From The Point: New General Secretary David Brear looks ahead for the IEU

I’m really excited to be taking on the role of General Secretary of the union that I joined as a graduate teacher way back in 1989.

To be more accurate, the union I joined at that time was the union for Catholic secondary school staff that went on to amalgamate with the unions for Catholic primary staff, Catholic primary principals, independent schools, and then later the Tasmanian branches of the IEU to become the union it is today – the IEU Victoria Tasmania.

David Brear leads the applause for Deb James at her farewell dinner.

Over my journey as an educator I worked in Catholic schools, ELICOS and in the independent school sector before taking on the role of Organiser at the IEU around 20 years ago. It’s been a privilege to work for the union. The work is diverse and interesting but more importantly every day you are doing something that helps members do their job – and there’s no more important work than education.

I want to acknowledge the work of my predecessor Deb James who led the IEU for 17 years as General Secretary and for many years before that held several other leadership positions in our union. I can’t think of a more passionate and committed unionist than Deb and she leaves our union in really good shape.

Under Deb’s leadership our branch has grown steadily, and we now have over 20,000 members. We have over 120 EBA’s in independent schools and have negotiated Agreements covering staff in Catholic schools across both Victoria and Tasmania. Our members work in schools which are more litigious and more caught up in compliance and regulation than they have ever been before, so we’ve built a staff that has the appropriate skill mix to support members and at the same time drive our union forward.

When I started at the IEU we employed a single lawyer; today we employ five and they all have more than enough work to do. We have a dedicated communications team, IT support, finance, and admin as well as a super talented group of Organisers.

We have a strong and committed leadership group, made up of Kylie Busk the new Deputy Secretary who has a critical role co-ordinating the union’s education and professional issues work, Assistant Secretaries Andrew Wood who coordinates training, Simon Schmidt who looks after campaigning and organising, and Cara Maxworthy who oversees our work in independent schools.   

I’m really proud of our team and I’m confident that we’re in a really strong position to do the necessary work for members going forward.

What we do know though is that nothing is more certain than change. Our staff need to be out in schools working closely with members, so we always know what the issues are and what we need to be doing to be effective. This means having influence at the school level, but it also means having the capacity to work with other stakeholders including employers, various regulatory bodies such as VIT, VCAA and the VRQA as well as government at both the state and federal level.

We need to be strategic, agile and strong. Given how much we've grown, how strong we've become and how much talent and dedication we have in our ranks as a union, I'm confident we will be up to that challenge.