teachers at Xavier College will vote on whether to take industrial action including not attending Saturday sport through to 24-hour work stoppages as the Independent Education Union says staff at the school are distressed by their workload.

Negotiations for a new staff agreement at the Kew boys’ school have dragged on for two years, with weekend sport and workload among the key issues.

A compulsory conciliation hearing earlier this month at the Fair Work Commission failed to break the deadlock.

On Monday, the Independent Education Union (IEU) confirmed its members had won a protected action ballot order, a first for staff at the school.

Members will soon begin voting in the ballot, with the union saying internal polling suggests strong support for industrial action.

Teachers at the school will decide whether to take a range of protected actions, including not attending Saturday sport, bans on assemblies and detention duties and 24-hour work stoppages.

The union had said a sticking point in negotiating the new agreement was the school’s refusal to limit unpaid co-curricular workloads, a move out of step with other government, Catholic and independent schools which had better regulated teachers’ work hours.

A new workplace agreement last year gave Victorian public school teachers hour-for-hour time in lieu for out-of-hours work on school activities including camps, excursions and information nights.

The then Andrews government committed $130 million over four years in June so teachers would be paid for being on call overnight. The IEU said that since the commission hearing, the college had made some concessions. “Staff have now won co-curricular limits captured in the agreement, but for some the required 40 hours annually, on top of their teaching commitments, is too much,” the union said.

In a statement on Monday, the union said excessive workloads and burnout were having a huge effect on Xavier staff. More than 200 staff had left since 2021, and Xavier was currently being investigated by WorkSafe over workload-related matters.

Independent Education Union Victoria Tasmania general secretary David Brear said it was time the extraordinary work of Xavier staff was acknowledged by putting “sensible limits around co-curricular duties, meetings and all other duties of Xavier staff”.

“Across the board, school staff have in recent years been more stretched and overworked than ever, and we’ve seen this reflected in the deeply concerning number of teachers leaving the profession,” he said.

“We’re seeing too many teachers at Xavier in real distress as a result of the additional hours demanded by the school. This is just not OK.”

Seventy per cent of staff rejected the school’s latest offer in June. The school’s union members’ vote in favour of a protected action ballet order paves the way to potential industrial action. The results of the poll are due on December 8.

Xavier College was contacted for comment.