Know Your Agreement: Victorian Catholic Education Agreement Highlights - Part 2
Disclaimer : the information in this news article may not be current. For up-to-date advice on the CEMEA please refer to the fact sheets on this page.
Welcome to the second edition of Know Your Agreement!
Each week we'll take a closer look at three changes which, whether big or small, will improve the working lives of staff in Victorian Catholic education.
Education Support Staff & School Services Officers - classification and salaries (Appendix 5)
Alongside across-the-board salary increases for Education Support Staff and School Services Officers, there have been some very important changes to the lower end of the classification scale - in particular the reclassification of all ES staff at Level 1 to Level 2.
This follows the work done over the last two Agreements to improving the middle of the range, and ensures that ES staff at all levels now have a meaningful career structure, with salary progression that better recognises their skills and experience.
Those higher up the scale also now receive the same 1% annual Position Allowances as teachers.
School Services Officers have also had a very significant salary increase, backdated to December 2021.
Read more.
'The Commitments'
(Clause 9.3)
While much of the focus of this Agreement is on better management of workloads at a local level, we know that there is a real need to tackle this systemically – to look at ways of avoiding duplication, providing resources, encouraging best practice, and finding efficiencies to better support the work of teachers and principals across the state.
That’s why we negotiated the inclusion of seven ‘commitments’ agreed between employers and the IEU. These bind the parties to working together to find ways to, for example, encourage the sharing of teaching resources, streamline NCCD data collection, reviewing administrative work to ensure that teachers can focus on teaching and learning, and proactively planning calendars to better manage workloads at peak periods.
Read the commitments in full and find out more here.
Family Domestic Violence Leave & Sexual Abuse Survivors Support (Clauses 33 & 34)
The CEMEA increases the entitlement to paid family and domestic violence leave to up to 20 days per school year for ongoing and fixed-term employees, and includes a new entitlement for up to 10 days' paid family and domestic violence leave for casual employees.
These provisions reflect increasing awareness of the toll taken by such horrible situations and the resources required to rebuild. It takes money and time to escape dangerous domestic situations, and to re-start your life.
This Agreement also introduces up to 20 days of paid leave for survivors of historical sexual abuse. Eligible employees can access this leave in connection with attending and preparing for legal proceedings, accessing support services, or other approved activities.
Read more here.
Stay tuned for the next suite of highlights – coming next week!
Find Part 1 of this series here.
You can find all you need to know about the Agreement here.
Got a question or comment? Anything you'd like to tell us about how implementation is going in your workplace? Click here to let us know!